I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.
Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.
Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.
After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL’s. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.
Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I’d say the answer is a very clear no.
One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.
Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don’t mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.
vivaldi probably does have spyware it lol. why would you choose an application that hides their code instead of making it open for everybody to see / improove? you dont need to be a programmer to know that any FOSS app with a following would get caught out instantly for pulling anything lame. Eg chromium prototyping web integrity api. you dont need to audit the code, just the fact that it is open makes it 99% more trustworthy as people are looking at the code all the time.
Vivaldi is Source Available :
https://vivaldi.com/source/
from vivialdi website: Roughly 92% of the browser’s code is open source coming from Chromium, 3% is open source coming from us, leaves only 5% for our UI closed-source
still way more sus than brave
source: https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser-open-source/