1675
Please, do not use Brave. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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.

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[-] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago

All you need to know is the Brave guy is a pedophile who is 100% using your ad revenue to buy csam.

[-] Skedule@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 year ago

Lol did i miss something? Did he get arrested or something?

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[-] RandyButternubs@lemmy.nz 19 points 1 year ago

its open source tho, show me the spyware and i will belive you

[-] eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 year ago

It's not just about spyware. It's about the actions of the company and the fact it's Chromium based.

[-] RandyButternubs@lemmy.nz 12 points 1 year ago

idk who the guy who made brave is and what he does but the browser works and definately isnt spyware coz you can just go look at the code yourself

[-] jeremyparker@programming.dev 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Fwiw the guy who made Brave is the same guy who who wrote JavaScript. He created Firefox too iirc, but was booted by Mozilla for being loudly and publicly homophobic.

I haven't heard anything about him being a pedophile, however.

(It's probably worth mentioning: he wrote JavaScript over the course of 10 days in 1995, iirc. Over literally the next 28 years, JS has been developed and maintained by everyone but Eich - so if you're weirded out by the fact that Eich wrote JS, he really did very little of it. If all we had was his version of it, it would be nowhere near as prevalent as it is today. JavaScript is still garbage, but at least it's our garbage.)

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[-] WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

I used to use Firefox but have been using Brave cause I was getting tired of having to open Edge every time there would be an addon or tool that was Chrome exclusive. So unless there's other options for privacy focused chromium browsers I'm just gonna stick with brave.

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[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago

Honestly, even the crypto part of Brave was a cool idea. Back when it was in beta, I was sending various websites and GitHub users 'tips', and they were able to cash out. It was genuinely supposed to be a new way to monetize the web (they later made the tips automatic based on how long you spent on each webpage), but, yeah.. Too many people didn't see the vision, and they got too much hate, so I'm pretty sure that whole program is axed now.

[-] eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 year ago

they got too much hate

It's almost like lying to your users about fundraisers and inserting affiliate links into URL's leads people to hate you...

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[-] Daydream8714@lemmy.today 13 points 1 year ago

I would be very curious what other browsers people recommend. I use Brave solely because of the profile feature it offers, which for my use case is an order of magnitude better than Firefox’s containers. Is there something more private/better than Brave that still has profiles?

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[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 year ago

Brave is better than chrome ans I'm glad we have alternatives.

[-] eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 year ago

Yes, but there's also way better alternatives to Brave.

[-] Vexz@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

I guess only Firefox and Firefox based browsers.

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this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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