Brave is essentially just Chrome with an adblocker, a bunch of bloatware, and a bunch of controversies.
Brave took BAT donations in YouTuber’s names without their consent, with them keeping the money if the YouTubers didn’t claim it. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-browser-no-longer-claims-to-fundraise-on-behalf-of-others-so-thats-nice/
Brave’s search engine crawler hides itself from websites by pretending to be Googlebot, and Meta (Facebook) buys API access from them to train their AI. https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/
The business model of Brave rewards as a whole is to block all other ad networks to replace them with their own, which is unfair as only YouTubers and websites that have joined can make money from most Brave users.
If Brave actually cared, they would create an acceptable ads style feature which was free for everyone and allowed simple contextual banners while blocking ads which track you, take up most of the page, or have NSFW content.
Their approach is monopolistic as they have full control and can strangle YouTubers and websites by dropping pay at any time.
And Brenden Eich has said on Twitter that he plans to release “Brave Origin”, which is a paid version of Brave without the bloatware. That name is ironic as he is admitting that his browser is commercialised and bloated, which is similar to when gorhill gave uBlock way to Chris Aljoudi who commercialised it, which led him to create uBlock Origin.
If you use Brave, ditch it and look at using Librewolf or Helium instead, which both include no ads nor tracking and don’t have Brave News, Rewards, Wallet, Talk etc bloatware.
Desktop = Librewolf, Mullvad and hardened firefox browsers. Strictly separating uses. Mobile (Android) = Cromite, Brave, Firefox and Tor. Again, separating uses.
I already use librewolf on desktop which is a great experience. But Firefox on mobile is just so horribly laggy and has a dated UI, the only offering it has is ublock origin and reader mode. Brave is the only real mobile browser choice I have since it has pretty good tracker blocking and I can disable nearly all of the problems you’ve mentioned here.
I’m kind of surprised to hear you say that. I’ve been quite happy with Firefox mobile. I haven’t experienced any of the lag or whatever you mentioned. The ability to use extensions far outweighs any updated visuals in the UI department for me. It does everything I need a browser to do.
What is it that you need that isn’t already there? (genuinely asking)
An extra reason: Eich is a homophobic asshole and an anti-masker
To those asking “which browser other than Firefox”
It’s fantastic. It’s Chrome, stripped of junk, with full (not lite) Ublock Origin natively supported and shipped. What more could you want?
And it can coexist alongside Firefox.
Cromite is also great, but its antifingerprinting is so hardcore it breaks some sites. That’s perfect for shopping/private browsing, but a bit much for daily driving unless tracking resistance is your #1 priority.
On iOS and OSX, Orion (from Kagi) is sublime. It’s Safari based (which you want for Apple stuff), but heavily modified with a native blocker, and supports extensions if you really need them. There aren’t many Safari “forks” like it.
I say this because I’ve been through a gauntlet of trying a bunch. Bromite, ungoogled chromium, waterfox, pale moon, Thorium, Vivaldi, all sorts of iOS apps and Firefox/Chromium forks. And these feel like endgame to me. Helium is just about perfect (as long as its development isn’t dropped), and Orion is close aside from some UI quirks.
Name a solution for a mobile phone webbrowser without ads including youtube ads that allows playing youtube while the screen is turned off and I am ready to switch.
Morphe takes the official YouTube app and modifies it to remove ads and add background play morphe.software
Firefox… I mean, regular old from the app store Firefox… Not even Waterfox or anything, just Firefox.
How did you end up at Brave without knowing Firefox could do all that?
Dude, just use NewPipe or PipePipe from Fdroid. They are much better than using the Youtube mobile website.
Or Grayjay, I found NewPipe / other frontends had their fair share of issues while I was using them. Their desktop app however I’ve not used as it was failing to build on my NixOS machines.
Don’t forget that they used to add referral parameters to links you clicked so they got a kickback from you clicking things from anywhere even if they didn’t make that link for you.
I’m just glad people are finally starting to mention LibreWolf as the first go-to.
Do people realize that if Firefox dies (in the many ways that could be interpreted), all of these downstream forks will also die right?
Like, the work to in essence remove unwanted parts of a code base is admirable but its an utterly miniscule fraction of the work that goes into maintaining a modern browser, keeping up with standards, sending people to be voices at conventions, etc.
The beauty of open source projects is that if they are abandoned, other people can pick them back up. Sure it may be difficult, but if it wasn’t FOSS it wouldn’t even be possible.
what do you all propose as an alternative for ios? (i’m aware ios isn’t ideal, im gonna get a GOS phone soon but wanna use this phone until i cant)
Orion is great.
So is DuckDuckGo.
Firefox
I use Ecosia’s browser
deleted by creator
Ok, but which browser should we use.
