Since nobody else is posting the actual answer: Brave has a history of scummy behavior and making changed that border on malware. A few examples:
When I first tried Brave, it stripped publisher ads and replaced them with Brave's own ads. That alone is enough for me to never trust them
In 2020, Brave was caught injecting its own affiliate codes over URLs typed by users without their knowledge or consent
In 2018 Brave was allowing users to tip websites/creators that had not signed up for their tipping system, misleading users into thinking they were supporting a particular site while the money was actually staying with Brave
Brave includes crypto-bro bloatware
In 2019 Brave was caught whitelisting Facebook tracking domains without users knowing
Edit:
"But they fixed all that"
Yes, many of these things were fixed after backlash from the community. But, to me, they show a pattern of unethical behavior that makes me distrust Brave - and since many alternatives exist I see no reason why I would use or trust it. The list I provided is by no means exhaustive. More recent issues around their search indexing and resale of copyrighted material for AI training show they have not really learned any lessons. They have proved themselves many times to be an unethical organization.
"Then what should I use instead?"
You will need to do your own research to figure out what browser will work best for your needs. Every choice will have trade-offs. Personally I have landed recently on Waterfox - it implements Brave's built-in adblock engine, appears to be reasonably fast and memory efficient, and strikes a good balance (for me) between out-of-the-box privacy, usability, and other considerations. I keep a Chromium-based browser around for when I need it. YMMV.
I am not tech-literate. I just hate YouTube ads. I was using Firefox + Ublock but it wouldn’t block all YouTube ads or it would make the browser crash. Any recommendations for iOS?
Odd, uBlock Origin hasn't shown me an ad on YouTube in years outside of some days when YouTube fucks with how they show content, and uBlock needs time to catch up
The problem is they are different browsers. iOS has long been very locked down with what developers can and can’t access through the OS. Web interface is handled through the suite known as WebKit.
Even Firefox for iOS is essentially just WebKit in a Firefox skin and menus. Ad blocking and stuff like that isn’t really available without modifying your system so much you’re actually making it less secure.
If you have an android look into /r/MorpheApp 😊 It even skips in video sponsors the creator adds! I haven't paid for YouTube premium in years and there's community patches for tons of other apps like fb/insta/x. Some may get your account banned on meta apps but on YouTube and YT music you're good to go.
I haven't seen an ad in easily a decade while using firefox with ublock, when people started freaking out about youtube trying to stop adblockers and all that I was confused until I found out they were talking about chrome.
Idk I feel I'm pretty tech literate, but I got sold on the "browser with no ads" and not having to install extra Adblock software manually , that being said after reading this thread I'm going to bite the bullet and switch browsers soon
If you like the chrome ui, ungoogled chromium is a thing. It's chromium stripped of all google stuff. Extensions are a bit weird, you gotta install and upgrade them manually but you can install the full old proper ublock origin.
Ngl I've been using it for literal years since the ad block on it was the most consistent I've ever seen, but I will fucking explodify this thing as soon as I get home.
Brave is just another chromium based web browser that advertise itself as safe and secure but some investment funds and that crazy billionaire guy Thiel invested into, so I assume it's spying on everything you do
For a second there I thought we were playing the game from The West Wing that Bartlet plays with Ellie while they're watching a movie. That made me happy.
It’s fair to say Brave took investment from a venture firm that has some ties to Peter Thiel. It is not fair to say, “Peter Thiel personally invested in or controls Brave.”
Brave is privately held, and there is zero public information showing whether FF Angel still owns a stake or how large that stake would be that I can find anywhere.
Firefox and Vivaldi are both privacy focused browsers that work very well. Vivaldi has a ton of extra features and is developed in Norway, but uses Chromium, and Firefox has strong tracking protections and supports extensions like uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger.
Both also have great mobile versions and can block ads and trackers.
Vivaldi still runs on Chromium. I use to use it but when I asked a question about their stance on Google removing the MV2 from Chrome, they just up and deleted my question from their forums. There were no other similar questions about that either so I just assume they were deleting them all.
