I don’t understand when and why Brave became such a household name. It seems so many people use it and swear by it, but its reputation is “suspicious” at best.
Just use Firefox. It’s been around way, way longer and it doesn’t use the Chromium engine. Google doesn’t need more of a monopoly on the internet.
But what’s wrong with non Chrome Chromium based browsers?
(Just give me downvotes, I don’t care if my question is stupid)
Well Chrome(ium) has almost all of the browser market share and google is trying to push something called web environment integrity which would implement a sort of certification system where web servers evaluate the authenticity of the client. If you extrapolate that idea a bit further it boils down to “we won’t serve you content if we don’t like your browser, device, OS, etc”. Which I would consider as hostile to the open but rapidly closing internet as we know it.
Edit: I forgot to make my point lol. Firefox is a completely different browser engine from the chromium based browsers which is why you see a lot of people recommending firefox because they don’t comply with web integrity. I don’t think it’s working though because this is something only the techbros and the cybersisters care about while everyone else just goes about their day.
Makes sense.
Chromium is still controlled by Google, so having an overwhelming market share of Chromium-based browsers reduces competition and increases Google’s control of the market’s position and future. Using Firefox (and Safari, if it were not locked to a single ecosystem) reduces that threat.
When we say “controlled”, that’s still only accounting for the primary fork, right?
As long as it’s open source, it feels like the idea is that the day Google pushes “feat(): Users now automatically have $1 sent to Google a day” commit, someone creates a “chromium-nongooglefucked” fork repository from the prior commit, and everyone uses that.
K
It just means if they want to do something bad then they can
If Google wanted to they could ban VPNs on all Chromium browsers and all the forks downstream would have to comply
More likely they can make it so only verified websites will load and down the line charge to be verified. It kills the open internet and the ability for anyone to make a website/host it where they want
Damn.
It’s not a stupid question, some people just don’t know.
Mainly it’s because:
- Chromium holds too much market share which is bad for the health of the Web.
- Chromium is controlled by Google which is concerning because they have been known to plant trackers even in software that shouldn’t have them.
- Chromium is inherently less secure, it contains features that might seem nice but are extremely risk to give access to websites i.e. letting websites access Bluetooth.
There are probably plenty more reasons but these are the big ones, and of coarse this is a simplification, in reality things are always a bit more complicated.
Web dev here. Regardless of my opinion, I need to make sure my web projects work on chrome because of market share.
I think if Firefox can find a way to have full parity with chrome extensions, that might be a big shift. I’ve talked to more than one person that has a specific extension they rely on that they can’t duplicate with Firefox options. They have many of the big names, but also some holes
It’s the other way around in my experience
Genuinely curious. What extensions are stopping people from moving to Firefox?
Not OP, (and Firefox is still my main), but I keep Chromium-based browsers around for Ichigo, an addon which automatically translates raw manga - which is a godsend for avid manga readers like myself who frequently run out of existing translated manga to read. There’s also Scan Translator which works in a similar way, but sadly Firefox has nothing like them.
In my opinion best bet is ungoogled chromium for any extensions or applications that utilize chromium.
I just spent awhile trying to switch from Vivaldi to Floorp before going back. It just doesn’t work as smoothly, things like tabs wouldn’t save properly between sessions, pinning tabs doesn’t prevent you from closing them, UI elements would disappear, etc.
I use it as my YouTube/spotify browser because the ad block just works. Firefox is janky because I have other extensions running that screw up playback on some sites (this has gotten a lot better but I still just use brave out of habit)
The only real problem I ever had with Firefox was this privacy option that would disable auto playback on sites like Twitch and TikTok but that was a setting I wasn’t even aware of. Other than that, I rarely ever have an issue with FF outside of web dev when it doesn’t yet support some cutting-edge web API feature.
Yea, it was something with various extensions I had going. I’m not blaming Firefox at all. I love Firefox. Just easier to use the other browser on the occasions when my configuration causes issues than try to troubleshoot it.
I’ve had issues with add-ons on some sites too. For those times I just use a different Firefox profile (each has its own set of add-ons and settings :D)
That’s a good idea.
Not surprised. Brave is dodgy af.
Use Vivaldi or Firefox if you care about privacy
I tried ff yesterday… it slowed my laptop like crazy. It was a clean install, not sure what was rhe issue, it was eunnin from an ssd
I’m running FF on a 10 year old Linux laptop with no issues.
Maybe I need to change to Linux, this one is Windows 10 and I am tired of getting errors because of things that Windows change. Last week I had the search bar activated with thr last update. Thanks for the tip
I would strongly recommend looking into it. There’s not much you can’t do with Linux these days and it’s easier than ever to adopt. Check out Linux Mint for a good distro for those new to Linux.
