- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- privacy@lemmy.ml
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As a reminder, Brave was created by the guy who brought you JavaScript and was later fired from Mozilla for donating to hate groups. Brave also profits from multiple forms of fraud including NFTs and affiliate hijacking.
If folk want to have a chromium-based browser made by a company, take a look at Vivaldi instead
(which will keep the old plugin architecture, so adblockers work). It has a limited built-in blocker and extra features, but for now still runs uBlock.Vivaldi is what I use, and it’s absolutely the best Chromium browser I’ve ever tried.
That said, I’d switch to Firefox in a heartbeat if it could duplicate that sidebar. I use that thing all the time, and it’s the only thing keeping me on Chromium.
As a strictly Firefox user for… as long as I can remember… what side bar? If it’s a bookmark or tab container I could probably hack a plugin together pretty quick.
Try it out. It’s a sidebar that allows you to put all kinds of websites and tools in small pop-out windows.
A less visually appealing, but much more powerful version of the opera chat sidebar.
I’ve tried to get something similar in Firefox, but nothing comes even close.
Built-in functions >>> addons any day of the week.
(cfr mouse gestures)
i fucking love vivaldi’s mouse gestures.
whenever i use firefox i end up constantly opening the inspector view like an absolute moron
opera chat
…whut? (I haven’t had opera since the buyout)
Yeah, no. I should have put some hyphen I guess.
Opera chat-tabs. Opera has a sidebar for chat clients (eg messenger, WhatsApp, telegram,…) built-in. It works really well and is prettier than the Vivaldi implementation. Still sticking with Vivaldi though
Cool! Thanks for explaining =)
Before the buyout, I think you could use it as an AIM/ICQ client.
It’s a thin, persistent bar on the left side of the page with tools and shortcuts. By default, it’s where you find bookmarks, history, downloads and things like that, but you can also add custom websites to it as well. They pop out either over or alongside the main window (depending on whether the pin button is pressed), and they display the mobile webpage when available, to be more usable in such a small window. It’s how I use Discord and Mastodon.
Firefox fork with features like the sidebar, vertical tabs, and more. It’s a vivaldi-like gecko browser, give it a shot.
I have Vivaldi on my android but I do not know how to get adblock working. Is it even possible?
Firefox mobile has Ublock Origin and works great. Even on YouTube.
Menu -> Settings -> Tracker and Ad Blocking -> Block Trackers and Ads
Thanks. I quickly tried it on YouTube and did get an ad. So I guess it doesn’t work on those. Bummer.
Edit. Tried it some more and did not get any more ads. It takes a little to get the video playing but other that 10/10. No ad experience. Awesome.
(which will keep the old plugin architecture, so adblockers work).
Will they? All I remember was them saying that their built-in adblock (which is very barebones) would still work after Manifest v3, nothing much else.
Seems you’re right! I’ll cross out that part. Sorry!
This is misleading. The BAT was a reasonable idea not really a scam.
It’s not just BAT; Brave also supports NFTs, which are even more unambiguously a scam.
The company is in bed with the cryptocurrency “industry” which cannot exist without constant fraud, ransomware, and other crimes.
Just a reminder, one of the largest investors in Brave is a right-wing billionaire who runs a corporate espionage agency that contracts with the US Department of Defense to spy on people.
Source of the info?
Well, it’s about Peter Thiel, who also founded the Palantir surveillance technology company. As a source for his involvement with Brave, Wikipedia cites this TechCrunch article, which mentions funding from Thiel’s “Founders Fund”.
I’d rather criticize Brave for other reasons though, like being led by Brendan Eich or supporting crypto.
That’s the best reason, but somebody already mentioned it and I didn’t want to be redundant.
Wow, I actually had no idea. I haven’t used Brave in awhile now but they’ve been making some strange decisions lately. This makes the picture a little clearer
I love it when I talked shit about this browser and get acused of wearing a tin foil hat.
Just a reminder, Brave was using people’s likenesses to solicit donations without their consent, and without necessarily give those people the donations.
Not heard that one before, source?
(Not that I’m running low on reasons not to use brave)
If you want to poke around, look up “Tom Scott and Brave”.
https://www.altcoinbuzz.io/spotlight/famous-youtuber-tom-scott-frustrated-with-brave/
deleted by creator
Uh I’ll stick to Firefox thanks.
Update: Brave plans to address the issue in a future release. The VPN service will only be installed after a user purchases the VPN.
“Oh gee whiz did we do that?! Woopsie doodle! We’ll fix it someday!”
Furthermore, no data is sent to Brave from the VPN services. End
This might be true but the bigger problem is I have exactly zero reason to believe anything Brave says about the things they’re installing on people’s machines without consent. If you’re still using Brave at this point you’re a fool.
They’ll either evil or incompetent. Neither of which I want on my computer
Damn the negative stories just keep coming in regards to Brave. It’s a shame, I liked using their iOS app but I said fuck it awhile ago already. Firefox is my main b rowser
I’m still not sure what to use on my iPad for adblocking. Someone please tell me what to use instead on iPad! Everything else is Firefox + uBlock Origin, of course.