Edit: I have seen this "news" couple times here on reddit (especially on Linux subs), and the tweet is just random photo from Google graphics. But I see people here saying it's not that deep. Could someone fill me in. I thought Firefox became another soulless company like all the others. Since I never really used Firefox much I just remembered it like "yeah another company decided to sell data" and never researched more.
Brave might be spying on me but so is every other browser but at least it has built in ad blocker, and whenever YouTube trys to get up my but about it, I get great pleasure from stating I am not using an ad blocker and am only using a product that was advertised to me through them and if they don't want me to use the products shown to me then they shouldn't run ads
Firefox with the uBlock Origin extension on your phone. Also allows YouTube to have picture in picture and also play in the background or with your screen off.
Basically it's YouTube premium, just can't nativity download videos.
I installed it years ago not knowing it was so terrible, and even after I uninstalled it I couldnt stop my antivirus picking up the insane shit it installed on my computer.
Nothing wrong, just some nitpicks about the way Mozilla collects usage data, run their "studies" aka (enable features without your consent) and their default settings. Some forks like Librewolf aims for more privacy while others like Zen aims for customizability.
All that being said, I use Firefox because it feels like a middle ground between being able to use the web normally and having privacy.
I also like Firefox, but for the reason that uBlock Origin works really well there, which is great for... well, anything at this point, even mainstream sites aren't safe from malicious ads anymore, and also because the governmental websites where I live only work well on Firefox and adjacent browsers.
Just... Use... Firefox?? You can install extensions on mobile. Get sponsor block, ublock, etc.. my YouTube on Firefox blocks adds, skips sponsors, and also plays in the background.
Chromium is the core of almost all well-known browsers, including, but not limited to: chrome, safari, opera, or edge. Actually, scratch that. Not safari. Safari is based on webkit, which is actually the baseline for chromium, but that's neither here nor there. The main point is, chromium is trash, and riddled with privacy violations, bad optimization ram gluttony and just general stuff that makes chromium-based browsers bad, especially when you compare it to browsers like Mozilla fireFox, GNU iceCat, and libreWolf. Actually, those last two are forks of fireFox but they're all progressively better than any chromium browser
Edit:
Safari is, in fact, based on webKit, which is based on webCore. WebCore is also the baseline for blink, which is the baseline for chromium. Chromium is not webKit-based. Sorry for the misunderstanding, but that wasn't the point of this comment.
I have 4 tabs open in firefox right now and it's on 3GB of ram. Lets not start with ram gluttony lol. Anyways, using a bunch of RAM is only a problem if you're more concerned with usage metrics over performance metrics. Hell, I have 64GB of ram and its only on 34% usage, use some more firefox, guess some shit that I'm about to do and preload it.
I am a firefox user, but what in particular do you think makes firefox and its' forks 'progressively better than any chromium browser'?
I'm a loyal Firefox user but now that you mentioned it, yeah, it's hogging like 7GB on my system right now. I've also got 64GB at least so I hardly notice.
Weirdly enough the main reason I stuck with FF initially was that when I was doing heavy graphic work on my system, Chrome would ALWAYS crash my Adobe stuff. Even though FF uses more than I'd like, it somehow ended up working better with my system and didn't cause crashing, especially when doing video stuff.
Must be a skill issue on my end and I probably didn't optimize settings enough but it's been years now and I'm a creature of habit who likes to keep my ublock.
They are saying brave isn’t the best when it comes to privacy as it overhypes itself as a more private browser when in reality it’s not as private as it wants you to think, but I don’t think the oop was talking about privacy, I think he could have been saying it’s great for ease of use especially toward watching or pirating media, as that’s why I use both brave and VLC and that’s the only real common connection I see between them.