I will do that, I mean there is something wrong with windows, it was slowing ff for some reason. And not only that, other apps. I mean I have 16gb of ram, and only running that and whatsapp
Did it a little over a year ago. Has been fun thus far, my computer really feels like my device now which it didn’t really do before. Its like when a meal tastes better because you make it yourself. Still have issues once and again ofc but I had that on windows too tbf. Not an OS advisor, not OS advice
I will try it, i am really angry at ms, it is not normal that it was running ff slow, with 16gb if ram and onky running WhatsApp in the backgroud. Thanks for the recommendation
I think angry is good, that helps you pull through. Godspeed!
That would have been around the same time that I did too. High five Linux twin!
Eyyyyy high five. Any good or bad stories or something to recommend? I will start. I am now the go too person on work for people who have issues with their usb drives. Not matter what, on linux I can always read the filesystem or make their flash drives work again. And people are always super thankful :)
Haha that’s really cool! I had something similar at work - when the adobe suite stopped working properly with the computers there I was able to get GIMP and and Libreoffice working for everyone instead. I most recommend the application “cherrytree” and avoiding flatpak. Also, if you’re thinking about self-hosting check out YUNOhost. How about you?
I did just over a year ago and haven’t looked back.
I will do that. Just need to backup my bookmarks and some files and format both drives clean.
Very odd. It’s not supposed to effect the os at all
I know, that is why it is so strange. Maybe I need to see if there are addons in the background.
I have issues with FireFox running YouTube on windows 10 - it gets super laggy - the issue is nonexistent if I used the Piped frontend. I think it depends a lot on what website you are using - some don’t play well with FireFox.
That being said, I did not have issues with FireFox on Mac when I used that, or on Linux, though I don’t use my Linux laptop a lot for web heavy stuff
It’s believed to be that Google will serve different websites to non-Chrome (maybe non-Chromium) browsers, or they specifically use features that only they implement to ensure that it performs worse on other browsers. And I don’t mean they add a new feature and it’s only them, but that
. Honestly, fuck Google.
Check out the Freetube application for watching youtube videos. You can import all your subscriptions from youtube, make playlists, download video/audio etc.
I do have lag issues with YouTube on FF as well, but only the video not the audio. I just assumed it was a codec issue, or just RAM management, since it only occurs when I’ve been running FF plus a game like wow all day
Bro said Firefox 😂 Firefox’ been Google bitch for a good while now, it’s either Librewolf or Mullvad now
Google is paying Mozilla to keep their search engine the default in Firefox. Period. There is no Google spyware (or any spyware in general) in Firefox. Just because Google is the default search engine in Firefox doesn’t mean Firefox is Google-controlled spyware.
Also Librewolf’s privacy is in some ways selfish on their part. It strips out Firefox’s troubleshooting data collection so Mozilla loses a good chunk of clues on how well the browser works. Lack of any data would lead to lower browser quality, ends up as a worse Firefox release, and Librewolf gets to be affected directly as a downstream of Firefox. By removing troubleshooting or usage data (which practically doesn’t affect privacy in any way), Librewolf is just hurting itself in the long run. If they’re really aggressive against directly contributing data back to Mozilla, then they should just run their own collection server and contribute the final data back to Mozilla.
telemetry and troubleshooting information can be used for fingerprinting. This isn’t an issue for most people but I can understand why some wouldn’t like it. Tor browser strips a lot of that as well for similar reasons.
My understanding is that google primarily funds Firefox because if chrome becomes a monopoly then google would have to face antitrust laws. Getting broken up would be more expensive to them than keeping Firefox viable with a minority of people using it as their browser.
Care to share some examples?
why so many down votes?
Because it’s not true for the browser itself?
Lemmy is a linux/firefox circlejerk overall, don’t try
You tried. RIP
It’s the most sane thing to do.
The Brave team are basically a bunch of dodgy wankers at this point.
Just a reminder, any time you see a “tech” youtuber with brave installed, they’re not going to be an excellent source of information
Brodie Robertson is an excellent source of information ☹️
Except in terms of browser choice apparently. Either they’re ignorant or being paid. Either way it’s not a good sign.
BuT bRaVE isN’t ThaT bAd 🤡
Yep, this news actually broke a couple days ago, I remember seeing a Brave fanboy having a meltdown over it and ranting about how Mozilla is the real shady company, blah, blah, blah.
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Oh dear lord. What did they say in support of their “Mozilla is shady” argument?
To be fair. Mozilla foundation is shady. They keep pushing things that don’t follow their core mission. That try to expand their brand.
You can use Mozilla to build solid privacy respecting systems, but Firefox out of the box not so much. They’re better than Google, but that’s a low fucking bar.
Mullvad browser, Tor browser, mull for Android - all use the core Firefox open source engine, to make privacy respecting programs that work out of the box with privacy respecting defaults.
So I would say Mozilla is a good guy in this conversation, but not a saint.
Though they are transparent with the fact that they are doing it. I’m not a fan of it either, but it’s not too shady when they’re open about it IMO.
Fair enough, they aren’t evil to be sure.
