I know of the controversies, I just don't think they're all that big when you actually examine them.
Homophobia
I'm part of the LGBT community and I just think there are bigger fish to fry. One of the guys involved made a $1k donation to an anti-prop 8 campaign like 15 years ago. That's it. That's the controversy. Like, yea it's shitty, but there was a lot more hate toward the community back then. People have grown and changed their views a lot in the years since. If we boycott every single company or individual who ever did anything even remotely homophobic, no matter their actions since, we'd essentially have to be living in a commune growing and making literally everything ourselves. Btw, this same guy is the one who developed JavaScript and I don't see even remotely the same level of hate for that, so it really feels like people are just being selectively upset.
Cryptocurrency
It's opt-in. It asks you once, and then never again. It was developed at a time when crypto was popular and was a feature people wanted. It was seen as a good thing when it first came out. Public opinion on crypto has soured, but plenty of people who wanted it still use the feature on brave. They have no good reason to scrap it. Especially because, again, it's opt-in only. Don't like it? Cool, don't use it. They aren't pushing it on you. But people hear the word crypto and immediately break out the pitchforks.
Do you even know what the goal of their cryptocurrency was? I think it's safe to say its failed at this point, but the goal was to completely rework how ads function on the internet. It would have killed the modern advertisement methods where ads are shoved in your face and you get nothing for it. Instead, it would have directly paid you a tiny amount any time you saw an ad, with you being able to choose how many you saw, or even if you saw any at all. Then you'd either be able to either keep the money for yourself, or donate it to websites/content creators of your choice. Take away the crypto part of it, and that's actually a pretty admirable goal in my book.
Ad affiliate links
Brave's biggest, actual, controversy is that they replaced some affiliate links with their own. Specifically links to binance.us, which is a crypto market. When it was found, Brave changed their code extremely quickly and claimed it was a bug. Now, companies have often lied through their teeth and claimed malicious actions were a "mistake" or a "bug", so maybe that is the same case here. But considering it was one site only, it was fixed almost immediately, and when you look at how it was actually replacing links (suggested auto fill in the address bar, pulled from browsing history) I am leaning toward it actually being unintentional.
Conclusion
I think people just like to hate things, and will find any reason to continue to do so as long as their little corner of the internet tells them they should hate it. People most vocal with their complaints rarely take the time to dig into the facts and see if it's really as bad as they claim; or they fully know it's not as bad, but never want to let the truth get in the way of a good ol' fashion, hate-boner, circle-jerk.
Is Brave the best browser? Hahahaha no. It's still a chromium fork and has been a little too eager to integrate AI in my opinion. But it's FAR from the worst and is the probably the best privacy focused browser for those that don't understand technology and struggle to use third-party ad-ons. It's just a little ridiculous that while there are legitimate things to complain about, most people's arguments seem to always stem from the 3 topics above.
Now cue the downvotes because I'm clearly some crypto fascist boot-licker for daring to believe "nuance" isn't a made up word.
A couple points: Brendan Eich, the one that made the prop-8 donation, is the current CEO of Brave, not just "one of the guys involved". In a related problem, I find it a little difficult to believe that someone who doesn't still hold their anti-gay views would be quite so eager to take cash from Peter Thiel (via his Firm Founder Fund) and I especially do not want to be involved with a browser supported by Thiel when the terms of his investment are private (like, does he have access to brave's user data? We'd like to think no, but boy are they shaking hands with the devil while asking us to trust them.)
Another big piece of criticism that was excluded: Brave created a bunch of profiles for content creators without telling them then used those to solicit donations on behalf of those content creators, then not only refused to refund users who were deceived they kept all the money they said would go to the content creators.
I think people just like to hate things, and will find any reason to continue to do so as long as their little corner of the internet tells them they should hate it.
Trying to present aspects of this as overblown is possibly true - their affiliate link scam was just to binance.us and that gets left out of a lot of this, but at the same time that's a damned difficult thing to sell as just having been a mistake when it was auto-replacing the links to something they were the beneficiaries of.
Btw, this same guy is the one who developed JavaScript and I don’t see even remotely the same level of hate for that, so it really feels like people are just being selectively upset.
Well sure, but he's not actively the CEO of javascript, and as far as I'm aware hasn't ever been involved with javascript since it was rolled into the OpenJS Foundation.
(Also: Brendan Eich shared a bunch of covid conspiracy theory / misinformation stuff. Sure that's a minor point, absolutely everyone sure was doing that back then and why should we judge, but still it's not a great look.)
Trying to present aspects of this as overblown is possibly true - their affiliate link scam was just to binance.us and that gets left out of a lot of this, but at the same time that’s a damned difficult thing to sell as just having been a mistake when it was auto-replacing the links to something they were the beneficiaries of.
And this is why an Open Source browser is so important. Because we can audit it. You are saying like it is a bad thing to audit it.
(like, does he have access to brave’s user data? We’d like to think no, but boy are they shaking hands with the devil while asking us to trust them.)
A wireshark audit isn't relevant to their reasons for having included the link redirect in the first place, and even a full code audit wouldn't turn up a user datasharing agreement with Thiel? Obviously auditing OS software is a good thing, I never made any claims about that being bad or presented like it wasn't possible?
I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here, none of that refutes any of the points I made.
datasharing agreement
What kind of data they could be collecting if they just connect for checking the version and 1 or 2 connections more, as shown in the wireshark scan? Really, oh a computer downloaded Brave, big deal. Even assuming the worst that everything goes to Thiel it just doesn't matter because it is not relevant for tracking.
In the end they are just browsers. It's great to have people that inform others and lead them to better alternatives and Firefox has many of them who are very passionate. But then many of them are way too passionate.
I agree with you on all these. The only problem I have with Brave is they choose to exclusively shit on Firefox recently as their marketing strategy, while there are apparently much much bigger fish to fry. I thought their whole mission is to stop people from using Chrome, not another way more privacy focused browser.
Dude you are the most logical and coherent person in this thread, congrats.
I should add that most of the bloat Brave has can be disabled via policies, even IA things.
Yup librewolf for all the stuff I can. Google Meet has all kinds of wierd problems on firefox, especially in Linux. Whne you're hosting you can't share just one tab with sound and in linux getting the video/mic to authorize is hit or miss and takes a good 20 seconds on my boxes to authorize even when it works.
Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet.
:::
In terms of performance, it's well known that Blink is faster and it can be tested by just trying both. Firefox stutters and lags while Chromium maintains a smooth framerate.
I disagree with compatibility however. Chromium's wayland support is iffy and it barely integrates with XDG or VAAPI
GrapheneOS's objections are irrelevant because you should be using security extensions if you're old enough to get online without parental supervision. JavaScript has not run on my web browser since Bush Jr was in office. Considering Graphene is made by weirdos who get hysterical if you start asking questions about the difference between admin permissions on a big device that lives on your desk versus a small device that lives in your pocket, they're pretty firmly relegated to being unserious.
Do you really think extensions are sufficient to manage proper process isolation in the browser engine itself?
JavaScript has not run on my web browser since Bush Jr was in office
Are we serious? You can't claim that security is irrelevant for everyone because you cripple your web browser to be functionally equivalent to curl https://website.com/.
made by weirdos who get hysterical if you start asking questions about the difference between admin permissions...
There's little difference. I'm pretty sure they'd agree the traditional desktop security model (especially Linux) is extremely weak.
While I'm sure you are right I think Brave also likely pays for maintaining opinion on social media and posting positive comments supporting it. Many others learned of doing that (for example musk has bots astroturfing its image pretty much everywhere.) Similarly for example you don't see controversies section about Brave.
These are all the browsers I personally think are good and privacy-respecting. Sorry if I accidentally included too many options.
::: spoiler Desktop
Firefox-Based
Firefox
The standard for browsers where you aren't the product. For maximum privacy it does require tweaking settings, but it is reasonably privacy-friendly out of the box. It has light customization options including a sidebar and customizable button placement, and can be much more heavily customized with user themes.
Librewolf (Most reccomended for privacy)
A custom version of Firefox with enhanced privacy by default. Comes with Ublock Origin installed. May break some websites.
Waterfox
A Firefox-based browser with some additional privacy features, enhanced speed, and additional features.
Floorp
A browser based on Firefox with much more advanced customization options and many additional features, like workspaces and web panels. Doesn't add any additional privacy-focused features. They recently also added support for chrome extensions. This is my personal choice of browser (with the Natsumi modification).
Zen Browser
A Firefox-based browser with a sidebar+workspace workflow, and lots of stylistic changes and customizations that help put the focus on the webpage. Very nice and usable for productivity, but doesn't add any additional privacy-focused features.
Chromium-Based
Ungoogled Chromium
It's Chromium, but without Google. Pretty self-explanatory, it's simple, and it works.
Vivaldi
An extremely customizable browser packed with a massive quantity of additional features that can be toggled and tweaked for varying needs and methods of usage. Doesn't add any significant privacy-focused features. It supports MV2 extensions.
Helium
A chromium-based browser with enhanced privacy and speed. Comes with Ublock Origin pre-installed, and supports MV2 extensions. It's a pretty new project.
:::
::: spoiler Android
Firefox-Based
Firefox
The de-facto privacy-friendly browser, although for maximum privacy it does require tweaking settings. It (and its forks) are the only privacy-friendly browsers on android that support extensions.
Waterfox
A fork of Firefox with more private defaults, and extra bloat removed.
IronFox
A hardened private Firefox fork. Heavily focused on privacy and security, it sacrifices some usability for privacy.
Chromium-based
Cromite (Most reccomended for privacy)
A chromium fork with enhanced privacy and built-in ad blocking.
Vivaldi
Very customizable chromium-based browser. It does not come with an ad-blocker.
:::
::: spoiler iOS
All browsers on iOS are limited to the WebKit engine which Safari is built on, so just use Safari. The benefits of other browsers on iOS are negligible.
