• Bonsoir@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I use it as my main browser and I honestly can’t go back to Firefox, but I really dislike some parts of it and of it’s community. The browser itself is fast, its default ad-blocker is awesome and there are a couple functionnalities that are nice to see, like Tor integration. But they block ads to show you their ads instead, that you cannot block even if you deactivate the “Brave Rewards”. The whole reward system in BAT is kind of shady; they need to authenticate you before you can withdraw anything and it’s worth peanuts anyway. When I complained about those issues on reddit, I got answers that looked like they were produced by sect members, and it wasn’t even on a related sub.

        • Bonsoir@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Sure, I can, but it would be a hassle and I’m kind of comfortable with what I have now. The first thing that hit me when I tried to get back to firefox (a couple weeks ago) was actually the time to load a page. It felt long compared to what I am use to. Sure it’s anecdotic, but I opened a game called factoryidle that ran capped at 200 fps on Brave, it was only at 70-80 fps on Firefox. The adblocker I had installed was also inferior to Brave’s. I guess it may be due to some extensions or I don’t know, but something was wrong and I didn’t want to do the effort to fix it.

          It’s like I want to believe, but as you say, I’m too lazy. I will try Ungoogled Chromium since you recommand it.

      • sequential@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Can I ask where you see Brave ads? I deactivated everything and haven’t seen any of their own ads

        • Bonsoir@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          If you use Brave News (to display a RSS feed), you get “news” about Brave’s functionnalities. They appear as any other widget in your feed, but are marked as “Advertisement” on the upper right corner. Here is an example from my feed : https://imgur.com/a/RJV2Px2 .

          Looks like it’s not the case anymore, but when I opened a new tab, some time ago, I used to get ads from Binance or other cryptocurrencies exchanges displayed as “cards” on the right of the window. Right now, I only get “cards” showing about “Brave Talks” or rewards, but it used to be advertisement about other products, such as Binance or other cryptocurrency company.

          I can’t reproduce it right now, but some “new tab” backgrounds are (or were) also advertisement for crypto-related products.

          There was also a controversy some time ago where they were injecting their own referral link when you typed a cryptocurrency exchange’s URL on the search bar : https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caught-adding-its-own-referral-codes-to-some-cryptcurrency-trading-sites/ . They stopped after it got viral.

          At least they are tagging their ads as such, but it’s weird how you can’t block any of it when they decide it’s there.

          • sequential@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I see, thanks for explaining. I used to get ads on every other new tab, but found that I could disable that in the Customize menu. I’ve only been using Brave for a few months, but it’s been a really good experience as it’s been the fastest browser for me, especially for maps. I still use Librewolf as well, which I highly recommend. I am privacy-focused, but honestly this article doesn’t deter me from using the browser and it seems like a lot of the comments here didn’t read the article or don’t understand that Brave Browser is different from Brave Search. I’ve been happy with Duck Duck Go for years, so I don’t use Brave Search.

      • MrMonkey@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Brave ads are opt-in.

        At some point you opted-in.

        If you don’t like it, then next time opt-out now or don’t opt-in next time.

      • Space Dancer@mastodon.online
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        1 year ago

        @Compactor9679 @PrivateOnions uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Multi-account Containers, Facebook Container, and Decentraleyes are the basic extensions you’d want. Then disable pocket and telemetry in settings. There’s more but that’s a pretty good starting configuration.

      • squirrelwithnut@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The Containers extension is the only thing you really need IMO. Firefox is already very privacy focused, and its default settings are pretty good.

        • kylostillreigns@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          With First Party Isolation is place, containers now add up very little to your privacy to be honest. They are mostly helpful in convenient compartmentalization of your browsing activities without actually having two different browsers.

          Firefox is already very privacy focused, and its default settings are pretty good.

          Partially incorrect. There is unnecessary telemetry that you would prefer to get rid of, for an example there is a setting for extensions recommendation as you browse. Also, probably because of their deal with Google, Firefox defaults to Google’s location services even though Mozilla has its own. You may want to change that as well for better privacy. I am only citing a handful few examples, there is more for you to dig in. uBO is a must have with right set of filters enabled according to your own privacy threat vectors. There is a reason hardening is a common practice among Firefox users.

        • EthicalAI@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Didn’t Firefox install adware on everyone’s instance in an overnight update? Like idk why people swoon over Firefox.

    • theonetruedroid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I used Brave for a out 6 months, but I’m really turned off by the devs. I switch to FF and am loving it. It’s much improved from when I last used in decades ago.

    • T156@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s a shame that there isn’t a good alternative for Apple devices, though. iOS doesn’t have much by the way of good ad blockers.

    • ✖️ 🇨 ✖️ 🇨 🐝@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It’s the hype from Cryptobros pushing it because it has crypto functionally and its own shitcoin.

      Personally, I never liked how it wants to monetize your browsing time constantly and pushes a lot of crypto shit in its advertising. Vivaldi is much better as an alternative imo.

    • Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Brendan Eich, the guy who co-founded Firefox and developed Javascript, is the CEO of Brave. His politics aside, I think he’s a pretty trustworthy guy.

      • IriYan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I hate to burst your bubble but when it comes to 6-7digits of cash at stake what does “trustworthy” even mean? You mean between millions and his word to you he will choose his word? His previously stated values and principles?

        The guy who made waterfox seemed pretty nice, friendly, committed to the cause, then sold the project to a data-miner, and so did the honest people who made startpage, the trustworthy privacy minded search engine? Now they see waterfox is independent again and not part of the big multi-natinal data miner.

        Mozilla once again made a sudden change that breaks your previous profile or other functionality and if you dare roll back the upgrade your profile has been ruined in transition, so you are forced to start from scratch reconfiguring, setting up you std tabs, bookmarks, history … Same stuff with TB, addons/plugins disabled, new “features” added, whether you trust them or not, added dependencies … you roll back you lose.

        The google chrome-engine is so intrusive in the way it runs, degoogled or not, it is hell to have on a system. Maybe inside a vm without anything else other than specific browser session may be ?ok? for fluff work, nothing private I hope.

        The naivity of people to accept and sometimes welcom large corporations producing FOSS is what got us to this mess, and I don’t mean users, but devs, distro managers, … if it is legally FOSS it is OK, even if it is a huge trojan horse manufactured by corporations to penetrate an other wise safe and secure system. FOSS - no corporate involvement - may be it, but will it boot? LinFound. gets millions and millions to have board seats to influence kernel, and it seems to be dancing with their wishes.

        • EthicalAI@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I think FOSS is enough because as long as you can fully read the code, it can be audited and even forked to remove BS. So I’m fine with companies developing FOSS. I don’t even really care about EEE. We can always maintain a fork of the standard at the moment you fucked with it. We can even still get your upstream changes just with the shit cherry picked out! It’s always a win.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Brendan Eich, the guy who… developed Javascript

        You say that as if it’s a point in his favor, LOL.

        If not for that asshole, we could’ve had a decent language embedded in the browser, like Scheme or Python!

        • Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I mean… if there wasn’t someone inventing a usable open source language for the browser it could have been some weird proprietary Microsoft language and our sites would still look like web 1.0