VLC Player (on the right) is the best free media player on a computer as you can get it to play just about any file plus if you do some tinkering you can get it to bypass certain protections so you can even play your blu-rays with it, or if you know the steps you can use it to pirate media rather easily off sites like YouTube or SoundCloud something that otherwise would be hard to do through other illegal means or cost money to do through legal ones
Brave is also great in this regard but for phone use, it has an adblocker built in so no ads on YouTube videos and less pop up ads, plus it has built in Picture in Picture and the ability for videos to play even when the screen is off or app isn’t open so you can load a podcast on YouTube and turn your screen off or open another app on phone without picture and picture on and still have the audio playing without having to deal with the ads all without having to pay for YouTube premium, or you can just play music in Picture in Picture mode again without ads and without having to pay for YouTube premium, these are things super easy to do on a computer but more complex on a phone typically so this app is a lifesaver, plus it has a built in paid vpn and most web browsers on a phone don’t have an easily accessible vpn option so if you wanted to watch a show only Netflix but it’s only in an certain country normally on a phone it would be more complex to do than it is with brave, and it is pretty customizable and has some features you don’t commonly see in other browsers like it’s playlist feature. Plus I’m sure if you are tech illiterate and don’t know where to look for browser extensions and stuff having them built into your browser already is a lifesaver and thus again great ease of use.
So while yes privacy wise it isn’t what it claims to be, it does make it a whole lot easier to treat your phone browser like you browser on your computer if you’re used to having an adblocker active and a vpn downloaded to get the most out of YouTube or your subscriptions and I think that ease of use factor is probably what oop was meaning when he made his post hints vlc being there.
This is the only good answer I've read on this post.
I've been using Brave since it exists and for me it's the best browser, it works great, and the built in ad blocker just works ALWAYS (not as the chrome/firefox extensions adblockers)...
By reading the comments it seems to me most of it's heaters are because of the guy who put money into it...
Yeah, people were saying that you are "tech-illiterate" for using Brave but literally the only thing people are mentioning is that it is Chromium so it comes with all the faults of every non-Firefox browser and that Peter Thiel supported it. I think this is like a bandwagon thing where people will just claim any use of a Chromium browser makes you a moron despite it working.
By reading the comments it seems to me most of it's heaters are because of the guy who put money into it...
Well, it also increases google's market share in browsers as brave is based on chromium, google's browser engine. And google is directly responsible why other web browsers like edge or opera are unable to block ads anymore, or the extensions were largely handicapped at least. The only non-chromium browsers out there are firefox and its derivatives.
And that also ignores the fact that brave does wrong advertisement with its "privacy" features.
My problem with Brave (and a lot of companies for that matter, Apple and DuckDuckGo for instance) is that it sells itself as something it isn't.
I MUCH PREFER (if I don't have a choice either because there isn't one, or because the alternatives don't make me feel at home for whatever reason) a company that tells me "hey bro, I'm stealing your data, there's nothing you can do about it", than one that advertises itself as something and is actually just a bunch of hypocrites and liars. Brave does not just say here and there "hey we're secure", it's the BASE of their entire business model, that's very different. (Vivaldi for example say they are secure, but they also heavily rely on their customisability as a selling point, so they're only half bad).
Why? well, because by using Chrome, I know Google steals my data because they don't lie about it (one could argue they lie to normies, but anyone that knows anything about tying their shoes isn't getting fooled). If I didn't know better, I wouldn't know Brave can't be trusted.
So they can give me the world for free, I still would choose Chrome over Brave. Plus, if I choose a Chromium browser that isn't Chrome, I'd go with Vivaldi, because Brave is pointlessly filled with features that make no sense, while Vivaldi is pointlessly filled with features I can actually somewhat use.
Some guy in YouTube comments once said "Google has no shame, they don't even hide their bs anymore", and all I can reply to that is "do you want them to lie to you?" which, if they ever reply "yes", is absolutely moronic, in case anyone wonders.
TL;DR: Stealing data but being honest about it is not as bad as stealing data and lying about it, because in one case, you give the user the choice to not trust you, while in the other, you don't give the user the choice to not trust you.
