• Voytrekk@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    200
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Looking into privacytests.org, the main developer behind it is someone who contributes to Brave source code. He may not be officially affiliated with the company, but it would be hard to ignore any sort of bias towards Brave.

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      52
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I’ve been seeing a lot of techy “privacy” blog posts, even here on Lemmy. It’s a little annoying when they muddy up the waters like this. People new to privacy will come across them and head off in the wrong direction.

      We need more comments calling them out and linking to proper resources. The site linked in this post even has a confusingly similar name to the actual recommended resource:

      https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/

      (And a quick sidenote: privacyguides is the same team from privacytools. There was a name change after the original owner for the domain came back and fought over the project. PrivacyTools is now a paid advertising site, and it is NOT recommended. https://www.privacyguides.org/en/about/privacytools/ )

      Edit: while I’m at it, here’s the official community on Lemmy

      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Even Privacy Guides has its own set of controversy, where basically one group completely took over the community from its founder (who themselves wasn’t squeaky clean, either).

        • Otter@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Isn’t that the same controversy, just worded in favor of privacytools?

          I’m trying to judge based on what I’ve read from each party, and I’m still leaning towards the privacyguides account of what went down

          The recommendations are probably the biggest factor for me. See the VPN pages on each site

          • TWeaK@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Tbh I don’t really care enough either way. But I would lean a little more towards privacyguide’s account of things, while I still don’t fully trust their judgement either. I can’t remember why now but there was something they were very fanboy-like over which I disagreed with, and since then I haven’t been following their advice, let alone their drama.

          • Otter@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            The article on privacyguides I linked above touches on some of this as well. I haven’t read through this one, but seems like the less verifiable one in a “x said y said” situation?

      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        28
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        The project technically being independent does not mean it isn’t biased towards one browser.

            • Platform27@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              You can but:

              1. There is no clear indication of bias, from PrivacyTests, just accusations.
              2. If the tools and tests ARE open source (which they are), they can be checked for bias/cheating. Someone could also expand (fork) upon them to give more of a rounded opinion.
              • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                A better defense against accusations of bias is a group or persons transparency.

                Simply having an open source methodology and code base isn’t transparency either, since it takes a much, much deeper and more developed skill set to audit both software source code and testing methodology than it takes to raise an eyebrow at sus circumstances.

        • Ado@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          Okay? Where is the proof it’s biased towards one browser