:::
I mean, yeah. I’m not a computer person, so five six browsers seems like a lot to just know off hand. I don’t know as many cola brands or Russian Czars without looking them up (I clearly don’t know what a normal comparison would be). People do talk mad shit about Firefox, chrome, opera, brave, safari, and edge though, which have got to make up the vast majority of the browser market.
But people talk shit about all of them. Plus, does edge really count? Also, wasn’t that really your point? I can think of more than five and people are still shit talking them.
From a non techie perspective, I don’t know why one is better than another.
Maybe. I tried a lot and my personal experience is that Chrome is at least a level above all else in UX for general use.
So chrome with some privacy features out of the box seems a good way to go.
You can prefer the UX of Chrome, especially since so much of the web is designed for it. But it's not a subjective personal experience that it is not private. Google exists to harvest your data. And the fact that everyone just accepts it is why the internet is so shitty.
Privacy features? Google harvests your data regardless of your settings. It also furthers Google's monopoly on the web. I'm sure anyone can see the problem with an advertising giant hungry for data being able to dictate how you access the internet, and what the internet even looks like. Google has power over all of that, split between their influence in the W3C, their Chrome browser, their Android OS, and Google Search.
Google decides what you see, how you see it, and how the underlying technology functions; that's literally their business model.
That's the real problem with Chrome and any Chromium based browser.
Yes, it's a big concern. Unfortunately I have a lot of those.
I will have to leave it to other people to spearhead a better fairer freer alternative. One that will not only attract a select crowd, but a wider audience.
In conversations humans don't talk like robots or like they are writing a code. People often use lose expressions, colorful language, exaggerations and everything else that I have no idea about.
I didn't think I'd need to explain that when I said every browser before, I didn't really think every single browser. Yet here we are.
That's why I didn't actually think you will call me out on it and just continued with other stuff. 😀
So yeah, not every browser 😁. Only a few. Although with so many new questionable ai ones, the percentage is going up for sure.
I’ve been on Firefox since the very, very, very earliest days, back from when it started as Phoenix. I’ve been diehard believer in Firefox from
Day 1.
But as usage has declined (and declined), many websites that I actually need to use no longer test for Firefox. A key website I use doesn’t allow me to log in with Firefox. Not as a “we don’t support Firefox” but quite literally it doesn’t work.
I’m all for flying the banner but I can’t live with a browser that no longer works on the websites I need. And yes, I’ve filed a bug, but because it relates to a login Mozilla closed it (they can’t verify logging in to this website).
I happen to be moving my account to a different website so I may be able to dodge it this time but Firefox really is sinking and at what point does one choose to abandon the ship?
I do this as much as possible. However the Firefox in-page translation software seems to do something that actually changes the page (and this can break things like forms) whereas chromium browsers do some kind of translation layer on top, so the page can run normally beneath it.
It's an infuriating reason but right now it means I have to split my browser use depending on if I need translations or not.
It's not a difficulty issue It's that lots of us have tried Firefox and don't like it.
Personally I don't use Firefox because it is buggy, is missing critical features, implements some web standards weirdly and has weird user agent styles. The end result is that many websites don't look right and don't work correctly and/or fully
They're pretty much just hating to hate or basing themselves on very outdated information, 'missing critical features' is a joke, because if it actually were critical it would've been implemented already (plus firefox is very extensible, with many plugins existing and forks adding specific features), if they actually had a point they maybe would've given a single example.
Weirdly implementing some web standards kinda did apply a bit until a few years ago where all the big browser engine developers got together and pinned down the standard. If something still breaks that probably means the website used some out-of-spec workaround that only works in Chrome. Some things do indeed behave differently between firefox and chrome (an example of my own: file input fields with multiple types, eg allow both video and image are handled differently at least in the mobile apps). Yet again if they had a point maybe an example would've been great.
Weird user agent styles?...?? I'm just confused honestly.
I just searched for chrome vs firefox and just about every article from the past year or so say firefox is more secure. Not that it matters a lot either way. Two party system is crap.
How so? at least on Android and Linux there is a lack of sandboxing and site isolation. This could be fixed up to a certain point but anyways it would be more insecure than chromium.
The problem with iron fox is that it's so hardened about privacy that it breaks functionality l, for example you can't even use add-ons if you don't enable it first, it is disabled by default...
For those not in the know, Peter Theil is a MAGA Christian-Nationalist fascist, and owner of Palantir.
Palantir, is the military industrial complex company Trump has entrusted to create a mass surveillance network on US citizens, completely against the 4th Amendment, and dwarfing the NSA spying that was exposed by Snowden.
You can garuntee any activity you do in Brave is being tracked and sent to that network.
People here up upvoting baseless conspiracies based on a braindead notice that technology is like magic.
If everything was tracked and harvested by Brave, it'd destroy them much more than the bullshit "homophobe" allegation. Just use network traffic monitors to see if it does. You think people haven't tried?
Or do you think software can covertly send data without users being able to determine?
It's open source for fucks sake. Stop with the Alex Jones tier analysis.
Oh shit I didn't know about this! I remember when Brave came out and I just instinctively knew there was something fishy about it, never used it. It's like a sixth sense, like how you know when something is an ad.
I remember feeling the exact same when Facebook first rolled out and everyone was raving about it- I just knew it was a big scam, I couldn't articulate it, but I knew.
It's a good intuition to have, we should all keep our bullshitometers up to code and well maintained.
Tried it when it first came out, noticed that it had an option to allow some ads to "support the developers" or whatever, immediately noped out of there and uninstalled it. The only adblockers that do that are the shady ones who are in bed with the ad companies.
I ditched Adblock Plus for Ublock Origin many years ago over this shit; not about to use an entire browser that secretly collects data on me and sells it to the ad companies.
Apple has a reputation as the Fisher Price version of smartphones and laptops/desktops because the user can't change much themselves. It's an old meme, but it checks out
Imagine criticizing an app just because it is usable and useful for the normal user, instead of thinking that is such a big goal. Fucking elitism and snobism devours leftism.
I still can't believe Brave is a thing. There apparently are just people out there who are like "I'm frustrated by the corporate bullshit in google's chromium chrome, so I think I'll try this crypto scam made by a homophobe on google's chromium brave"
Fixed it, so it's more accurate. Now with even more insanity.
Chromium based browsers have no cookie isolation like FF with multi account containers. They recommend Profiles but a separate window eats way more RAM and the experience is just much worse. I use Zen
I used to use brave when I just started becoming privacy aware. Here are the reasons why:
it's chromium based. I loved the way chromium based browsers looked, especially when compared to Firefox. They had a comforting feel to them, whereas Firefox had a very "office-ey" feel to it.
I wasn't aware of the issues of chromium dominating the market share that it does and how monopolization in this manner can be harmful.
I wasn't aware of the people behind brave.
I had seen older people use Firefox (with the default UI, which I didn't like). That's why, I associated Firefox with "old and outdated". I hadn't seen anyone use brave, and it looked quite good at the time for me.
Now, I use Mercury, a Firefox fork (ikik, it hasn't seen an update in a long time, shush). I've loaded it up with my custom CSS, so its appearance is exactly the way I like.
I only stopped using Firefox when an update broke GPU acceleration on my PC. Would be happy to switch back if it gets fixed, but it seems they're more interested in adding AI slop, which doesn't bode well for the last bastion of anti-Google monopoly resistance. 🤷
Hey, I just wanted to follow up on your comment. Since this discussion I looked into the following:
Ungoogled Chromium: Lousy installation / update experience. Lacks Widevine support and syncing across devices. Will maintain Manifest V2 as long as feasible, but no guarantees. No Widevine is a non-starter for me.
Helium: Lousy installation experience again, also no Widevine or sync. They're maintaining Manifest V2 support for now but it's unknown what will happen if/when it's completely removed upstream. I'll keep my eye on this as it looks promising, but it's not ready yet.
Vanadium: Irrelevant to my desktop use case
Vivaldi: Has Widevine and cross-device sync. Has built-in adblocker but it's based on ABP and worse than Brave's. I use 1Password and I had to manually create a file in /etc/1password as root to get the browser extension to communicate with the desktop app. I also had to specifically install Vivaldi as a system package to enable 1P integration; no Flatpak or Snap (as if). Non-technical users would struggle with this. It will also maintain Manifest V2 for as long as possible, again no guarantees. Otherwise, Vivaldi did really impress me with how customizable and featureful it is. Vivaldi comes with a free-tier Proton VPN. While I wouldn't trust it with sensitive information, it's good enough to foil certain kinds of statewide bans.
Firefox: Every time I try to use Firefox I end up back with a Blink-based browser because sites just tend to break more in Firefox. Otherwise it's a great choice for uBlock Origin alone. Personally, I have lower tolerance for website breakage than I do for the occasional ad slipping through.
Orion: This one really impressed me with its features and customization. It has cross-device sync for sure. My Mac is a work computer, so my Widevine test was to try playing some Pluralsight content, and that worked. It supports both Firefox and Chrome extensions, which is kind of nifty. There isn't a Linux version available yet, but it's planned for this year. On my work Mac, I use Brave Shields' built-in userscripts support to bypass some nag screens, but the same scripts do not work in Orion with ViolentMonkey, and while they claim to be the fastest browser, the PR review view in GitHub lags noticably when adding comments to a diff. I want to switch, but I don't feel Orion is ready yet.
Brave: Good installation experience, has Widevine and cross-device sync. 1Password extension works out of the box. Some crypto shit appears in two places in the UI but are easily hidden just by right-clicking on them. They're maintaining Manifest V2 support as long as they can like other Chromium-based browsers but still no guarantees. Of the browsers I surveyed, Brave Shields is the best built-in ad-blocker. It's not uBlock Origin, but I almost never see any ads, and it'll live on even if Manifest V2 gets sunsetted. No free VPN, but instead integrates with Tor, which is slower but probably more trustworthy for sensitive stuff while being free.
