I think a lot of people don’t know any of the controversy related to brave and just use it because they know it as the most private chromium browser
Marketing has really worked for Brave.
That is the sad state of the world. Mass manipulating sentiment like some commercial psyop is a built in “feature” of the system.
we live in an era where you can make a puke like prime the most desired drink in the world, so yeah.
Catering to convenience too.
While I’m sure you are right I think Brave also likely pays for maintaining opinion on social media and posting positive comments supporting it. Many others learned of doing that (for example musk has bots astroturfing its image pretty much everywhere.) Similarly for example you don’t see controversies section about Brave.
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There is so much controversy with every browser and people working on them that I find is better just not to read anything about any browser anymore.
Maybe, if you’ve only heard of like 5 browsers.
Maybe. I tried a lot and my personal experience is that Chrome is at least a level above all else in UX for general use. So chrome with some privacy features out of the box seems a good way to go.
Chrome is the worst, there is no privacy with Chrome. The UX is also trash, it’s only good if you haven’t tried anything else.
Also Sergey Brin is in the Epstein files.
Well i respect your personal experience, but it doesn’t at all correspond with mine.
You can prefer the UX of Chrome, especially since so much of the web is designed for it. But it’s not a subjective personal experience that it is not private. Google exists to harvest your data. And the fact that everyone just accepts it is why the internet is so shitty.
We are taking about brave, not chrome. I don’t think you get any more harvested than you do with Firefox.
Privacy features? Google harvests your data regardless of your settings. It also furthers Google’s monopoly on the web. I’m sure anyone can see the problem with an advertising giant hungry for data being able to dictate how you access the internet, and what the internet even looks like. Google has power over all of that, split between their influence in the W3C, their Chrome browser, their Android OS, and Google Search.
Google decides what you see, how you see it, and how the underlying technology functions; that’s literally their business model.
That’s the real problem with Chrome and any Chromium based browser.
Yes, it’s a big concern. Unfortunately I have a lot of those. I will have to leave it to other people to spearhead a better fairer freer alternative. One that will not only attract a select crowd, but a wider audience.
Not sure what that has to do with your claim that “every” browser has “so much controversy”, but okay.
In conversations humans don’t talk like robots or like they are writing a code. People often use lose expressions, colorful language, exaggerations and everything else that I have no idea about.
I didn’t think I’d need to explain that when I said every browser before, I didn’t really think every single browser. Yet here we are. That’s why I didn’t actually think you will call me out on it and just continued with other stuff. 😀
So yeah, not every browser 😁. Only a few. Although with so many new questionable ai ones, the percentage is going up for sure.
So by “every browser has so much controversy”, you meant, “maybe a few browsers have some controversy”.
Apparently it’s robotic to point out gigantic overstatements.
🥱
that’s so sad
I mean, yeah. I’m not a computer person, so
fivesix browsers seems like a lot to just know off hand. I don’t know as many cola brands or Russian Czars without looking them up (I clearly don’t know what a normal comparison would be). People do talk mad shit about Firefox, chrome, opera, brave, safari, and edge though, which have got to make up the vast majority of the browser market.Having to cross out 5 and make it 6 because you actually could name more than 5 off-hand really seems to undercut that point.
But people talk shit about all of them. Plus, does edge really count? Also, wasn’t that really your point? I can think of more than five and people are still shit talking them.
From a non techie perspective, I don’t know why one is better than another.
Can anyone reccomend good options fo browsers?
These are all the browsers I personally think are good and privacy-respecting. Sorry if I accidentally included too many options.
Desktop
Firefox-Based
Firefox
The standard for browsers where you aren’t the product. For maximum privacy it does require tweaking settings, but it is reasonably privacy-friendly out of the box. It has light customization options including a sidebar and customizable button placement, and can be much more heavily customized with user themes.
Librewolf (Most reccomended for privacy)
A custom version of Firefox with enhanced privacy by default. Comes with Ublock Origin installed. May break some websites.
