this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2023
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44
Is Brave overrated? (jeremmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
39 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I don't know if I am missing a point or not but I don't exactly quiet get the hype as to me, it just chrome with poor man's uBlock Origin and their own crypto in the mix.

Like how it that different from me using ether Librewolf or even Google Chromium and install uBlock Origin compare to Brave?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

BAT is Brave Attention Token, a form of crypto exclusive and locked into Brave. Its like a little crypto mining scam.

Brave Browser is funded by DoD: https://np.reddit.com/r/privatelife/comments/fe34ls/exclusive_brave_browser_funded_by_dod_contractor/

Brave traffic detected with Cryptocompare despite BAT rewards disabled: https://unddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/gr8nue/ (removeddit no longer works, use unddit)

Brave also has a known history of whitelisting Facebook and Twitter trackers, and has a crippled adblocker that does not work on Brave's "acceptable" advertisements.

Brave Browser hardcoded their crypto partner Binance referral links (https://twitter.com/cryptonator1337/status/1269201480105578496) alongwith Ledger and soon-to-be-compromised Coinbase (https://decrypt.co/31461/coinbase-wants-to-identify-bitcoin-users-for-dea-irs)

Also some new stuff you might want to check.

https://sick.codes/sick-2021-109/

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/13527

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I've never seen any real benefit of Brave over just the vanilla unGoogled Chromium fork if you really do want Chromium, or Firefox/one of the unMozilla'd forks if you want just any engine.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Brave is basically just for people too dumb to install uBlock Origin on Firefox, and who desire a worse experience with the fickle greed of BAT garbage.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Honestly, their "make money while you browse while making money for your favorite websites all while maintaining privacy" thing is so on the nose for "too good to be true" that I'm genuinely disappointed by how many people who are supposedly pro privacy and FLOSS development fall for it. If someone promises the world, they're almost always either misguidedly deceiving themselves, or maliciously deceiving you.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

I wouldn't touch it on the account of it's crypto stuff.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Librewolf

It's a different platform, you won't participate in the monopolization of Chromium as the only browser worth building webpages for.

Google Chromium and install uBlock Origin

AFAIK you'd have to do some tweaking under the hood to achieve the same effect, particularly when it comes to de-coupling Google from Chrome. My impression is that you'd be closer to Brave if you started with Chromium or even Ungoogled-Chromium.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

One problem with LibreWolf is that it has very weak security. The exact same goes for FF and other FF based browsers.

The Chromium monopoly sucks tho.

Edit: grammar. :p

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

What's this about weak security? Do you have something to read about that?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

No, he is just another victim of madaidan/Spengler/GrapheneOS church propaganda.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

From the same author as one of the best linux hardening guides: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

One of the best... you mean toilet papers of the internet, repeatedly trashed by r/linux and HN users?

https://web.archive.org/web/20210929053611/https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/pwi1l9/thoughts_about_an_article_talking_about_the/

https://web.archive.org/web/20220111035527/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25590079

https://archive.is/zxS72

madaidan is an admin of GrapheneOS, NoGoolag, SpiteChat communities/chatrooms across various platforms. The "insecurities" blog chap, notorious for a lot of misinformation in FOSS and Linux communities but opposite in a big chunk of mainstream privacy community. A staple of the "redditor hackerman" starterpack, for people who know nothing better.

He knows literally nothing and has proven his credentials https://i.imgur.com/UHhQRIU.jpg and https://i.imgur.com/FiYhbkk.jpg, among many other places.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I literally only read their linux hardening guide and that article on browsers. And both of them seemed me pretty good.

I might ignore their activities on social media tho. I'm reading the links right to help my ignorance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

because I am an autistic (in 4chan sense) computer science graduate

Whew, the cringe is immense from both sides in that post

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Be grateful for the transparency I portray, and for presenting what people otherwise would never have known. Even I see it as a bit cringey, but I was neck deep into privacy community back then, and you have to use certain lingo to mesh with that crowd.

If I told you madaidan used to (probably still moderates) NSFW subreddits years ago, you would be shell shocked.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

a) I would have no idea who that person is if I hadn't seen this post today

b) I really don't see what the problem is with them being the mod of a couple of NSFW subs? Especially since they said they're all just jokes and basically empty?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Well... seriously, go and read those archived r/linux and HN comments. This fellow here is pretty well known in privacy community to be basically someone who shits on Linux and praises Windows and MacOS security. This person and Brad Spengler were the ones to begin this trend of Big Tech "security" apologia in privacy community, which has become a disease with GrapheneOS on the mobile side of things now.