So, bottom line: it's not just "good marketing"; Brave legit offers the smoothest experience by my criteria with top-tier website compatibility while also offering a permanent ad-blocking solution which is not quite up to uBO standards, but close enough that I don't mind.
Yes! Thank you! I mentioned Vivaldi in a different post on the same topic, and almost got eaten alive by rabid GitHub neckbeards. It's not fully open source, but who gives a fuck? It's a great browser.
I prefer Vivaldi - despite letting you install Adblock extensions (sicnce it's a Chromium browser), I really like how it has a built-in ad-and-tracker-blocker. Seriously!
You can view part of the source code, outdated. They leave out the source of some UI features iirc. So you cant verify that the binary you installed was actually made from that source code (because, again, they only publish part of the source code).
Open source typically means that the code is public and comes with extensive freedoms to use, modify, and distribute (the degree to which these are allowed is governed by the software license).
Source available, on the other hand, generally means that the code is publicly available for review but is otherwise proprietary and/or restricts the freedoms that an open source project provides.
The differences are more nuanced than the above summary might suggest, as they come from different philosophies on what open source should mean and how people should be able to interact with and use open source projects.
I get why it's popular. It's has a nice default user experience and if that's all you care about most people will be fine with it. It's not for me though
Any alternative on iOS and android? Can't find any good one.. And I'm a GOS user very privacy aware but honestly brave is the only browser I know that blocks ads
Brave on Android is a turn-key (no configuration meshugas) adblocking solution for Youtube that let's me watch my subscribed channels without breaking on updates.
Hey! Put some (dis)respect on the man's name! Brave is made by the (idiotic) guy that made the backbone of modern interactive web(JavaScript) , Brandon Eich! He was one of the founders of Mozilla!
I'm missing something here. What's the big thing people in this thread are hinting at JavaScript being used for that's so sinister? Is it just like, tracking and stuff?
Let’s stop calling it tracking. Tracking can be done server-side. What you are referring to is spying if we’re calling a spade a spade.
Many modern websites won’t work without JavaScript enabled. They purposefully design essential features of the site to fail without JavaScript, so that is must be enabled, so that spying can occur. This is also slow, and bloated.
Sorry, I work with a marketing department so it's just normalised to me to call it tracking despite the fact that yes, I agree with you that it's surveillance and targeted ads are gross. What distinction are you making between tracking server-side, and spying? For me, I guess I'm talking about things like Google analytics or Google ads or hotjar or MS Carity when I say "tracking" in this context (JavaScript).
Well, if you sent a request to a web server, it is obviously gong to know that you requested something from it- so in general it should be the expectation of a user that the server owner has a reliable way to track that activity.
Tracking pixels, cookies, etc that follow a user around the web and gather activity that someone did NOT send to a server and relay it back to said server is IMHO spying.
Just because it’s being served into the browser on each payload doesn’t mean it was requested or desired.
All those things you named are spyware, marketed under the guise of diagnostic reporting. And, to be fair, that most certainly are also used for diagnostic purposes. But that’s not how they make money.
Hey man, I agree with everything you're saying and I genuinely mourn the freedom of expression that the web has lost. I was using "just tracking and stuff" as a shorthand as part of a conversation, cos I was just asking specifically about what I was missing from what people were talking about.
Yeah there's loads of funny little quirks to the language. I actually quite like that about it, I think it's sort of endearing and human, even when I'm frustrated with it.
I don't know if it's slow necessarily, but I do know that a lot of things I build (I have to build things designed by other people, I've tried to push back but ultimately it's my boss designing a lot of it) is overengineered and relies on frankly too many moving parts, which could contribute to annoying UX I guess but with all the caching we have in place I'm not sure it's slow... I'm not a computer science guy though, I might be just too dumb to understand how slow it is
Brave is fine. But it is more due to my employer tolerating it instead of insisting on Chrome. I really like how you turn the privacy setting up to 11 and make websurfing borderline impossible.
Personally as long as I'm not contributing to their wealth in some way I don't think it really matters what the CEO of the company that makes a product does. I'm mostly just going to use the best product for me. Now there is an argument that simply by using it I'm contributing to their usage numbers which helps them, and that's definitely true for social media platforms because of the network effect (which is why I stay off of the corporate ones), but it's less true of other products. In fact if i use an ad-supported product but block the ads I'm likely costing them more than I am a benefit.
It's also a spectrum rather than black and white: every medium or larger tech company, especially if american due to the deregulated and in many cases openly corrupt capitalism, is going to do evil things for profit and be both run and owned by evil people/corporations. But their level of danger to global society varies. Musk is extremely dangerous because of his active campaign to bring fascism and nationalism to power in Europe, which is why x.com is blocked in my house at a DNS level. Other billionaires are dangerous too but they're not all equal.
I've been using firefox but I'm probably gonna switch to librewolf because of Mozilla's ai bullshit. If you don't mind me asking, what search engine do you use inside?
I'd be happy to switch away the moment someone recommends me a better chromium based option.
Firefox just doesn't work for my use case. I know it's pithy, but their dev tools suck, and the history menu is dogshit. And since my main use case is pulling up recently used pages, that's a huge impediment for me.
I'd switch to vanilla Chromium, but it's (reasonably because of what it is) super feature poor. Not having a good way to device sync on Linux basically makes it a non-starter for me.
So what's my alternative? What browser should I use? It's a genuine question, as I've tried several, and Brave is the only one that's remotely usable for my use case.
I haven't used it myself as I use Firefox, but it looks promising. If I had to use Chrome on my device I'd try this one. It is still in beta technically, though
Thorium, vanadium, et ceteraium. Do some searches and you'll find plenty of chromium projects that are reasonable replacements even if they aren't 1-to-1 feature sets.
Sure, notionally. I could also write my own browser from scratch and make it to my exact specifications.
I've lived in "cobble together everything I want using a combination of half a dozen browser extensions and bash scripts" land before, and I'm old enough now to realize that maintaining systems like that is almost never worth the time or effort.
It's worth it if that's your hobby, but I have more interesting projects to work on than getting a baseline Chromium or whatever up to a usable state.
So when there's a 95% answer for my use case, it's a hard sell to get me to switch to an 80% solution where I need to jury rig the last 15% to just break even with the out-of-the-box option.
I don't care about my tabs being synced, I just use kdeconnect if I want a link on another device and most of the time I keep their content fairly disjointed. I just happen to know multiple people who did it that way and haven't complained yet.
I do believe LibreWolf lets you use Firefox sync for tabs and history if you want to.
Also I have no idea what your setup is. If you already have a NAS setting up a shared profile could take less time than installing the browser.
You asked for options, then mentioned a problem you had with those offered and I just gave you a solution that works for all of them.
Also doing "15%" (the features a browser offers on top of basic functionality are so much less 10% and I don't need half of them) myself is usually worth it for me in exchange for privacy, a more permanent foss solution, and ethics.
Though to be fair I have never needed more than an hour for that for any software other than my text editor. Mostly it's the last "4%" of things I'd like that take longest
I don't actually care about tab sync. I mostly care about this for machines I use as browser based media players, which means I need my history synced.
Main use case is using machine 1 to watch YouTube, then resuming where I left off, via the history menu, on a separate machine.
The Firefox history menu is absolute trash, and there are no extensions to make it behave in a way that's remotely usable.
But my whole use case is not "keeping my content disjointed," which kind of is my point. If my use case was your use case, then sure, your setup is reasonable. But it's not.
And I don't maintain a personal NAS anymore. I realized I just wasn't getting utility out of it, and it was one more thing to get set up again after a move (it wasn't an off the shelf NAS, but a Pi set up with an external storage array.)
Well yes then the things I mentioned indeed likely won't help you.
If you watch on YouTube though, doesn't it keep track of what you were watching in your account? The timestamp isn't ever in my browser history, Is it the frontend you use?
Whatever your perception of percentages and ease they don't want to do extra legwork. Glad it's an option for you but they obviously don't care to do it.
Ultimately they are content with their browser and only want to switch if they can maintain equivalent features without the hassles of tweaking it.
I don't rely on that feature at all so I couldn't say with confidence which alternatives have it that are still chromium based. The two I suggested are both excellent for differing reasons. Outside of chromium, I'm reasonably sure Firefox has it but again, I don't use the feature.
Going to any different browser will have positives and negatives, but if that feature is a sticking point you are certainly limited in your options.
I can't use Firefox unfortunately, as my main use case hinges on the history menu being remotely usable.
But yeah, that was kind of my point. When evaluating trade offs, at the time I switched, Brave was the only real browser that checked all the boxes, which is why I use it.
Firefox has only added AI in relatively recent updates, it is entirely device local, currently only optionally used for translation of pages, and pretty easy to disable entirely. I don't believe it's even part of the mobile version codebase.
You're making an argument along the lines of saying a BB gun is equivalent to an anti-tank rifle because they both fire projectiles.
Firefox has also confirmed all current and future AI features will be able to be disabled entirely with a single switch, despite the new CEO's braindead comments about wanting to integrate AI further.
Not ideal, but considerably better than most other options. There's no serious argument in favor of Brave simply because Firefox has a whiff of AI on it. Brave has literally been involved with a cryptocurrency scheme.
The only other options not under the Chrome umbrella are in-development browsers that aren't reasonable for normal use and don't have mobile versions.
Plus, nearly all of the Firefox forks, which is what I would reccomend instead of the main branch of Firefox, have the current AI features disabled by default or completely stripped out.
I'm active in the fuck ai and techtakes communities on the lemmyverse. I don't need to be lectured about the slop machine and auto-plagiarizers. But I'm getting damn tired of people completely writing off Firefox for dipping their toes in the sewage and then using that as some hare brained excuse to go use browsers that are injecting sewage into their fucking veins.
Don't let a desire for perfection blind you to options that are only better.