Waterfox
A Firefox-based browser with some additional privacy features, enhanced speed, and additional features.
Floorp
A browser based on Firefox with much more advanced customization options and many additional features, like workspaces and web panels. Doesn’t add any additional privacy-focused features. They recently also added support for chrome extensions. This is my personal choice of browser (with the Natsumi modification).
Zen Browser
A Firefox-based browser with a sidebar+workspace workflow, and lots of stylistic changes and customizations that help put the focus on the webpage. Very nice and usable for productivity, but doesn’t add any additional privacy-focused features.
Chromium-Based
Ungoogled Chromium
It’s Chromium, but without Google. Pretty self-explanatory, it’s simple, and it works.
Vivaldi
An extremely customizable browser packed with a massive quantity of additional features that can be toggled and tweaked for varying needs and methods of usage. Doesn’t add any significant privacy-focused features. It supports MV2 extensions.
Helium
A chromium-based browser with enhanced privacy and speed. Comes with Ublock Origin pre-installed, and supports MV2 extensions. It’s a pretty new project.
Android
Firefox-Based
Firefox
The de-facto privacy-friendly browser, although for maximum privacy it does require tweaking settings. It (and its forks) are the only privacy-friendly browsers on android that support extensions.
Waterfox
A fork of Firefox with more private defaults, and extra bloat removed.
IronFox
A hardened private Firefox fork. Heavily focused on privacy and security, it sacrifices some usability for privacy.
Chromium-based
Cromite (Most reccomended for privacy)
A chromium fork with enhanced privacy and built-in ad blocking.
Vivaldi
Very customizable chromium-based browser. It does not come with an ad-blocker.
iOS
All browsers on iOS are limited to the WebKit engine which Safari is built on, so just use Safari. The benefits of other browsers on iOS are negligible.
Oh wow ya thank you. This is very helpful
Literally just use Firefox for Android with uBlock. People act like this is difficult.
*uBlock Origin
I’ve seen the following types of people:
- People who ask how to do it, and get amazed.
- People who legitimately are not bothered by ads.
- Who think it to be a “headache”, and to just “let it be”.
- Who are incredibly tech illiterate to the point of frustration.
and then disable your YouTube app and save a link to webpage to your home screen. I haven’t seen a YouTube ad in years with this method.
Or just use ReVanced. Use microG for non rooted phones.
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There’s also PipePipe, which also does SponsorBlock so that you don’t have to see sponsor segments in videos
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Oh, nice. I didn’t know that.
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and/or use a video player program for playing videos, like mpv (+ yt-dlp).
I haven’t seen a YouTube ad in years with this method.
Decades. (counting mplayer and youtube-dl before)
I’ve been on Firefox since the very, very, very earliest days, back from when it started as Phoenix. I’ve been diehard believer in Firefox from Day 1.
But as usage has declined (and declined), many websites that I actually need to use no longer test for Firefox. A key website I use doesn’t allow me to log in with Firefox. Not as a “we don’t support Firefox” but quite literally it doesn’t work.
I’m all for flying the banner but I can’t live with a browser that no longer works on the websites I need. And yes, I’ve filed a bug, but because it relates to a login Mozilla closed it (they can’t verify logging in to this website).
I happen to be moving my account to a different website so I may be able to dodge it this time but Firefox really is sinking and at what point does one choose to abandon the ship?
Name and shame those sites. Those sites are the problem not firefox.
You’re not wrong. But I’m not on social media so have no channels to shout on. I doubt any newspaper would accept a reader contribution about this.
Name them here
Not available for IOS. For android firefox is bad at sandboxing and security. Vanadium if it had adblocking would be perfect for me.
It’s not a difficulty issue It’s that lots of us have tried Firefox and don’t like it.
Personally I don’t use Firefox because it is buggy, is missing critical features, implements some web standards weirdly and has weird user agent styles. The end result is that many websites don’t look right and don’t work correctly and/or fully
Interesting. I use Firefox for everything and haven’t had any issues. Maybe I’m just not that picky?
