I only use brave at work because it somehow bypasses the firewall there and I can install and use it. I run it to watch videos about cooking or traveling and reading news when I have nothing to do at my job.
At home I usually run tor browser (tbb) and firefox with addons to block ads and tracking.
I’m not sure I should turn to brave as default browser. How do you see it?
what’s your experience with brave like?
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Functionally, read this guide here: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers
Philosophically, Brave does a lot of shady user tracking and crypto shit of their own, and I choose not to use it for that reason. Better than Chrome. Worse than Firefox. In my opinion.
Apparently they sell user data to train AI models… search for “brave controversy”
Apparently you need to follow your own advice and do a search because it takes 30 seconds to see they are collecting data from their search engine not the browser. So if you don’t use their search (which is pretty shit anyway) it’s not relevant to the browser side of things. The browser is completely open source and everyone can see what the code is doing.
And isn’t using search data to improve search results a pretty reasonable usecase for AI? Seems like a nothing burger. For the record I use librewolf but I find the constant Brave hate to be undeserved.
https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409406835469-What-is-the-Web-Discovery-Project-
If you opt in, you’ll contribute some anonymous data about searches and web page visits made within the Brave Browser (including pages arrived at via some, but not all, other search engines). This data helps build the Brave Search independent index, and ensure we show results relevant to your search queries. By “data” we mean search queries, search result clicks, the URLs of pages visited in the browser, time spent on those pages, and some metadata about the pages themselves.
My emphasis.
So just don’t opt in then? They’re not selling the data, it’s completely optional, and they explain exactly what they’re collecting, how they’re collecting it, and what they’re using it for. This is all completely reasonable. They have to get this information for to improve the search somehow. Even the actual collection component is open source. I’m not sure what the issue is.
My reply was purely to get to the accurate information versus your reply which says that they are “collecting data from their search engine not the browser” as it’s important that people reading know what’s actually going on.
I’m not here to argue about whether they should or should not do that and I’m not going to (and when I used Brave I consciously went into the menu to opt into this to improve their search engine so we could have a competitor).
Ahh yeah I actually remember that now that you mention it, I used to be a heavy brave user since then I’ve moved to ARC, is pretty cool also built on top of chromium just like brave.
Used it for a while years ago, hated all the crypto stuff it tried to push but could still ignore most of it. Then saw the CEO sharing antivax propaganda and decided to try different options, ended up finding much browser options out there. These days I’m running Vivaldi. I think I would only put brave ahead of chrome itself now.
The crypto stuff is opt-in. You don’t have to use Brave Shields (in browser ad blocker). It can be turned off. Now you can use uBlock Origin or another ad blocker.
My biggest problem with Brave is it installs VPN Services without without telling you. Here’s a Brave developer talking about it on the Brave subreddit.
If you need a Chromium browser. Just use ungoogled-chromium, Windows version. If you just need a browser use Firefox.
In OP’s case it sounds like the VPN service is the whole reason they’re using it. Not that I would recommend it, as their corporate IT likely has a policy against exactly this sort of thing
I just discovered this on a relative’s computer. Any trick to removing the VPN service?
The VPN services are installed but do not run unless/until you activate Brave VPN. This is such a non-issue.
It’s shady AF. Anything with that much crypto bs baked in shouldn’t be trusted.
Why?
At work I use firefox, but to be fair we don’t have any firewall or restrictions. Home I use librewolf for privacy reasons.
Crypto scam scum
If you so much as mention a browser on reddit you’ll get 5 replies telling you to try Brave
Haven’t seen it mentioned once. Most of the time, it’s to NOT use brave as it’s sketchy, and to use Vivaldi, or even better Firefox.
All evidence points to it being a very technically sound browser but with a terrible leadership. I used to use Brave but have since switched back to Vanadium.
It’s a good browser. I used it for a really long time then switched to Firefox. Now I’m switching back, because Firefox has bizzare issues with rendering some pages and apps.
It’s a great browser. The mobile version is packed with features not found in other browsers and the desktop version is the best chromium based browser imho.
A lot of people here trash talk brave because of the CEO but there are bad apples in every corporation.
As a regular user, it’s fine. I know the controversy around it. At the moment, it doesn’t bother me as much as it does with others. I only use brave, the browser. I don’t use its search or any other of their services.
I would like to go to Firefox but only thing keeping me from switching is its PWA experience is not good compared to Brave/Chrome.
PWA?
Progressive web apps
I’ve used it on my phone once, and had trouble trying to change my home page. Searching for it, apparently it was because of an option that was glitched. Turning it off solved it. This glitch was present for years, from what I read, and still wasn’t solved.
It had the A.I. controversy that people mentioned. So I guess it’s not very reliable in the privacy section, even if it’s their main “appeal”.
I’m using Firefox on both PC and mobile. Only experimented with Brave for a short time. Can’t say much more about it.
Brave is in the same business model as google. Selling ads. First drive adoption. Then flip the table to serve ads.
It works for you due to the firewall restrictions and such, great, use the tools that work for you.
But as far as using it as a default, nope; Firefox (and any non chromium browser if I can help it) all the way.
Brave sucks ass. They sell your data