I tried Brave. Didn't like that it had a crypto ads on the new tab page. I also didn't like that it has some weird built-in point system that you can turn off but randomly turns itself back on and glitches out. Back when I used to use Twitter (formerly X) dot com, it would show weird point counters next to every Tweet and the ability to disable it didn't work.
Brendan Eich could be a huge proponent of butthole sunning and crystal healing. As long as I can turn off the butthole sunning button in his browser, I'm fine with it. And I can.
Never touched the crypto stuff, the AI search thing, whatever. Just turn them off. When I can't do that, I'll just use something else.
I trust Brave, because privacy guides trusts brave. It has a great in built adblocker and apparently the default privacy settings of any browser. I believe crypto, AI, all that other stuff is opt in, it's opensource as well. Considering chromium is the best at sandboxing and security for mobile, what other options do people have?
The article you linked is over 3 years old at this point. You can't use that as the basis for your argument for software that's likely had hundreds of patches since the time that article was published.
I agree with you, but you also can't just assume that everything is fixed or that the security is as good as the competition these days just because the software received a lot of updates.
Look, I could point you to the blogs and patch notes for Chromium and Firefox and you could read into it and make your own conclusions from it.
From my perspective as a solution architect that has worked for several mid to large size organizations, is that security is difficult to measure and constantly changing. When I evaluate what software to use I do it on the basis of how they've historically addressed security concerns, and where the organization that develops the software priorities lies. My opinion is that when it comes to security, Mozilla and Google are about the same when it comes to Firefox and Chromium.
I haven't looked into Brave much, so I can't comment there besides it's another organization that you have to trust so it's inherently more risky.
I agree it depends about your security threat model. The browser, being open source is subject of several audits in the past, I don't think if an organization just because being alphabet or Mozilla is inherently more safe, as it would have a lot of malware in chrome and firefox extensions for example, poor extension control from them...
Well I like it. It does the job, just a bit better than chrome. I tried Firefox, disappointed. Brave works and I most definitely don't have time to read and decide what everyone involved with a free software does or says.
I'm sure my opinion will do well here, 😂.
I wonder if I'll be called worse names than the last time I said I don't like Firefox? Maybe ban?
A few littl things that id like to work differently, but I think the nail in the coffin was when an app I tried didn't work on Firefox.
And then there was the whole controversy with the funding, then with the ai stuff I just went back to brave and decided not to actually follow controversies like this. When I mentioned this once before, I think I was called a bunch of names including wishes that I die, so i wasn't too motivated to make any effort into changing again anyway.
You wanted less controversy from the makers of your browser so you went for Chrome by Brave eau de toilet. I'm confused.
That's like going from an environmental-protection group to environmental-destroying group bcs previously the latter group didn't want to send you pamphlets anymore.
I'm guessing the web app made for Chrome didn't work in Firefox?
And that ads don't bother you.
... but this case is exactly why I want more disclosures when we bitch about Mozilla/Firefox.
It's imperative that thought all the bitching newbies are aware of that they are seeing the process of how we keep Mozilla informed (and how they get inputs, and how they then ultimately decide to go forward).
And to understand that none of this process is happening for Chromium, def not here.
I don't think a comparison with environmental activism really applies here. They are just browsers.
I don't really get this Firefox community either. Why is everybody pissed all the time at everyone who doesn't cheer for Firefox all the time. Sometimes it looks like a cult.
I don't think a comparison with environmental activism really applies here. They are just browsers.
The main problem is that it's a decision between making a monopoly win (google with chrorium that take almost all the marketshare) and the possibility to overthrow it, "they are just browsers" well- yeah they are, until you notice how the kind of influence you, just look at how google want to ban adblockers so bad and want to make other shitty moves, i suggest to look further
I don't really get this Firefox community either. Why is everybody pissed all the time at everyone who doesn't cheer for Firefox all the time. Sometimes it looks like a cult.
It's only a part of the community, and it's the loud part*. Please ignore them and don't lump everyone together.
.* i actually don't notice them much tbh, so i don't think that they are that loud but it could be just me being lucky
Well, here we can't do much cuz those are the developers tha mess up, but sometimes it can be solved by just changing the user agent (there are countless extensions for that)
And then there was the whole controversy with the funding
Honestly - it's just the founding, the main problem is that if google cut the tube they will die, but nothing else, it's for sure less controversial than Brave with their crypto stuff and homophobic CEO, also, if you hate google don't go using chrorium
Whoever called you names or told you to die is just an idiot, ignore them.
I actually knew it wasn't really the fault of Firefox that the app didn't work, ....but the app still didn't work even with this full realization .😀
I might check out Firefox browsers again some time in the future, if I find myself with extra time, I have other priorities in life right now than to read about that. I just need them to work and brave works really well.
This is the same logic that people like Elon Musk use when they become more Nazi after it being pointed out they hold Nazi beliefs.
“You called me names and made me do this!”
So, you support cryptocurrency and homophobia? You support using a browser that hijacks all the tracking on the web and then uses it for itself and its own tracking network (instead of blocking it)? Because people told you that you were an idiot for doing it?
Lol yeah because that's what people think. I guess stay mad about the straw man you made up instead of digging into real people's thoughts and feelings.
He donated to Prop 8 in California back in 2008. The bill intended to ban gay marriage in the largest state in the country. He resigned as the CEO of Mozilla after receiving a lot of backlash from the public. The man is openly against gay marriage. You don't have to dig very deep to find that much.
Not really personal tbf, but still, the avarage users wouldn't dig anyway, but honestly it wouldn't seem too strange that someone on lemmy in a post about browsers would do that
I think a lot of people don't know any of the controversy related to brave and just use it because they know it as the most private chromium browser
Marketing has really worked for Brave.
That is the sad state of the world. Mass manipulating sentiment like some commercial psyop is a built in "feature" of the system.
we live in an era where you can make a puke like prime the most desired drink in the world, so yeah.
Catering to convenience too.
I know of the controversies, I just don't think they're all that big when you actually examine them.
Homophobia
I'm part of the LGBT community and I just think there are bigger fish to fry. One of the guys involved made a $1k donation to an anti-prop 8 campaign like 15 years ago. That's it. That's the controversy. Like, yea it's shitty, but there was a lot more hate toward the community back then. People have grown and changed their views a lot in the years since. If we boycott every single company or individual who ever did anything even remotely homophobic, no matter their actions since, we'd essentially have to be living in a commune growing and making literally everything ourselves. Btw, this same guy is the one who developed JavaScript and I don't see even remotely the same level of hate for that, so it really feels like people are just being selectively upset.
Cryptocurrency
It's opt-in. It asks you once, and then never again. It was developed at a time when crypto was popular and was a feature people wanted. It was seen as a good thing when it first came out. Public opinion on crypto has soured, but plenty of people who wanted it still use the feature on brave. They have no good reason to scrap it. Especially because, again, it's opt-in only. Don't like it? Cool, don't use it. They aren't pushing it on you. But people hear the word crypto and immediately break out the pitchforks.
Do you even know what the goal of their cryptocurrency was? I think it's safe to say its failed at this point, but the goal was to completely rework how ads function on the internet. It would have killed the modern advertisement methods where ads are shoved in your face and you get nothing for it. Instead, it would have directly paid you a tiny amount any time you saw an ad, with you being able to choose how many you saw, or even if you saw any at all. Then you'd either be able to either keep the money for yourself, or donate it to websites/content creators of your choice. Take away the crypto part of it, and that's actually a pretty admirable goal in my book.
Ad affiliate links
Brave's biggest, actual, controversy is that they replaced some affiliate links with their own. Specifically links to binance.us, which is a crypto market. When it was found, Brave changed their code extremely quickly and claimed it was a bug. Now, companies have often lied through their teeth and claimed malicious actions were a "mistake" or a "bug", so maybe that is the same case here. But considering it was one site only, it was fixed almost immediately, and when you look at how it was actually replacing links (suggested auto fill in the address bar, pulled from browsing history) I am leaning toward it actually being unintentional.
Conclusion
I think people just like to hate things, and will find any reason to continue to do so as long as their little corner of the internet tells them they should hate it. People most vocal with their complaints rarely take the time to dig into the facts and see if it's really as bad as they claim; or they fully know it's not as bad, but never want to let the truth get in the way of a good ol' fashion, hate-boner, circle-jerk.
Is Brave the best browser? Hahahaha no. It's still a chromium fork and has been a little too eager to integrate AI in my opinion. But it's FAR from the worst and is the probably the best privacy focused browser for those that don't understand technology and struggle to use third-party ad-ons. It's just a little ridiculous that while there are legitimate things to complain about, most people's arguments seem to always stem from the 3 topics above.
Now cue the downvotes because I'm clearly some crypto fascist boot-licker for daring to believe "nuance" isn't a made up word.
A couple points: Brendan Eich, the one that made the prop-8 donation, is the current CEO of Brave, not just "one of the guys involved". In a related problem, I find it a little difficult to believe that someone who doesn't still hold their anti-gay views would be quite so eager to take cash from Peter Thiel (via his Firm Founder Fund) and I especially do not want to be involved with a browser supported by Thiel when the terms of his investment are private (like, does he have access to brave's user data? We'd like to think no, but boy are they shaking hands with the devil while asking us to trust them.)
Another big piece of criticism that was excluded: Brave created a bunch of profiles for content creators without telling them then used those to solicit donations on behalf of those content creators, then not only refused to refund users who were deceived they kept all the money they said would go to the content creators.
Trying to present aspects of this as overblown is possibly true - their affiliate link scam was just to binance.us and that gets left out of a lot of this, but at the same time that's a damned difficult thing to sell as just having been a mistake when it was auto-replacing the links to something they were the beneficiaries of.
Well sure, but he's not actively the CEO of javascript, and as far as I'm aware hasn't ever been involved with javascript since it was rolled into the OpenJS Foundation.