They’re pretty much just hating to hate or basing themselves on very outdated information, ‘missing critical features’ is a joke, because if it actually were critical it would’ve been implemented already (plus firefox is very extensible, with many plugins existing and forks adding specific features), if they actually had a point they maybe would’ve given a single example.
Weirdly implementing some web standards kinda did apply a bit until a few years ago where all the big browser engine developers got together and pinned down the standard. If something still breaks that probably means the website used some out-of-spec workaround that only works in Chrome. Some things do indeed behave differently between firefox and chrome (an example of my own: file input fields with multiple types, eg allow both video and image are handled differently at least in the mobile apps). Yet again if they had a point maybe an example would’ve been great.
Weird user agent styles?..?? I’m just confused honestly.
Me too
Buggy? Huh.
I do this as much as possible. However the Firefox in-page translation software seems to do something that actually changes the page (and this can break things like forms) whereas chromium browsers do some kind of translation layer on top, so the page can run normally beneath it.
It’s an infuriating reason but right now it means I have to split my browser use depending on if I need translations or not.
Is that new in the last couple years or so? I recall chrome breaking form entry left and right when translating before i could read the language.
Right now chromium is my best choice for translations in-page
I used to keep it installed just for that too so I’m not judging. I just also recall forms being broken by the translate tool.
Yeah I think it’s something about breaking the attributes of html elements. If it translates some id or data value then the form can’t find it.
The same for if it replaces elements or otherwise breaks hooks and event listeners.
You know you can install the “chromium-like” translation thing on Firefox as well, as an extension? E.g. this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/traduzir-paginas-web/
I’d rather use Librewolf than waste an hour wrestling Firefox configuration for better privacy.
Heck… I’d even rather use Brave than Firefox.
Canonical1 are a puppet for Google, long time, enshitifying.1 OOPS! LOL. Mozilla! XD Slip of the tongue, wrong enshitifying corporation making free software.
Peter Theil is the primary investor in Brave.
For those not in the know, Peter Theil is a MAGA Christian-Nationalist fascist, and owner of Palantir.
Palantir, is the military industrial complex company Trump has entrusted to create a mass surveillance network on US citizens, completely against the 4th Amendment, and dwarfing the NSA spying that was exposed by Snowden.
You can garuntee any activity you do in Brave is being tracked and sent to that network.
People here up upvoting baseless conspiracies based on a braindead notice that technology is like magic.
If everything was tracked and harvested by Brave, it’d destroy them much more than the bullshit “homophobe” allegation. Just use network traffic monitors to see if it does. You think people haven’t tried?
Or do you think software can covertly send data without users being able to determine?
It’s open source for fucks sake. Stop with the Alex Jones tier analysis.
Time to break out the article: https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/
*which is also still chrome
Normal browser icon vs incognito browser icon comes to mind
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Lynx is all the UI you need.
Or
linksif you’re all fancy like.curl, html2latex and latex are all you need.
I don’t even see the code anymore, all I see is blonde, brunette, redhead
it’s still around, just renamed to seamonkey
Mosaic or gtfo.
I use “nc” and parse like a real man.
konqueror is all i ever needed
Sadly some of it is that the folks at Brave are very good at burying their bad reputation under marketing
Time to warm up the popcorn machine.
Oh shit I didn’t know about this! I remember when Brave came out and I just instinctively knew there was something fishy about it, never used it. It’s like a sixth sense, like how you know when something is an ad.
I remember feeling the exact same when Facebook first rolled out and everyone was raving about it- I just knew it was a big scam, I couldn’t articulate it, but I knew.
It’s a good intuition to have, we should all keep our bullshitometers up to code and well maintained.
When tiktok came out I imagine you just fell ill due to sensory overload.
It absolutely did, and I went on a crusade trying to stop people around me from using it- to no avail.