I am on opera
Literally Firefox.
I feel like the reasons are obvious and I am constantly amazed at people who choose offshoots that end up having problems jsut as bad or worse than Chrome.
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Firefox actually uses an engine independent of Chromium
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Firefox keeps developer documentation for the actual open web in a a clear fashion better than anyone else with MDN.
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Firefox is responsible for all of the heavy lifting for any of the browsers downstream of it that people seem to want to switch to so that Mozilla is less supported and the browsers they are on also break (which is bizzare footgun behaviour in my opinion, and exactly why the people who are idealists inherently can’t win. They shoot themselves in the foot with idealism so hard that companeis don’t even have to care about their opinions).
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Firefox has more resistant than the engine makers of any other browser to anti autonomy web changes like Chromes manifest 3, tvarious new tracking mechanisms and more.
Excuse a little bit of snark at hypothetical responses below, but Im just so frustrated Ill let off a little steam here:
bUt Ai.
So they have a few AI features you have to purposefully find or stumble into, and that means you are going to do everything in your power to make sure your last actual chance to avoid completely Google domination dies too?
You are basically begging for the even more intense enshitification that will come if Firefox actually dies.
bUt SoMeOnE eLsE cAn CoNtInUe DeVeLoPmEnT
Oh yeah? Someone else is going to take on this project with a massive amount of legacy code, inside knowledge and hundreds of people working on it constantly to keep it completely up to date??
You must have been confused when I mentioned above Mozilla does the heavy lifting for the browsers down stream. Just because someone makes a fork that removes features doesnt mean they are equipped to handle the level of work done in the code they are downstream of.
Anyways, the bottom line is, for now, if you actually value open source, the answer is Firefox.
Or one of Firefox forks. I like waterwolf due having a mobile app
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You should try Librewolf and Helium.
Vivaldi, the only decent Chromium and from the EU (Norway), green energy server in Iceland (Geothermic energy)
I’m waiting for Servo to able to play YouTube videos then I’ll stop using Firefox (Floorp)
Use Invidious?
I can use invidious but what I mean is that if Servo can play videos on Youtube then it can render like 90% of the entire internet without any weird format issues
I don’t like Brave or the amount of bloat. Sadly what is missing from basically all Chromium forks is even basic browser anti-fingerprinting. The only other real example I can think of is Cromite, which is what i recommend people use instead of Brave.
I’m too ready to ladybird browser to be ready in a few years.
I was looking forward to ladybird until I saw social media posts from the person who runs the project, like:
In recent years I’ve attended multiple software conference talks that had unrelated extreme political rhetoric in slides, such as “fuck [name]” and “punch [group]”.
Whenever this happened, some of the audience would clap and cheer, I’d roll my eyes, and the talk would get back on topic.
Fast-forward to today, and look at how many people in our industry are openly celebrating the murder of someone they decided was a “nazi” and “fascist”. Turns out these people were more serious than I thought.
As someone who’s repeatedly been called a “nazi” and “fascist” myself for disagreements with far-left ideology, I know how easily those labels get thrown around. And honestly, this is making me seriously reconsider which conferences I attend.
There’s a hateful rot within our industry. It shouldn’t be socially acceptable to cheer for murder. We need to do more than roll our eyes.
source: https://nitter.net/awesomekling/status/1967178708852097278
Can you really discount and avoid a whole project because of that statement?
It reads like: “Can we keep politics out of software?”
Which I agree with for the most part.
I’m not sure I have experienced enough of life to make this statement, but it feels like in recent years a lot of people are becoming radicalized through social media, etc, which is seeing its spread into every conversation and space. Maybe he is done with politics and doesn’t want to keep hearing about it in unrelelated spaces (software conferences). What’s wrong with that?
I’ve seen the guy on a podcast where he explains ladybird, he seems like a good dude doing it out of love and to see competition in the browser space, I can’t fault him for this (nothing burger).
Do you think differently?
Yeah, ladybird is dead to me. I think the assumption that you can keep politics out of anything is wrong. Everything is political and only if you are in a privileged position (because you are rich or not a suppressed minority or whatever) you can afford to be apolitical because things are already going your way. When someone demands to “keep politics out” I think it should be interpreted as “I don’t want to renegotiate the status quo because I don’t want to lose my privilege.”
Another thing that annoys me about his comment is the victimhood complex. He is complaining that people are being mean to him but if people are “repeatedly” calling you nazi or fascist … chances are you are saying fascist things but I don’t see any self-reflection here.
A few years? I thought alpha would be out this year
An alpha is hardly a replacement for a full browser though.
Mullvad Browser is great as well.
Brave is the browser version of Honey. It blocks 3rd party ads and inserts its own, taking the money. Either block the ads or don’t but this is shitty.
