this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023

1590 points (91.6% liked)

Privacy

32177 readers

395 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

1590

Please, do not use Brave. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

653 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.

Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.

Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.

After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL's. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.

Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I'd say the answer is a very clear no.

One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.

Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don't mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It still uses chromium

I'm not sure what that means. It doesn't "use Chromium", it is a fork of Chromium.

it's susceptible to the Google's Web integrity protocols

No. It isn't. You're thinking of Chrome. Don't know how many times I can say this but Chromium forks are not Chrome.

An website using the new protocols can refuse to load on your browser if you don't accept the ads.

...huh?

Why is it so difficult to comprehend?

Because it makes zero sense.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Using a fork of Chromium is still using Chromium, and still helping Google's dominance in the browser market. Using forks of Chromium is still supporting Google in the same way using forks of Firefox is still supporting Mozilla.

[+] [email protected] -12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Using a fork of Chromium is still using Chromium

That's not correct. Chromium is an entirely different browser. It has a logo that looks like the Chrome logo but gray.

and still helping Google's dominance in the browser market

When there becomes a suitable alternative that I can use for daily tasks and still preserves privacy, I'll recommend that one.

Currently I use 1 of 5 different browsers, depending on the task. I can't really recommend other people do the same. So the one is typically recommend is Brave because it's the only out-of-the-box privacy-preserving browser that works with virtually any webpage.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Literally any Firefox fork is a suitable alternative that can be daily driven. As for out-of-the-box function I don't see that as a factor in a community all about privacy, changing settings is pretty much the norm.

Edit: Also I said using a fork of Chromium is still using Chromium, not Chrome.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Literally any Firefox fork is a suitable alternative that can be daily driven

That's simply incorrect. I've used a few and many of them don't load webpages properly. We can argue about who's to blame for that but at the end of the day they don't work the way any Chromium browsers would.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've never had any such issues.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I have come across web pages in the past that refuse to load if the user agent isn’t chrome/edge

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I haven't encountered this issue. And Ungoogled Chromium is always an option.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

That would run the risk of the user agent displaying as chromium. So you would still need to change the user agent, which I’m not sure why you wouldn’t do that to begin with

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah. So then these issues don't exist or what?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm not saying they don't exist, just that I have never personally experienced them. The only issues I've ever really experienced are with DRM-ridden websites which you should avoid using anyway.