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.
I would recommend Ecosia as a search engine, Waterfox as a browser, and Lumo as an AI chatbot if you’re fixed on using AI.
Waterfox is Firefox with all privacy settings on. Simple enough.
Ecosia is a German-based search engine company that uses profits for replanting trees and reforestation. They use several resources for search results, so understand it’s not 100% based on pushing full privacy. I just figure they’re doing good with their money.
Lumo is the Proton-based AI that’s Mistral at the heart (French-based ai company focused on privacy) with some other tools under proton’s belt too.
Combined, I think this gives everyone/anyone a potent level of security/privacy with out-of-the-box use and no special tweaks or settings required.
You could go one step further and use 9.9.9.9 for DNS either at the browser level or gateway level for the whole home!
You say “all the privacy settings on”, but what does that mean. I assume FFP but probably not RFP. I also assume it keeps JS JIT enabled which is a massive attack surface. I am not going to get into more detail but if people are looking for a more security/privacy focused Firefox fork, use Librewolf. If all you are looking for is Firefox with the privacy settings on, just use Firefox. Even with Librewolf, you can (mostly) replicate the experience by using Phoenix or Arkenfox with vanilla Firefox. I recommend everyone reconsider using a fork that is amounts to a few preinstalled extensions and just some (good) default settings. Using a fork just introduces a new party into the mix, which at best slows down how fast you get (security) updates from upstream, and at worst leads to supply chain attacks.
That being said, I keep seeing people talk about how much they like Waterfox. I tried it and figured it wasn’t for me. That isn’t me saying that it isn’t the right choice for others. I would love to better understand what people enjoy about Waterfox over/instead of Firefox/Librewolf/Zen/etc., pros/cons and the like.
It’s a solid mix of having a lot of the privacy settings enabled, but without fully disabling all services that a majority of people might like or use (having a Firefox acct to sync favorites might be one). There are auto updates and patching that’re pretty quick to get released too.
I found a reddit post from the dev commenting on it a while back. Seemed like a sensible balance. https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/14seevh/comment/jqwuan8/
Either way, Librewolf and Waterfox seem like they can accomplish the same things, but just have a few default settings that differ. LW eliminates all possible Firefox account sync and services, but the fact I don’t use them, they’re not enabled. WF unfortunately leaves the default search to Google instead of startpage or Ecosia, but that’s a simple click at the top or change in settings. LW has Duckduckgo. LW has strict cookie settings enabled by default which might break some sites that require it for full functionality. Some people might not like that or want to whereas WF didn’t mess with settings. I’m more so talking about the masses or someone just starting out getting into privacy stuff that might prefer these things, but by no means are th either bad or worse than Firefox or Chrome.
Librewolf offers a setting to re-enable FF Sync. There are similar toggles for other things.
I want to love ecosia because of their unique climate projects, but the company is kinda going to shit internally.
Do you have more info on the company going to shit? I quickly googled it and maybe I’m searching wrong but the couple of pages with search results I checked had no relevant information lol
I hate recommending reddit, but take a look at the last threads on their subreddit. Also, check their employee reviews on Glassdoor and Kununu (German version of Glassdoor).
I agree. Plus it’s not available in many languages
Do I need waterfox if I just go through firefox setting and turn things on/off?
Waterfox pleged to not have any AI features that Firefox might have if you care about that
Librewolf is your answer. They don’t use ai nor allow ai generated code in their source. Waterfox if basically a web browser version of a Firefox skin.
Why Lumo and not Lechat directly?
Idk, primarily bc Lumo was a part of Proton, which I use, and I liked the ability to do offline searches and searches that delete ASAP after closing the tab. Plus honestly I’ve not specifically checked out lechat, so maybe I will!