The Mozilla telemetry, pocket, Mozilla synchronization, experiments, the new tab page basically being an advertisement page. That leaves the sour taste in my mouth, so I don’t trust them because of that… Shady good guy vibes:)
They’re doing what they think they need to justify their existence, and although I personally believe being just a great browser would be enough I appreciate their communication around their ventures. It’s not great, but it’s not like they’re installing malware in the background.
https://itsfoss.com/firefox-looking-glass-controversy/
They get pretty close sometimes. I respect their mojo, but I don’t install vanilla Firefox anymore. On anything. For any reason. I don’t trust them anymore.
I wish them the best, if I could donate directly to Firefox development I would, but it’s impossible with them. So I don’t. I donate to mullvad, I donate to the Tor project, and I donate to servo. That’s what I can do to make sure we maintain an open and free web
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The White House probably isn’t doing much illegal SIGINT dragnetting of US citizens, but I bet the Pentagon, NSA HQ, and the Hill all do.
Firefox over everything. use Vivaldi if you insists on rendering blink
Question: why would they do that? If you don’t even know it’s there, what good is it doing for them?
It’s also enabled by default.
Edit: Apparently it’s not enabled by default. I tried brave some time ago and remembered that it was enabled, which promoted me to uninstall it immediately. Maybe it was enabled by default then, maybe I misremembered.
Having a VPN basically just means sending your traffic (albeit encrypted) to someone else’s server, before sending it to the wider internet.
That means if you don’t specifically disable it, everything you do in the brave browser could theoretically be logged, processed and analyzed by the owners of brave.
Even if the traffic itself is still encrypted, like with online banking, just knowing how many people in a certain city use which bank for example, could be very interesting to advertisers.
Depending on how evil they are, they could also log extensive amounts of user data, just waiting for the day it becomes legal to sift through it (just like a lot of governments do).
Or maybe they just log and sell your data even though it’s illegal. Like a lot of companies do all the time (see Cambridge Analytical scandal etc.).
Or maybe they don’t. But if I was a browser company I’d sure enjoy having all my users route all their traffic through servers I control.
the toggle shows up by default, but without a paid subscription the vpn is unusable. even then you need to enable it. you can disable it completely in brave://flags and set “enable experimental brave VPN” to disabled. it’s shitty that they include it by default, but it’s disingenuous to say they’re rerouting traffic of all brave users through their own vpn servers.
Alright, thanks for the correction.
Holy fuck, well that is a whole other issue…
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Opera does this too and nobody bats an eye (anymore).
For some reason people like to clown on Brave specifically.
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- Download a browser with a built-in VPN
- Get browser and VPN services on your computer
Why is this news?
Because it’s Brave and people like to jump on bandwagons. This is like the 6th time I’ve seen this article posted in lemmybin also.
And since we have the reddit-minded folk here, no, I do not support Brave and never will and I would much rather they disappear from the internet, but using ragebait to complain about the browser installing the necessary files to have one of their advertised services working, like pretty much every other software does, is not the way to move forward.
Because these idiots don’t know how software works.
They’d shit their pants if they paid attention to the services on their computer.
It’s good users are now aware that Brave includes redundant features that you have to pay extra for to activate. Users browser will update everytime the browser or the VPN software needs an update.
For example Firefox VPN from Mozilla is separate software. They don’t force millions of users to download it even if they don’t want it.
This is yet another example why people should not be using Brave and should be skeptical of its intentions.
They don’t force millions of users to download it even if they don’t want it.
Mozilla has been forcing Pocket on Firefox users for years, as well as Mr Robot ads and numerous other things. They don’t exact have the moral high ground here.
Whats pocket? And why is it bad that its on the browser?
Pocket is Mozilla’s bookmark/sync pay-cloud-service. Comes with Firefox by default and can’t be easily removed. From a company that claims to care about privacy I would expect a self-hosted local-first approach for such problems, not a cloud service.
But its not active unless you turn it on right? Just preinstalled so if you decide to use it its already there?
Cause that does sound like a little bloatware but if thats the only bloat they have and thats its only issue Im not sure Im bothered by it.
Just imagine: using Windows and being concerned about privacy. Big lol.
Ok. Chrome sucks. Brave sucks. What’s good. Firefox?
Firefox is the least sucky.
Firefox and Mull (a Firefox fork) have your privacy in mind. They work as good as Chrome and don’t fuck you without asking.
I’m team Firefox, very happy here. There’s a small amount of optional telemetry to disable to maximise your privacy, and it has the best plugins because there’s a lot of choice and they’re not purposely crippled.
Plus you can use pretty much any plugin on mobile. this is the biggest feature for me.
it remains inactive unless the user subscribes.
Nothingburger who cares?
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please let us make bad choices and don’t talk about why they’re bad
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there’s a term for appropriating the struggle of an oppressed group the way you just did, but I can’t remember what it is. Anyway - I feel like you’re assuming everyone is talking about you when we’re not… If we don’t like something that you like, you can just mind your own business…?
If there’s a post about someone doing something bad, and people talk about how bad it is, but you think it’s good, are we all supposed to stop talking about it because you showed up?
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Sick. Thanks brave.
Independed browser from Google when?