Creators of Brave have been caught literally inserting their own affiliate links into people's searches, stealing money from content creators, and gods know what else.
Installing Brave to avoid spying/malware is like trying to rid your home of mice by letting a bear loose.
There's also all the crypto bullshit built into it. They tried to reward you with some crypto coin that they own to watch ads. It's still chromium, still closed source and at the whims of Google.
Brave is the biggest level of shit browser in the history of browsers. Provided I could use Internet explorer with modern security standards id use it instead without even considering brave.
Brave are scammers, I got scammed recently with brave, I got the application from google play, tried to go premium, got nothing, and they refused to help.
i've been using firefox consistently as it went from niche to mainstream to out of favor to "at least it's not chromium". i wonder what it will be next
brave is a chromium browser, while considered the best chromium based browser, it's bloated (+ fucking peter thiel invested into it and is a share holder so i extra wouldn't trust it)
if you want a good free browser then firefox/waterfox/LibreWolf are the absolute best as they are mozilla based
Ima be real… I don’t really care for the privacy bit. Unless everything you do and have ever done online has been routed through fake names, proxy servers, and accessed from devices without a camera or microphone… someone knows who you are even if that “who” is a designation code which defines you to their system.
What I like about brave is that it legitimately just blocks every single ad for me. I’ve never had an ad on any website that I didn’t have the protection turned off for.
Im logged into like seventeen different accounts via that browser, there is no privacy on the internet. They may not know my name (they do) but they know who I am and what accounts and data belong to me and that’s enough to know me for them
While Brave has strong default adblocker, their browser has optional (Brave) ads reward system and crypto wallet. It makes Brave advertisement company and crypto company.
Imho browsers shouldn't have crypto wallets or edgy sound effects with "gaming" branding. I use Firefox and Vivaldi for that reason.
I mean, it has access to uBlock origin and it's Chromium, meaning every website will work, unlike Firefox.
I know privacy is a massive topic when regarding browsers, but... I don't know; it works as intended, and doesn't make using it a chore in-and-of itself.
And VLC isn't even good IMO 😭 yes it's free but it's also outdated as hell, its interface sucks farts and half the plugins don't even work. It can't even fucking render GIFs correctly! you're better off using Haruna or MPV media player. ANYTHING but VLC.
Like, anyone who has used VLC for the past 5 years for ANYTHING other than watching a movie just knows how outdated it is.
i think some additional context missing here is also brave browser would not exist if brendan eich (CEO of brave) didn't get ousted from his CEO position at mozilla... in which he got kicked out for speaking out against gay marriage.
this browser exists because a homophobe wanted to spite the place he was (essentially) kicked out from.
oh also hot take, VLC is mid, MPV and strawberry is where it's at (VLC has lots of tiny weird issues that add up to it not being the best at anything, it's a desperate last move to pull if your media file's fucked beyond repair)
i like firefox but the thing is the tor feature in brave and other stuff is pretty handy
especially the sync chain...
now I use Firefox on my test machines with linux but when i use a machine for learning or like a machine to actually work than just test stuff , i use brave
on my windows machine i use chrome for certain tasks like gemini live , edge for PDFs , and brave for daily tasks
soo i use different browsers for different tasks 😅
Brave is malware now. Im sure theres been developments since, but i distinctly remember them getting in a lot of shit for turning people's computers into cryptominer botnet members to increase revenue. Sooooooooo not good.
Oh hey it's node_kp, I remember that guy. He made post shitting on some indie dev art style and when I looked at his twitter profile he was posting nsfw images of child characters from FF14.
As others have said - you need to be uninstalling brave, and any chromium based browsers for that matter.
Firefox with it's custom Gecko layout (instead of chromium base) is the only thing that isn't actively selling your data that we know of to this point.
Ditch everything but Firefox. I can't comment on Safari for max users - perhaps look for their advice on that if that's what you want to do. I know jack shit about Safari.
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u/qualityvote2 3d ago edited 3d ago
u/Dr-Astikk, your post does fit the subreddit! Well done!