These specimens/entities coincidentally praise the security of Windows, MacOS, Google Pixel, Apple Secure Enclave, while calling Linux and FOSS projects horrible nightmare all the time, consistently. Moreover, they also coincidentally happen to call PRISM Snowden and Assange revelations irrelevant jokes (see https://web.archive.org/web/20220418214232/https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/iox6rq/should_i_get_an_iphone_if_i_value_privacy/ or https://i.imgur.com/xcryYvM.jpg).

There is a lot to it, and its hard to form a gist of it other than these entities being extremely dangerous to and being the equivalent of termites to privacy community, everywhere one exists.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Can you go into more detail about Librewolf having weak security? This is news to me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Compared to Chromium.*

Not only LibreWolf but every FF based one.

You can check out this article since it explains it better than me: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html

While it's not about the most recent version most if not all of its points are still true.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Let me provide you a little more on the subject.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220418212845/https://old.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/i80uki/theymozilla_killed_entire_threat_management_team/g1703is/

https://web.archive.org/web/20220418213345/https://old.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/i80uki/theymozilla_killed_entire_threat_management_team/g162g4r/?context=10000

Tweet linked in above hysteric post https://web.archive.org/web/20200812145114/https://nitter.net/MichalPurzynski/status/1293220570885062657

The job of madaidan/Spengler/GrapheneOS church is to hate and destroy FLOSS projects that condemn their actions or do not fall in line with them, and even attempt witch hunts on people that criticise them. I was a victim of it last year, as they hijacked the Matrix room of this very community (which I was unable to save since admins did not listen to me) and attempted to create fabricate projection lies against me because I moderate this place. https://archive.ph/acy2h

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Coming back after some time, thanks for giving me another point of view. Sorry that shit happened to you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Then get off the internet, none if it is secure.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Generally speaking is true that our security standars are incredibly low and that's becoming more and more dangerous as time goes. Even moreso in our hyper-digitalized society.

But I fail to understand what does that have to do with the fact that FF is less secure than Chromium. May you develop, please?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

@SrEstegosaurio @coldhotman why does it have weaker security than Chromium browsers?

Edit: saw this in the comments: madaidans-insecurities.github.…

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

Nope. You are fine. Not missing shit. Only plebs rave about how awesome it. The only thing it could possibly have going for it are privacy focused defaults (maybe?)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Guess whenever Google rolls out the update to disable tracker blocking as we currently know it, we'll be firmly able to answer this question. It's unclear to me if this will impact Brave but if it doesn't then this will show Brave was worth the hype more or less I think.

Edit: I love FF but something's just run better on chromium, I have FF as default with Brave as a back up

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Well, what Google wants to introduce is a completely arbitrary limit to the number of filtering rules, so increasing that constant in the code should be no trouble at all.

Having said that, ad blocking effectiveness is lower on Chrome-based browsers already today: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox
Padding those flaws out or offering similar functionality to uBO in their custom ad blocker, that does take some effort.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I don't trust brave but it does have features out of the box that no other browser has:

  • web torrents
  • Tor in private tabs
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

How does Brave Tor compared to the regular Tor browser? It is just work as the same or is there few stuff they added to make it much better?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I'm not too sure sorry, I haven't really used it much other than testing it out when I found out a about it.

I would imagine you have less control over specific Tor settings, but I am not 100% sure.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Tor has completely broken application on Brave, and leaks a lot of information.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Do not use it. Use only the Tor Browser since it's designed to make all users look the same. (Preferrably inside of a Whonix VM.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

All browsers are disappointing, and I don't think the market is capable of producing a good one.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

The web itself has become a disappointing place to be honest. (Obviusly we stil have cool sites here and there but I mean generally.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Sometimes I need Chromium. I always want an ad-blocker, though. So the two best choices are Vivaldi and Brave.

Vivaldi is closed-source, which is bad. But it has a lot of good customization options, and is transparent about its monetization.

Brave is open-source, but tries to get you into crypto junk. You can turn that off, but you have to do it for every different machine.

I currently use a combination of Librewolf and Vivaldi. But my setup shifts around a lot.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I've been using Brave since it was based on ~~Gecko~~ Muon, and all it's worth is ad-blocking by default. If you know how to install uBlock Origin, Brave won't offer you any advantages.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Brave was never based on Gecko. (Originally it was based on (a fork of) Electron! 🤣)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

My bad, it was Muon. No idea why I wrote Gecko

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Brave search provides an .onion instance, so I would say no

https://search.brave4u7jddbv7cyviptqjc7jusxh72uik7zt6adtckl5f4nwy2v72qd.onion/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I'm more on about Brave the browser, not really on about their search engine which they made