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.
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 (presumably) thousands of dollars off their users.
Brave is literally a grift. Too many people are falling for it.
Too many people only care about the openweb or shitty companies in the comments. They have no fucking willpower, no patience, and no follow through. Their complaints are utterly meaningless because they utterly refuse to stick to their guns.
There’s one and literally only one browser that actually stands for all the things the most vocal people around here claim to care about.
Yet, they use Brave.
Ehh there is only so much a single person can care about. If you have a life and aren’t effectively an activist/lobbyis by profession you can’t care about politics both local and global, preserving nature and ecolody, world hunger & disease, and a million other things like which software company is less evil all at once and follow through 100%, supporting all of the causes meaningfully.
Not to mention we have to make compromises, too.
Hard disagree. Firefox had its fair share of controversies, it’s still technically funded by Google (while not accepting donations), and Mozilla Foundation as a nonprofit is pretty questionable too.
The leadership of Mozilla Corporation is shit too like any other corp; they lay off engineers and give themselves huge bonuses.
It takes them years to even acknowledge simple bugs, let alone actually getting to fix them.
A huge part of why Firefox lost the “browser wars” is also that they failed to make it easy to build into other apps so it could work more like Electron, while also pissing off users with surface changes that break their workflow.
Overall it’s better than Chrome especially if you care about privacy, but it’s not a huge win.
FTFY
I turn on youtube and see no ads
Just use uBlock Origin.
What are the better solutions for iOS users?
As I stated in a previous post, if you are using an iPhone you’ve basically given up on having privacy. For ad blockers you could use AdGuard and Safari, it’s better than nothing. You could also use something like Mullvad VPN, it has DNS ad blocking.
As I stated in a previous post, I am using AdGuard on safari. And since I’ve basically given up on privacy, I also use Brave at times.
That’s the most ridiculous statement I’ve seen today. iOS has infinitely better privacy than Android lawl
An iPhone is a give-up on privacy because you don’t get alternatives. If you don’t like your stock OS on an Android phone you can just switch OS (for example GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, ect.). If you don’t like the normal YouTube app you can just sideload a different one. You don’t get this kind of freedom with an iPhone. A prime example of this is when, during the Hong Kong Riots where Apple pulled an app that assisted protesters.
Stock for stock, yes.
The difference is iOS is iOS, and there is only one. Whereas Android is open source and comes in thousands of flavors. You cannot install another OS on your Apple devices. You get what Apple gives you, and nothing more or different because that’s the way they like it. They want control over your devices.
Some flavors of Android are Graphene or Calyx OS which are not only better and more usable than iOS but also 10x more secure and private.
Someone mentioned Firefox Focus.
Firefox focus doesn’t seem to save open windows, it’s a purely incognito browser. & you can only have one page open at a time.
You’re right about the first part; it’s an incognito, tracker & ad blocking browser that clears your history and everything every time you close it… but if you long press on a link, you can open it in a new tab. Multiple, even. There’s just no option I’ve found to open a blank new tab and navigate to a website that way. So I totally understand why you’d think that!
(I hope this doesn’t come off as pedantic or rude or anything. That’s definitely not my intention here - I just want people to be able to make informed decisions with correct information, ya feel?)
Focus does indeed block YT ads!
Even safari with Wipr does not. Though it is amazing for everything else.
Not on iOS. Every browser on iOS is effectively just a skin for safari. There is no true Firefox for iPhone, or chrome for that matter.
If you’re using an iPhone, you willingly surrendered your freedom of choice. This is what you paid for.
Orion by Kagi. It is, afaik, are the only browser that isn’t just a re-skin of Safari.
Sideloading either Yatee or uYou+
Or use Piped as a PWA
I haven’t tried it but there’s also Kagi’s Orion browser which looks interesting.
Thanks I didn’t know about that one and I thought I went through all the alternatives. Currently I’m primarily watching YouTube vids through invidious in safari but will use brave when I watch my saved playlists.
Honestly had no idea this existed, cool!
This is why I use Brave on iOS devices. It is the best option I found. Others mention Adguard home and pihole. They just don’t work as well at blocking ads.