• kingthrillgore@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    The man who is CEO is a shitter who gave us the blessing/curse that is JavaScript

    They’re relying on a cryptocurrency for growth

    They use Chromium/Blink

  • Knusper@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    What hasn’t been said as explicitly yet: It being Chromium-based means there’s tons of implementation details that are bad, which will not be listed in any such comparison table.

    For example, the Battery Status web standard was being abused, so Mozilla removed their implementation: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/battery-status-api-being-removed-from-firefox-due-to-privacy-concerns/
    Chromium-based browsers continue to be standards-compliant in this regard.

    And this is still quite a high-level decision. As a software engineer, I can attest that we make tiny design decisions every single day. I’d much rather have those design decisions made under the helm of a non-profit, with privacy as one of their explicit goals, than under an ad corporation.

    And Brave shipping that ad corp implementation with just a few superficial patches + privacy-extensions is what us experts call: Lipstick on a pig.

  • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Judging by a default browser is also really misleading. Firefox is by far the most private with extensions, no competition.

    • sushibowl@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      Not exactly, the guy who runs it became a brave employee shortly after starting it. but they claim to continue to run it independently.

  • Munrock ☭@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Have a gander at the people behind Brave Software. They’re all cut from the same silicon wafer as everyone else in the Silicon Valley executive biome. And the (lack of) readiness of the information about who is behind Brave is another tell in itself.

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    I don’t run Brave because Brave runs a crypto scam right in the browser.

    I don’t care that you can disable it, I don’t care that it might be the only way they found to make a buck out of free software: anyone who dabbles in crypto is instantly sketchy. And I don’t want to run a piece of software as critical as a browser made by someone who’s not 100% trustworthy.

      • Mullvad accepts crypto as payment; there aren’t many other options for anonymous online payment methods today. What Mullvad aren’t doing us creating and running their own cryptocoin in support of their advertising wing. The two are not equivalent.

            • Devjavu@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 year ago

              How did I make a false equivalency when the op literally called any project that “dabbles in crypto” a possible scam? That includes Signal as well as Mullvad. Op’s comment does not in any way indicate the use of one’s own currency, simply abolishing all services using crypto.

              • Don’t you recognise a difference between creating a cryptocurrency to use it to encourage people to watch ads, and allowing people to pay with for a service with an existing cryptocurrency in the cause of anonymity? There’s a fundamental difference, right? If not, then fair enough - them taking exception to Brave but supporting Mullvad is hypocracy in your eyes.

                FWIW, I believe no defender of !privacy should be opposed to cryptocurrencies; for better or worse, they’re the only option for online anonymous payments. But I also object to the proliferation of bespoke shitcoins, most of which are truly pyramid schemes in intention amd execution. But it’s a fine line, I’ll admit.

                • Devjavu@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 year ago

                  Of course I recognize the idfference. And I hate brave for somewhat abusing their users like they do. Still, that is not what op said. I won’t repeat it again, but that fundamental difference you are speaking of was not highlighted by them. Possibly leading other people to believe that cryptocurrency is bad to use as a whole, which as yourself has said is not right if one repsects privacy.

    • null@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago

      What makes it a “crypto scam” and what makes “dabbling” in crypto inherently “sketchy”?

      • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Come on mate, there’s no way you’d be aware of crypto in an online space like this without being well aware of why most people consider it a scam.

        • null@slrpnk.net
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          1 year ago

          On the contrary, I’d expect people in these spaces to be more capable of separating the signal from the noise with crypto and not default to “crypto bad”.

    • Stumblinbear@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      I wouldn’t really call it a crypto scam if they aren’t demanding or asking you buy it, just giving you free crypto

      • Feydaikin@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        just giving you free crypto

        If being alive for 40-some years has taught my anything, it’s that companies “Just giving you free anything” should raise red flags.

        Even if it is benevolently intended, I’d be suspicious and very cautious about using their products.

  • benpo@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    That’s just browsers with default settings. Firefox doesn’t have a built in ad block, so it will always perform worse in that test. I guess FF + ublock origin + hardened settings (such as arkenfox) would perform like brave, if not better. For example, if you check android browsers, you see that Mull (a hardened fork of Firefox) performs great, even without ublock (that you can install as extension anyway).

  • Ilandar@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    That website is run by an employee of Brave, who rates the privacy of browsers based on their default settings (which Brave tends to perform best in). If browsers prompt the user to select their privacy settings on a first run, he scores them based as if the user had selected the worst privacy options.

    If he actually spent a few minutes setting up each browser, as is always recommended within the privacy community, that table will look a lot different. But then Brave wouldn’t stand out as much…

    • hruzgar@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      almost nobody does that though. And after a certain amount of time even power users are like “yeah. f* it”. So default settings ARE important imo

    • bbbhltz@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      That website is run by an employee of Brave

      Like, for real? That’s kinda funny.

  • danhab99@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Unless someone wants to disagree with me

    All the code is opensource and no one has ever raised a privacy alarm in a merged pull request. There’s nothing to fear

  • Thom Gray@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    I use Brave as recommendation for my friends still using Chrome, since I tell them it’s built on the same code. Most of them are so scared to leave Google’s toxic ecosystem that they think just installing LibreWolf will get them on a gov watchlist, hell they’re probably right. 🫢

  • satanmat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    From the JDLR dept… notice how brave is listed first, and passes every test (except a very few)

    This report just looks biased. Even if it is totally legitimate, and many users have pointed out how it isn’t , it looks biased.

    It looks like every sales pitch for a product where they list everything their product does and how it’s better than the other things.

    I vote librewolf

  • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    People don’t like the creator of Brave because he’s supposedly anti-trans. He donated to some anti-trans political group iirc.

    The browser also has some crypto stuff (web advertisment replacement, block chain based decentralized browser sync), and a lot of people hate crypto these days.

    Personally I think it’s a good browser, the web needs advertising revenue to function and it’s solution to replacing web ads with optional browser ads that still pay the websites you visit seems like a decent solution. I respect the push to use a non-chromium browser, but personally I rely too much on browser tab groups to use anything Firefox based.