(Also: Brendan Eich shared a bunch of covid conspiracy theory / misinformation stuff. Sure that's a minor point, absolutely everyone sure was doing that back then and why should we judge, but still it's not a great look.)
And this is why an Open Source browser is so important. Because we can audit it. You are saying like it is a bad thing to audit it.
You can audit it. actually there is this video doing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JNg4Ox2Hvc
A wireshark audit isn't relevant to their reasons for having included the link redirect in the first place, and even a full code audit wouldn't turn up a user datasharing agreement with Thiel? Obviously auditing OS software is a good thing, I never made any claims about that being bad or presented like it wasn't possible?
I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here, none of that refutes any of the points I made.
What?
Wow this is so... sane.
Being childish and reductive I wanted to downvote anything supporting Brave, but I find you've challenged my views on this.
That said, I think I'm just going to re-frame my dislike for Brave users by assuming they're all crypto-weirdos.
That's really well said.
In the end they are just browsers. It's great to have people that inform others and lead them to better alternatives and Firefox has many of them who are very passionate. But then many of them are way too passionate.
Calm down with this logical and thought-out response.
I agree with you on all these. The only problem I have with Brave is they choose to exclusively shit on Firefox recently as their marketing strategy, while there are apparently much much bigger fish to fry. I thought their whole mission is to stop people from using Chrome, not another way more privacy focused browser.
Appreciate the write up!
Dude you are the most logical and coherent person in this thread, congrats. I should add that most of the bloat Brave has can be disabled via policies, even IA things.
Which it isn't, and also Chromium sucks, so they're really just mag dumping into their foot
The web sucks, because of Google's EEE approach with Chromium; there just isn't a good way to use the web anymore. I use librewolf, it's okay.
Google really needs to be kicked out of the W3C and have Chrome taken from them.
Yup librewolf for all the stuff I can. Google Meet has all kinds of wierd problems on firefox, especially in Linux. Whne you're hosting you can't share just one tab with sound and in linux getting the video/mic to authorize is hit or miss and takes a good 20 seconds on my boxes to authorize even when it works.
Librewolf breaks some site and other FF features, I don't think if it's usable enough for day by day.
Chromium sucks? chromium is objectively more secure and performant AND compatible than gecko could be.
Based on what?
GrapheneOS cites security issues with Firefox.
::: spoiler Citation
In terms of performance, it's well known that Blink is faster and it can be tested by just trying both. Firefox stutters and lags while Chromium maintains a smooth framerate.
I disagree with compatibility however. Chromium's wayland support is iffy and it barely integrates with XDG or VAAPI
GrapheneOS's objections are irrelevant because you should be using security extensions if you're old enough to get online without parental supervision. JavaScript has not run on my web browser since Bush Jr was in office. Considering Graphene is made by weirdos who get hysterical if you start asking questions about the difference between admin permissions on a big device that lives on your desk versus a small device that lives in your pocket, they're pretty firmly relegated to being unserious.
Omg this idiot saying no one should use javascript... This is un realistic unpractical and stupid.
Okay boomer
Do you really think extensions are sufficient to manage proper process isolation in the browser engine itself?
Are we serious? You can't claim that security is irrelevant for everyone because you cripple your web browser to be functionally equivalent to
curl https://website.com/.There's little difference. I'm pretty sure they'd agree the traditional desktop security model (especially Linux) is extremely weak.
https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
Skill issue detected
https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
While I'm sure you are right I think Brave also likely pays for maintaining opinion on social media and posting positive comments supporting it. Many others learned of doing that (for example musk has bots astroturfing its image pretty much everywhere.) Similarly for example you don't see controversies section about Brave.
Can anyone reccomend good options fo browsers?
These are all the browsers I personally think are good and privacy-respecting. Sorry if I accidentally included too many options.
::: spoiler Desktop
Firefox-Based
Firefox
The standard for browsers where you aren't the product. For maximum privacy it does require tweaking settings, but it is reasonably privacy-friendly out of the box. It has light customization options including a sidebar and customizable button placement, and can be much more heavily customized with user themes.
Librewolf (Most reccomended for privacy)
A custom version of Firefox with enhanced privacy by default. Comes with Ublock Origin installed. May break some websites.
Waterfox
A Firefox-based browser with some additional privacy features, enhanced speed, and additional features.
Floorp
A browser based on Firefox with much more advanced customization options and many additional features, like workspaces and web panels. Doesn't add any additional privacy-focused features. They recently also added support for chrome extensions. This is my personal choice of browser (with the Natsumi modification).
Zen Browser
A Firefox-based browser with a sidebar+workspace workflow, and lots of stylistic changes and customizations that help put the focus on the webpage. Very nice and usable for productivity, but doesn't add any additional privacy-focused features.
Chromium-Based
Ungoogled Chromium
It's Chromium, but without Google. Pretty self-explanatory, it's simple, and it works.
Vivaldi
An extremely customizable browser packed with a massive quantity of additional features that can be toggled and tweaked for varying needs and methods of usage. Doesn't add any significant privacy-focused features. It supports MV2 extensions.
Helium
A chromium-based browser with enhanced privacy and speed. Comes with Ublock Origin pre-installed, and supports MV2 extensions. It's a pretty new project. :::
::: spoiler Android
Firefox-Based
Firefox
The de-facto privacy-friendly browser, although for maximum privacy it does require tweaking settings. It (and its forks) are the only privacy-friendly browsers on android that support extensions.
Waterfox
A fork of Firefox with more private defaults, and extra bloat removed.
IronFox
A hardened private Firefox fork. Heavily focused on privacy and security, it sacrifices some usability for privacy.
Chromium-based
Cromite (Most reccomended for privacy)
A chromium fork with enhanced privacy and built-in ad blocking.
Vivaldi
Very customizable chromium-based browser. It does not come with an ad-blocker. :::
::: spoiler iOS All browsers on iOS are limited to the WebKit engine which Safari is built on, so just use Safari. The benefits of other browsers on iOS are negligible. :::
Oh wow ya thank you. This is very helpful
There is so much controversy with every browser and people working on them that I find is better just not to read anything about any browser anymore.
Maybe, if you've only heard of like 5 browsers.
I mean, yeah. I’m not a computer person, so
fivesix browsers seems like a lot to just know off hand. I don’t know as many cola brands or Russian Czars without looking them up (I clearly don’t know what a normal comparison would be). People do talk mad shit about Firefox, chrome, opera, brave, safari, and edge though, which have got to make up the vast majority of the browser market.Having to cross out 5 and make it 6 because you actually could name more than 5 off-hand really seems to undercut that point.
But people talk shit about all of them. Plus, does edge really count? Also, wasn’t that really your point? I can think of more than five and people are still shit talking them.
From a non techie perspective, I don’t know why one is better than another.
Maybe. I tried a lot and my personal experience is that Chrome is at least a level above all else in UX for general use. So chrome with some privacy features out of the box seems a good way to go.
Chrome is the worst, there is no privacy with Chrome. The UX is also trash, it’s only good if you haven’t tried anything else.
Also Sergey Brin is in the Epstein files.
Well i respect your personal experience, but it doesn't at all correspond with mine.
You can prefer the UX of Chrome, especially since so much of the web is designed for it. But it's not a subjective personal experience that it is not private. Google exists to harvest your data. And the fact that everyone just accepts it is why the internet is so shitty.
We are taking about brave, not chrome. I don't think you get any more harvested than you do with Firefox.
Privacy features? Google harvests your data regardless of your settings. It also furthers Google's monopoly on the web. I'm sure anyone can see the problem with an advertising giant hungry for data being able to dictate how you access the internet, and what the internet even looks like. Google has power over all of that, split between their influence in the W3C, their Chrome browser, their Android OS, and Google Search.
Google decides what you see, how you see it, and how the underlying technology functions; that's literally their business model.
That's the real problem with Chrome and any Chromium based browser.
Yes, it's a big concern. Unfortunately I have a lot of those. I will have to leave it to other people to spearhead a better fairer freer alternative. One that will not only attract a select crowd, but a wider audience.
Not sure what that has to do with your claim that "every" browser has "so much controversy", but okay.
In conversations humans don't talk like robots or like they are writing a code. People often use lose expressions, colorful language, exaggerations and everything else that I have no idea about.
I didn't think I'd need to explain that when I said every browser before, I didn't really think every single browser. Yet here we are. That's why I didn't actually think you will call me out on it and just continued with other stuff. 😀
So yeah, not every browser 😁. Only a few. Although with so many new questionable ai ones, the percentage is going up for sure.
So by "every browser has so much controversy", you meant, "maybe a few browsers have some controversy".
Apparently it's robotic to point out gigantic overstatements.
🥱
that's so sad
Literally just use Firefox for Android with uBlock. People act like this is difficult.
*uBlock Origin
I've seen the following types of people:
and then disable your YouTube app and save a link to webpage to your home screen. I haven't seen a YouTube ad in years with this method.
Or just use ReVanced. Use microG for non rooted phones.
There's also PipePipe, which also does SponsorBlock so that you don't have to see sponsor segments in videos
Oh, nice. I didn't know that.
and/or use a video player program for playing videos, like mpv (+ yt-dlp).
Decades. (counting mplayer and youtube-dl before)
I’ve been on Firefox since the very, very, very earliest days, back from when it started as Phoenix. I’ve been diehard believer in Firefox from Day 1.
But as usage has declined (and declined), many websites that I actually need to use no longer test for Firefox. A key website I use doesn’t allow me to log in with Firefox. Not as a “we don’t support Firefox” but quite literally it doesn’t work.
I’m all for flying the banner but I can’t live with a browser that no longer works on the websites I need. And yes, I’ve filed a bug, but because it relates to a login Mozilla closed it (they can’t verify logging in to this website).
I happen to be moving my account to a different website so I may be able to dodge it this time but Firefox really is sinking and at what point does one choose to abandon the ship?
Name and shame those sites. Those sites are the problem not firefox.