The first time I saw it used in person was by a friend in a group of us all mid shroom trip. Sensory overload is an understatement.
Tried it when it first came out, noticed that it had an option to allow some ads to “support the developers” or whatever, immediately noped out of there and uninstalled it. The only adblockers that do that are the shady ones who are in bed with the ad companies.
I ditched Adblock Plus for Ublock Origin many years ago over this shit; not about to use an entire browser that secretly collects data on me and sells it to the ad companies.
Like Markiplier doubting Honey years before they were called out, something really was off about it.
Careful. Trying to sell Brave as a homophobe web browser won’t hurt it like you guys think.
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Persistent and unavoidable ads are the reason I don’t use original Firefox
Why are you not using uBlock Origin?
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Why don’t|you set it to open new tabs with a blank page? I have that as my setting and I forgot there were even ads on the start page.
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Firefox does have ads on by default for the startpage, but they can be turned off in the settings in a fairly easy and obvious way. So even as obnoxious and demoralising ads, I don’t think it is fair to say these ones are “persistent and unavoidable”. (It’s not easy to remove the Firefox logo from the new tab page, and that annoys me, but I wouldn’t call it an ad.)
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Not just that, it’s that Brave has this cult-like following for being out-of-the-box, Fisher Price My First Privacy BrowserTM easy to use.
Oh…oh, hey, Apple, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.
What does apple have to do with brave? i dont get it
Apple has a reputation as the Fisher Price version of smartphones and laptops/desktops because the user can’t change much themselves. It’s an old meme, but it checks out
I still can’t believe Brave is a thing. There apparently are just people out there who are like “I’m frustrated by the corporate bullshit in google’s chromium chrome, so I think I’ll try this crypto scam made by a homophobe on google’s chromium brave”
Fixed it, so it’s more accurate. Now with even more insanity.
Edit. Autocorrect bullshit
Chromium based browsers have no cookie isolation like FF with multi account containers. They recommend Profiles but a separate window eats way more RAM and the experience is just much worse. I use Zen
I love zen Such a great browser
Same reason they used Chrome. “What else is there?”
Software discoverability is kind of bad these days, and getting worse.
Ive found alternativeto.net pretty useful.
In the past, I’d classify that as SEO spam, but it has become kinda useful now that the rest of the internet has deteriorated so much.
The first place I usually search is GitHub, or open source app repos. Or niche communities that might be into the particular software ecosystem.
I used to use brave when I just started becoming privacy aware. Here are the reasons why:
- it’s chromium based. I loved the way chromium based browsers looked, especially when compared to Firefox. They had a comforting feel to them, whereas Firefox had a very “office-ey” feel to it.
- I wasn’t aware of the issues of chromium dominating the market share that it does and how monopolization in this manner can be harmful.
- I wasn’t aware of the people behind brave.
- I had seen older people use Firefox (with the default UI, which I didn’t like). That’s why, I associated Firefox with “old and outdated”. I hadn’t seen anyone use brave, and it looked quite good at the time for me.
Now, I use Mercury, a Firefox fork (ikik, it hasn’t seen an update in a long time, shush). I’ve loaded it up with my custom CSS, so its appearance is exactly the way I like.
Mercury has had a open high criticality cve for almost a year and a half now, that is being actively exploited.
Either switch to Firefox or a fork that is actually being maintained, or just block your machine from the Internet.
I agree with all you said, but suggesting to use a specific browser only when not connected to the web is kinda funny.
Noted
Too many times people who have been monitoring or are deep in a field overestimate how much knowledge an average person or even newly interested person has in the same field (oh hey, there’s an xkcd about that!).
People scoffing at anyone who thought Elon Musk was just a meme a nerd CEO before the cave thing, people who expect everyone to know who is running every browser, OS, or other company, and lots of other minor things they think should be common knowledge, when at the time it was something only someone invested in the overall field or someone who knew how search much better than the average person.
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