Checkmate, Brave shills.
Like built-in crypto shenanigans weren’t enough.
Vivaldi is a better brave. You get built in ad blocking and tracking prevention along with not having built in crypto
And mouse gestures! Configurable tab stacking! Workspaces! Notes and pinned tabs! Tab tiling! Web apps in the sidebar! I love Vivaldi.
Remember when Opera had all of these things a literal decade+ ago? I remember.
Vivaldi is lead by an ex-Opera engineer.
Yeah, I followed their dev over when they left. Opera seems to be a mess these days. I used Opera for over a decade.
There’s no built in crypto anything except for the odd ad on the homepage to buy crypto. Which, sure, is kinda lame, but they don’t mine crypto in the background or anything like that.
it has a built in wallet. Nobody said it was mining anything.
It has an easy to find option to turn off everything related to Crypto
the brave experience was less than ideal for me, the brave search is unusable, i switched back to firefox, which i had moved to from chrome
also, related, but a side note, word to the wise, never ever ever use a free vpn ever, someones gotta foot the bill for the exit server bandwidth, and either they’re keeping logs or they’re not keeping logs, but you’ll never know, and you won’t know when they sell their settup to the next guy. always use a major vpn service who’s audited and shown proof they’re not keeping logs, they’re in the business of secure and private vpn service. free vpns like what brave are offering are not in that business, and server, rack space, bandwidth costs actual money
never ever ever use a free vpn ever,
Proton VPN has a free tier and it’s legit.
If you need a Chromium browser use Ungoogled-Chromium, Windows version.
Very few people do. Better to just get Firefox.
Or some variant of it as Firefox also has its owned bundled stuff; I recommend Waterfox
Librewolf’s a good one too
On android I prefer cromite. Dont know how it compares with ungoogled chromium on windows though. Firefox is the superior choice on desktop
The only chrome variant that doesn’t seem sketchy to install is chromium. The built from open source chromium. And that’s just because some sites barely function unless you’re using chrome’s rendering.
For everything else, Firefox.
What about Thorium? Thoughts?
I haven’t heard of it before today! Definitely going to check it out.
Would qtwebengine count, or is it a bit of a stretch?
I don’t know that I’d call that a chromium browser but I’ve only looked at its docs for 10 minutes. Hard to say where chromium integration begins and ends there without digging into the code. Seems like, at most, it’s using the web rendering engine from the chromium project. But it also seems to suggest it has its own modules for executing/rendering js/css/html.
Probably not included in the “should be avoided” category.
Now I’m curious what it’s used for.
I’m currently using it in a browser called Falkon. It’s not as big as Firefox or Chrome, but it is endorsed by KDE. Also, Apple’s Safari is using something similar.
Librewolf
Software installs services to make its features operate, including optional default off ones. More news at 10.
Either it does it at install time, or when you try to turn on the VPN after subscribing to it, it pops an UAC prompt to finish installing optional components. That’s standard practice, and it’s good for security because it means they can flag the browser itself as not capable of elevating privileges. They’re not going to put a gaping security hole in their software so that idiots don’t write articles about “installing things without your concent”. You already consented to installing Brave, you can’t be surprised Brave is installed.
As long as it deletes them when you uninstall, this is a complete non-issue.
I guess it depends on how much you trust a company (both now and in the future) to do something they shouldn’t with this kind of setup, whether on purpose or though incompetence.
Personally, I don’t software silently installing unrelated services to my machine just in case the company decides they want to have it running on my machine in the future.
It is an advertised feature though. It can and will use those services if you enable them.
Should it also not come with the binaries for the VPN feature at all? That has downsides: maybe you’re on a laptop trying to bypass a network block that also blocks the download of the VPN software but the VPN would work.
So if it’s to come with the binaries, why can’t it install the service too, that defaults to off and manual launch? On Linux that’d be a systemd unit, on Windows it’s probably an API call of some sort but they basically contain the same information: some metadata, an executable and the privileges to launch it as.
I’d never seen a Linux user complain about <1kb systemd unit file being installed that’s disabled by default and only started on demand when the feature is requested as part of a package they install. It just is and doesn’t hurt anyone. Don’t want it, don’t use it.
When I download software, I expect all its built-in features to be installed and usable even if I don’t use them, nor want them. It’s part of the package.
It’s kind of borderline because the VPN really could and should be a separate product entirely, I don’t want to launch a browser just to then on a VPN. But they made it a built-in feature that’s advertised as such, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Especially given its proprietary software. If you’re that privacy and security conscious, why are you using proprietary software and not Firefox or Chromium or whatever the latest flavor of degoogled Chromium fork du jour is. The service is nothing compared to all the other crap they could be running in the browser completely hidden from you. That service is super transparent and upfront, if they wanted to hide it they could easily hide it. If you really don’t want it to run, you can even set it to disabled entirely, and Brave won’t even be able to start it.
If you’re that paranoid, you really should be running Linux or at least avoid as much closed source software as possible.
How many cryptos did they pay you to write that? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Yeah I mean there’s a lot wrong with brave but this is like getting mad at software for installing an autoupdate service