You’re not wrong. But I’m not on social media so have no channels to shout on. I doubt any newspaper would accept a reader contribution about this.
Name them here
vanguardinvestor.co.uk
I do this as much as possible. However the Firefox in-page translation software seems to do something that actually changes the page (and this can break things like forms) whereas chromium browsers do some kind of translation layer on top, so the page can run normally beneath it.
It's an infuriating reason but right now it means I have to split my browser use depending on if I need translations or not.
You know you can install the "chromium-like" translation thing on Firefox as well, as an extension? E.g. this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/traduzir-paginas-web/
Is that new in the last couple years or so? I recall chrome breaking form entry left and right when translating before i could read the language.
Right now chromium is my best choice for translations in-page
I used to keep it installed just for that too so I'm not judging. I just also recall forms being broken by the translate tool.
Yeah I think it's something about breaking the attributes of html elements. If it translates some id or data value then the form can't find it.
The same for if it replaces elements or otherwise breaks hooks and event listeners.
Not available for IOS. For android firefox is bad at sandboxing and security. Vanadium if it had adblocking would be perfect for me.
I'd rather use Librewolf than waste an hour wrestling Firefox configuration for better privacy.
Heck... I'd even rather use Brave than Firefox.
Canonical^1^ are a puppet for Google, long time, enshitifying.^1^ OOPS! LOL. Mozilla! XD Slip of the tongue, wrong enshitifying corporation making free software.
It's not a difficulty issue It's that lots of us have tried Firefox and don't like it.
Personally I don't use Firefox because it is buggy, is missing critical features, implements some web standards weirdly and has weird user agent styles. The end result is that many websites don't look right and don't work correctly and/or fully
Interesting. I use Firefox for everything and haven't had any issues. Maybe I'm just not that picky?
They're pretty much just hating to hate or basing themselves on very outdated information, 'missing critical features' is a joke, because if it actually were critical it would've been implemented already (plus firefox is very extensible, with many plugins existing and forks adding specific features), if they actually had a point they maybe would've given a single example.
Weirdly implementing some web standards kinda did apply a bit until a few years ago where all the big browser engine developers got together and pinned down the standard. If something still breaks that probably means the website used some out-of-spec workaround that only works in Chrome. Some things do indeed behave differently between firefox and chrome (an example of my own: file input fields with multiple types, eg allow both video and image are handled differently at least in the mobile apps). Yet again if they had a point maybe an example would've been great.
Weird user agent styles?...?? I'm just confused honestly.
Me too
Buggy? Huh.
Objectively more insecure and underperformant than ANY other chromium based browser.
Got a source for that incredible claim?
If you're going to make wild claims that most people would disagree with, you better be able to back it up with objective facts
https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
I just searched for
chrome vs firefoxand just about every article from the past year or so say firefox is more secure. Not that it matters a lot either way. Two party system is crap.How so? at least on Android and Linux there is a lack of sandboxing and site isolation. This could be fixed up to a certain point but anyways it would be more insecure than chromium.
Firefox uses literally the Chromium sandbox on Linux, they have for years.
https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
that's why ironfox is so valuable
The problem with iron fox is that it's so hardened about privacy that it breaks functionality l, for example you can't even use add-ons if you don't enable it first, it is disabled by default...
Lmao, never have I ever seen a lemmy comment ratio'd this bad
Peter Theil is the primary investor in Brave.
For those not in the know, Peter Theil is a MAGA Christian-Nationalist fascist, and owner of Palantir.
Palantir, is the military industrial complex company Trump has entrusted to create a mass surveillance network on US citizens, completely against the 4th Amendment, and dwarfing the NSA spying that was exposed by Snowden.
You can garuntee any activity you do in Brave is being tracked and sent to that network.
People here up upvoting baseless conspiracies based on a braindead notice that technology is like magic.
If everything was tracked and harvested by Brave, it'd destroy them much more than the bullshit "homophobe" allegation. Just use network traffic monitors to see if it does. You think people haven't tried?
Or do you think software can covertly send data without users being able to determine?
It's open source for fucks sake. Stop with the Alex Jones tier analysis.
Source:??? BTW, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JNg4Ox2Hvc
you only have three downvotes. maybe the kids are alright? XD
There are no kids on Lemmy, lol
lol yeah, you right XD
Time to break out the article: https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/
Time to break out the narrative about chromium vs gecko:
https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
This article was last updated in 2022. I wonder how much of it is still true.
Lynx is all the UI you need.
Or
linksif you're all fancy like.curl, html2latex and latex are all you need.
I don’t even see the code anymore, all I see is blonde, brunette, redhead
it's still around, just renamed to seamonkey
I use “nc” and parse like a real man.
konqueror is all i ever needed
Mosaic or gtfo.
*which is also still chrome
Normal browser icon vs incognito browser icon comes to mind
Sadly some of it is that the folks at Brave are very good at burying their bad reputation under marketing
Under marketing? I've seen a steady growth. The last Eich report told that It have 100 millon active users. duplicated in just 2 or 3 years.
Time to warm up the popcorn machine.
Oh shit I didn't know about this! I remember when Brave came out and I just instinctively knew there was something fishy about it, never used it. It's like a sixth sense, like how you know when something is an ad.
I remember feeling the exact same when Facebook first rolled out and everyone was raving about it- I just knew it was a big scam, I couldn't articulate it, but I knew.
It's a good intuition to have, we should all keep our bullshitometers up to code and well maintained.
When tiktok came out I imagine you just fell ill due to sensory overload.
It absolutely did, and I went on a crusade trying to stop people around me from using it- to no avail.
The first time I saw it used in person was by a friend in a group of us all mid shroom trip. Sensory overload is an understatement.
Tried it when it first came out, noticed that it had an option to allow some ads to "support the developers" or whatever, immediately noped out of there and uninstalled it. The only adblockers that do that are the shady ones who are in bed with the ad companies.
I ditched Adblock Plus for Ublock Origin many years ago over this shit; not about to use an entire browser that secretly collects data on me and sells it to the ad companies.
Like Markiplier doubting Honey years before they were called out, something really was off about it.
Careful. Trying to sell Brave as a homophobe web browser won't hurt it like you guys think.
Not just that, it's that Brave has this cult-like following for being out-of-the-box, Fisher Price My First Privacy Browser^TM^ easy to use.
Oh.....oh, hey, Apple, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there.
What does apple have to do with brave? i dont get it
Apple has a reputation as the Fisher Price version of smartphones and laptops/desktops because the user can't change much themselves. It's an old meme, but it checks out
Imagine criticizing an app just because it is usable and useful for the normal user, instead of thinking that is such a big goal. Fucking elitism and snobism devours leftism.
Imagine being so ideologically primed that a comment about a browser requires inventing a leftist to argue with.
Criticizing my critic about your ideology and not the argument.
Touch grass
Criticism is of the cult-like following. Not that I expect you know anything about that ;)
Fixed it, so it's more accurate. Now with even more insanity.
Edit. Autocorrect bullshit
Same reason they used Chrome. “What else is there?”
Software discoverability is kind of bad these days, and getting worse.
Chromium based browsers have no cookie isolation like FF with multi account containers. They recommend Profiles but a separate window eats way more RAM and the experience is just much worse. I use Zen
I cringe hard every time a "tech/privacy" youtuber says they use Brave.
Probably getting paid to say it?
Maybe, but In some cases (someordinarygamers), I don't think so (because of how he brings it up).
I used to use brave when I just started becoming privacy aware. Here are the reasons why:
Now, I use Mercury, a Firefox fork (ikik, it hasn't seen an update in a long time, shush). I've loaded it up with my custom CSS, so its appearance is exactly the way I like.
To be fair, it’s also full of AI bullshit now.
Vivaldi said they won’t include AI.
….Buuuut, it’s still Chromium. Yay, I guess?
I only stopped using Firefox when an update broke GPU acceleration on my PC. Would be happy to switch back if it gets fixed, but it seems they're more interested in adding AI slop, which doesn't bode well for the last bastion of anti-Google monopoly resistance. 🤷
That’s easy, it’s a chromium browser with built-in ad-blocking that hasn’t been kneecapped by manifest v3.
...and cross-platform syncing, automatic updates, and Widevine support out of the box
You mean Ungoogled Chromium? Vanadium? Chromium?
I've never been able to successfully compile ungoogled chromium from the git repo.
I've only tried twice. But it's among my greatest failures in life.
Ungoogled Chromium is a thing of beauty. Google should've just endorsed it for shits and giggles.
I said what I said. Thanks for listing alternatives, though!
Hey, I just wanted to follow up on your comment. Since this discussion I looked into the following:
So, bottom line: it's not just "good marketing"; Brave legit offers the smoothest experience by my criteria with top-tier website compatibility while also offering a permanent ad-blocking solution which is not quite up to uBO standards, but close enough that I don't mind.
Lots of those don't have any browser sync right?
I have to disagree with this point. Brave Shields are not as performant as UBO MV2.
Could you give an example? I’ve never seen any but the most unobtrusive of ads.
Yes, m.facebook.com the sponsored ads. On ubo those are blocked, on brave not.
That’s helpful, thanks!
I switched to Vivaldi recently and it's alright. I'll say the Brave ad blocking is solid and the android app works better than Firefox mobile.
Firefox mobile fucking hurts!
Yes! Thank you! I mentioned Vivaldi in a different post on the same topic, and almost got eaten alive by rabid GitHub neckbeards. It's not fully open source, but who gives a fuck? It's a great browser.
You forget what corner of the internet you're commenting on lol
I'm old and jaded. Every corner of the internet is doomed.
I have faith we will be one of the last holdouts.
I prefer Vivaldi - despite letting you install Adblock extensions (sicnce it's a Chromium browser), I really like how it has a built-in ad-and-tracker-blocker. Seriously!
But why should i use proprietary software in the first place, when a perfectly fine free alternative exists?
I like to suck cock of corporations that spy and profit from my data?
IIRC it's not exactly open source, but you can still view the source code.
You can view part of the source code, outdated. They leave out the source of some UI features iirc. So you cant verify that the binary you installed was actually made from that source code (because, again, they only publish part of the source code).
Because there are a lot of people who are way smarter than me who will verify it, and then sound the alarm when they find something.
Recompiling doesnt really take much human effort. Its an easy verification
Verification is a group effort, which has value in building trust in software and its devs. If i do it by myself or not is not that important.
I'm confused what the differentiation is. Ipen source means the code is open to be viewed
Open source typically means that the code is public and comes with extensive freedoms to use, modify, and distribute (the degree to which these are allowed is governed by the software license).
Source available, on the other hand, generally means that the code is publicly available for review but is otherwise proprietary and/or restricts the freedoms that an open source project provides.
The differences are more nuanced than the above summary might suggest, as they come from different philosophies on what open source should mean and how people should be able to interact with and use open source projects.
thank you for doing the work
I think the only real solution to protect ourselves is to stop using any browsers.
I get why it's popular. It's has a nice default user experience and if that's all you care about most people will be fine with it. It's not for me though
Whenever my coworker shares his screen and opens Brave the entire screen turns into a gigantic ad. 😭
Not everyone can co-operate a farmhouse b&b, Mose!
TBF I only tried it early. Probably before 2020
This is correct, but normies have the right to block ads too...
Any alternative on iOS and android? Can't find any good one.. And I'm a GOS user very privacy aware but honestly brave is the only browser I know that blocks ads
Brave on Android is a turn-key (no configuration meshugas) adblocking solution for Youtube that let's me watch my subscribed channels without breaking on updates.
Would newpipe, pipepipe, or Firefox on android with ublock origin extension work?
I use newpipe and it doesn't have YouTube ads. But I don't follow any subscribers, so I don't know if they include that functionality.
Firefox+ublock works for me
They include it and playlists, etc. So does FreeTube.
Revanced
Newpipe?
Snobs criticizing that normal people can now use an adblocker.
I need a lenticular post.
Hey! Put some (dis)respect on the man's name! Brave is made by the (idiotic) guy that made the backbone of modern interactive web(JavaScript) , Brandon Eich! He was one of the founders of Mozilla!
Imagine what could've been if JavaScript never existed. It might have even been good!
I'm missing something here. What's the big thing people in this thread are hinting at JavaScript being used for that's so sinister? Is it just like, tracking and stuff?
Let’s stop calling it tracking. Tracking can be done server-side. What you are referring to is spying if we’re calling a spade a spade.
Many modern websites won’t work without JavaScript enabled. They purposefully design essential features of the site to fail without JavaScript, so that is must be enabled, so that spying can occur. This is also slow, and bloated.
Yeah, it sucks.
Sorry, I work with a marketing department so it's just normalised to me to call it tracking despite the fact that yes, I agree with you that it's surveillance and targeted ads are gross. What distinction are you making between tracking server-side, and spying? For me, I guess I'm talking about things like Google analytics or Google ads or hotjar or MS Carity when I say "tracking" in this context (JavaScript).
Well, if you sent a request to a web server, it is obviously gong to know that you requested something from it- so in general it should be the expectation of a user that the server owner has a reliable way to track that activity.
Tracking pixels, cookies, etc that follow a user around the web and gather activity that someone did NOT send to a server and relay it back to said server is IMHO spying.
Just because it’s being served into the browser on each payload doesn’t mean it was requested or desired.
All those things you named are spyware, marketed under the guise of diagnostic reporting. And, to be fair, that most certainly are also used for diagnostic purposes. But that’s not how they make money.
Hey man, I agree with everything you're saying and I genuinely mourn the freedom of expression that the web has lost. I was using "just tracking and stuff" as a shorthand as part of a conversation, cos I was just asking specifically about what I was missing from what people were talking about.
A pretty list:
https://github.com/denysdovhan/wtfjs?tab=readme-ov-file#-examples
Also, javascript is quite heavy, slow, and many other shits, but i can't confirm them as i'm not a web programmer
Yeah there's loads of funny little quirks to the language. I actually quite like that about it, I think it's sort of endearing and human, even when I'm frustrated with it.
I don't know if it's slow necessarily, but I do know that a lot of things I build (I have to build things designed by other people, I've tried to push back but ultimately it's my boss designing a lot of it) is overengineered and relies on frankly too many moving parts, which could contribute to annoying UX I guess but with all the caching we have in place I'm not sure it's slow... I'm not a computer science guy though, I might be just too dumb to understand how slow it is
JavaScript is actually a beautiful language. It's what people have done with and to it that's the problem.
More, what people use it for.
I program on JavaScript. It is not elegant, it is a permissive mess.
I used brave for a while, I got 10$ I also got 10$ from Honey, apparently only scams give me anything
Brave is fine. But it is more due to my employer tolerating it instead of insisting on Chrome. I really like how you turn the privacy setting up to 11 and make websurfing borderline impossible.
Personally as long as I'm not contributing to their wealth in some way I don't think it really matters what the CEO of the company that makes a product does. I'm mostly just going to use the best product for me. Now there is an argument that simply by using it I'm contributing to their usage numbers which helps them, and that's definitely true for social media platforms because of the network effect (which is why I stay off of the corporate ones), but it's less true of other products. In fact if i use an ad-supported product but block the ads I'm likely costing them more than I am a benefit.
It's also a spectrum rather than black and white: every medium or larger tech company, especially if american due to the deregulated and in many cases openly corrupt capitalism, is going to do evil things for profit and be both run and owned by evil people/corporations. But their level of danger to global society varies. Musk is extremely dangerous because of his active campaign to bring fascism and nationalism to power in Europe, which is why x.com is blocked in my house at a DNS level. Other billionaires are dangerous too but they're not all equal.
I'm hoping something happens with Ladybird eventually, but who knows ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Are we not recommending internet explorer anymore?
Alright yall, what browsers you using then?
Librewolf on desktop, Vanadium on mobile.
I've been using firefox but I'm probably gonna switch to librewolf because of Mozilla's ai bullshit. If you don't mind me asking, what search engine do you use inside?
I use StartPage. I like the anonymous mode of viewing sites, it lets me circumvent certain blocks a lot of times.
I use libre wolf with DuckDuckGo but no doubt there's a myriad of concerns with them too.
Vanadium on Mobile, Mullvad browser on desktop
Lagrange
Orion
waterfox, brave is a fair choice if you need a chromium based browser though
Brave for the adblocker and sync of PC and Android. For the moment the best combo.
I'd be happy to switch away the moment someone recommends me a better chromium based option.
Firefox just doesn't work for my use case. I know it's pithy, but their dev tools suck, and the history menu is dogshit. And since my main use case is pulling up recently used pages, that's a huge impediment for me.
I'd switch to vanilla Chromium, but it's (reasonably because of what it is) super feature poor. Not having a good way to device sync on Linux basically makes it a non-starter for me.
So what's my alternative? What browser should I use? It's a genuine question, as I've tried several, and Brave is the only one that's remotely usable for my use case.
Have you tried Helium Browser?
I haven't used it myself as I use Firefox, but it looks promising. If I had to use Chrome on my device I'd try this one. It is still in beta technically, though
Looks pretty good. I may give it a shot.
Being in beta worries me, and I'll have to investigate if it has cross browser sync, though I assume it does through Google accounts or something.
Doesn't hurt to give it a spin though. Thanks for the rec.
It looks like the first pipelined release was in August, so I'm not surprised I hadn't heard of it, lol.
Thorium, vanadium, et ceteraium. Do some searches and you'll find plenty of chromium projects that are reasonable replacements even if they aren't 1-to-1 feature sets.
Last time I looked, any other Chromium alternative had me making negative feature tradeoffs.
I may circle back and look again, as it's been a bit since I cut over to Brave.
Have you used those and can vouch for them having inter-device history sync? Cause not having that is a hard blocker for me.
Can't any browser do that if you sync the profile folder somehow?
Sure, notionally. I could also write my own browser from scratch and make it to my exact specifications.
I've lived in "cobble together everything I want using a combination of half a dozen browser extensions and bash scripts" land before, and I'm old enough now to realize that maintaining systems like that is almost never worth the time or effort.
It's worth it if that's your hobby, but I have more interesting projects to work on than getting a baseline Chromium or whatever up to a usable state.
So when there's a 95% answer for my use case, it's a hard sell to get me to switch to an 80% solution where I need to jury rig the last 15% to just break even with the out-of-the-box option.
I don't care about my tabs being synced, I just use kdeconnect if I want a link on another device and most of the time I keep their content fairly disjointed. I just happen to know multiple people who did it that way and haven't complained yet.
I do believe LibreWolf lets you use Firefox sync for tabs and history if you want to.
Also I have no idea what your setup is. If you already have a NAS setting up a shared profile could take less time than installing the browser.
You asked for options, then mentioned a problem you had with those offered and I just gave you a solution that works for all of them.
Also doing "15%" (the features a browser offers on top of basic functionality are so much less 10% and I don't need half of them) myself is usually worth it for me in exchange for privacy, a more permanent foss solution, and ethics. Though to be fair I have never needed more than an hour for that for any software other than my text editor. Mostly it's the last "4%" of things I'd like that take longest
I don't actually care about tab sync. I mostly care about this for machines I use as browser based media players, which means I need my history synced.
Main use case is using machine 1 to watch YouTube, then resuming where I left off, via the history menu, on a separate machine.
The Firefox history menu is absolute trash, and there are no extensions to make it behave in a way that's remotely usable.
But my whole use case is not "keeping my content disjointed," which kind of is my point. If my use case was your use case, then sure, your setup is reasonable. But it's not.
And I don't maintain a personal NAS anymore. I realized I just wasn't getting utility out of it, and it was one more thing to get set up again after a move (it wasn't an off the shelf NAS, but a Pi set up with an external storage array.)
Well yes then the things I mentioned indeed likely won't help you.
If you watch on YouTube though, doesn't it keep track of what you were watching in your account? The timestamp isn't ever in my browser history, Is it the frontend you use?
Whatever your perception of percentages and ease they don't want to do extra legwork. Glad it's an option for you but they obviously don't care to do it.
Ultimately they are content with their browser and only want to switch if they can maintain equivalent features without the hassles of tweaking it.
I suppose that is just not an expectation I've ever had or fully understood. I've never had a machine that did what I wanted from the start.
I don't rely on that feature at all so I couldn't say with confidence which alternatives have it that are still chromium based. The two I suggested are both excellent for differing reasons. Outside of chromium, I'm reasonably sure Firefox has it but again, I don't use the feature.
Going to any different browser will have positives and negatives, but if that feature is a sticking point you are certainly limited in your options.
I can't use Firefox unfortunately, as my main use case hinges on the history menu being remotely usable.
But yeah, that was kind of my point. When evaluating trade offs, at the time I switched, Brave was the only real browser that checked all the boxes, which is why I use it.
The only feature in FF I use that is similar is tab sync. Love being able to pick up on my PC where I left off on my phone etc.
Bummer though man. Was hoping something out there would work for you.
Can you recommend a better browser that offers similar capabilities as brave, doesn't have ai, and has a mobile app?
Firefox.
Librewolf (desktop) and Ironfox (mobile) if you want the more privacy focused fork of it.
Librewolf is great, but I would personally recommend Waterfox for most. Librewolf has a poor UX (due to its increased security) which can put people off. The nice thing about Waterfox is that they also have an mobile app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.waterfox.android.release
Firefox has AI these days though.
???
You're gonna make my eyes roll out of my skull.
Firefox has only added AI in relatively recent updates, it is entirely device local, currently only optionally used for translation of pages, and pretty easy to disable entirely. I don't believe it's even part of the mobile version codebase.
You're making an argument along the lines of saying a BB gun is equivalent to an anti-tank rifle because they both fire projectiles.
Firefox has also confirmed all current and future AI features will be able to be disabled entirely with a single switch, despite the new CEO's braindead comments about wanting to integrate AI further.
Not ideal, but considerably better than most other options. There's no serious argument in favor of Brave simply because Firefox has a whiff of AI on it. Brave has literally been involved with a cryptocurrency scheme.
The only other options not under the Chrome umbrella are in-development browsers that aren't reasonable for normal use and don't have mobile versions.
Plus, nearly all of the Firefox forks, which is what I would reccomend instead of the main branch of Firefox, have the current AI features disabled by default or completely stripped out.
I'm active in the fuck ai and techtakes communities on the lemmyverse. I don't need to be lectured about the slop machine and auto-plagiarizers. But I'm getting damn tired of people completely writing off Firefox for dipping their toes in the sewage and then using that as some hare brained excuse to go use browsers that are injecting sewage into their fucking veins.
Don't let a desire for perfection blind you to options that are only better.
Firefox with Ublock Origin.
...waterfox with ublock origin
i wonder why after the blacklash of brave no one attempted to fork it.(ik it was forked only once).
Used Fennec
That said, other browsers should improve their ad blocking. Can't let Brave win.
Gorgeous.
Sorry why are we mad at Meredith?
I tried Brave. Didn't like that it had a crypto ads on the new tab page. I also didn't like that it has some weird built-in point system that you can turn off but randomly turns itself back on and glitches out. Back when I used to use Twitter (formerly X) dot com, it would show weird point counters next to every Tweet and the ability to disable it didn't work.
Shit wait what
Can I get a recommendation for a better ad-free browser on iPhone?
Orion
Brendan Eich could be a huge proponent of butthole sunning and crystal healing. As long as I can turn off the butthole sunning button in his browser, I'm fine with it. And I can.
Never touched the crypto stuff, the AI search thing, whatever. Just turn them off. When I can't do that, I'll just use something else.
I'll stop using Brave when other browsers improve.
I trust Brave, because privacy guides trusts brave. It has a great in built adblocker and apparently the default privacy settings of any browser. I believe crypto, AI, all that other stuff is opt in, it's opensource as well. Considering chromium is the best at sandboxing and security for mobile, what other options do people have?
Firefox is objectively more insecure than any chromium based browser.
https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
You're all over this thread desperately defending a browser.
What is your incentive here, I assume nothing and you're cheerleading for free.
Cringey as shit.
The article you linked is over 3 years old at this point. You can't use that as the basis for your argument for software that's likely had hundreds of patches since the time that article was published.
I agree with you, but you also can't just assume that everything is fixed or that the security is as good as the competition these days just because the software received a lot of updates.
So, can you tell how much the situation turned up into? Seriously, I want to know. This time it is not sarcasm.
Look, I could point you to the blogs and patch notes for Chromium and Firefox and you could read into it and make your own conclusions from it.
From my perspective as a solution architect that has worked for several mid to large size organizations, is that security is difficult to measure and constantly changing. When I evaluate what software to use I do it on the basis of how they've historically addressed security concerns, and where the organization that develops the software priorities lies. My opinion is that when it comes to security, Mozilla and Google are about the same when it comes to Firefox and Chromium.
I haven't looked into Brave much, so I can't comment there besides it's another organization that you have to trust so it's inherently more risky.
I agree it depends about your security threat model. The browser, being open source is subject of several audits in the past, I don't think if an organization just because being alphabet or Mozilla is inherently more safe, as it would have a lot of malware in chrome and firefox extensions for example, poor extension control from them...
Crypto? Really?
Well I like it. It does the job, just a bit better than chrome. I tried Firefox, disappointed. Brave works and I most definitely don't have time to read and decide what everyone involved with a free software does or says.
I'm sure my opinion will do well here, 😂. I wonder if I'll be called worse names than the last time I said I don't like Firefox? Maybe ban?
What thing doesn't convince you in using firefox?
A few littl things that id like to work differently, but I think the nail in the coffin was when an app I tried didn't work on Firefox. And then there was the whole controversy with the funding, then with the ai stuff I just went back to brave and decided not to actually follow controversies like this. When I mentioned this once before, I think I was called a bunch of names including wishes that I die, so i wasn't too motivated to make any effort into changing again anyway.
You wanted less controversy from the makers of your browser so you went for Chrome by Brave eau de toilet. I'm confused.
That's like going from an environmental-protection group to environmental-destroying group bcs previously the latter group didn't want to send you pamphlets anymore.
I'm guessing the web app made for Chrome didn't work in Firefox?
And that ads don't bother you.
... but this case is exactly why I want more disclosures when we bitch about Mozilla/Firefox.
It's imperative that thought all the bitching newbies are aware of that they are seeing the process of how we keep Mozilla informed (and how they get inputs, and how they then ultimately decide to go forward).
And to understand that none of this process is happening for Chromium, def not here.
I don't think a comparison with environmental activism really applies here. They are just browsers.
I don't really get this Firefox community either. Why is everybody pissed all the time at everyone who doesn't cheer for Firefox all the time. Sometimes it looks like a cult.
The main problem is that it's a decision between making a monopoly win (google with chrorium that take almost all the marketshare) and the possibility to overthrow it, "they are just browsers" well- yeah they are, until you notice how the kind of influence you, just look at how google want to ban adblockers so bad and want to make other shitty moves, i suggest to look further
It's only a part of the community, and it's the loud part*. Please ignore them and don't lump everyone together.
.* i actually don't notice them much tbh, so i don't think that they are that loud but it could be just me being lucky
Well, here we can't do much cuz those are the developers tha mess up, but sometimes it can be solved by just changing the user agent (there are countless extensions for that)
Honestly - it's just the founding, the main problem is that if google cut the tube they will die, but nothing else, it's for sure less controversial than Brave with their crypto stuff and homophobic CEO, also, if you hate google don't go using chrorium
Whoever called you names or told you to die is just an idiot, ignore them.
I actually knew it wasn't really the fault of Firefox that the app didn't work, ....but the app still didn't work even with this full realization .😀
I might check out Firefox browsers again some time in the future, if I find myself with extra time, I have other priorities in life right now than to read about that. I just need them to work and brave works really well.
Try either waterfox or librewolf
I've used waterfox for a while.
This is the same logic that people like Elon Musk use when they become more Nazi after it being pointed out they hold Nazi beliefs.
“You called me names and made me do this!”
So, you support cryptocurrency and homophobia? You support using a browser that hijacks all the tracking on the web and then uses it for itself and its own tracking network (instead of blocking it)? Because people told you that you were an idiot for doing it?
You’re a fucking child.
Yeah, man. That oughta change their mind.
Haha, here we go guys!
Performance, insecurity, poor Mozilla management.
https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
this article is 3 years old, send me something newer, maybe something wrote after firefox 138
Also, the author of that article is a die-hard chrorium user, i don't expect him to care much
How much have changed things since this date? I bet not much. Considering how Mozilla was spending their google money on. I.E. orgies in Africa.
Go look at the update change logs yourself
For a long while the browser was mining Cryptocurrency secretly, that what they're referring to.
If you really really need a Chromium based browser then Vivaldi is a better alternative.
I haven't found any info about this, even the opposite that brave was first to have defence against it .
FAKE.
Lol yeah because that's what people think. I guess stay mad about the straw man you made up instead of digging into real people's thoughts and feelings.
He donated to Prop 8 in California back in 2008. The bill intended to ban gay marriage in the largest state in the country. He resigned as the CEO of Mozilla after receiving a lot of backlash from the public. The man is openly against gay marriage. You don't have to dig very deep to find that much.
You seriously expect that the average consumer digs into the personal history of the owner of an internet browser
Not really personal tbf, but still, the avarage users wouldn't dig anyway, but honestly it wouldn't seem too strange that someone on lemmy in a post about browsers would do that