this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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If you are keen on personal privacy, you might have come across Brave Browser. Brave is a Chromium-based browser that promises to deliver privacy with built-in ad-blocking and content-blocking protection. It also offers several quality-of-life features and services, like a VPN and Tor access. I mean, it's even listed on the reputable PrivacyTools website. Why am I telling you to steer clear of this browser, then?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Brave has great anti-fingerprinting measures I just wish I could get that without installing crypto malware on my pc

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

I've heard enough of this stuff over the years to never be tempted to try the browser out. At this point, I feel like it's claim to privacy is mostly marketing. Personally, I'm going to stick to LibreWolf.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

Wow, what scummy bastards. I used the browser for a little bit, and I kinda figured they were up to some shady shit when I noticed a crypto-wallet was included, but I ignored all that shit and it was fine. But if I'd known what the CEO or the company in general had been up to I'd have dropped that shit like a bad habit long before I did for other reasons.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I agree that Brave is problematic and most of the criticisms are also legitimate. But the point about the crawlers is not really a problem. If you respect the wish of websites to be indexed exclusively by Google, you support Google's monopoly and prevent alternative search engines from having similarly good results.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I see no legitimate reason for not using a User Agent string, like all the other crawlers use, other than the desire to hide the crawler and make it difficult to block.

I don't accept his explanation. I see it as gaslighting.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Why I recommend against pushing people away from Brave:

Most people are still trapped in an ecosystem owned by either Microsoft, Google or Apple. We're yet to see a perfect web browser for everyone, but in the meantime we choose one, maybe two or three if we feel a bit more picky for each task, and use them to the best of our capacity. Making anyone feel guilty and ashamed for choices like this, when the best options are few, relative, and often come at a cost, is just useless.

I suggest reading the settings guides available at privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/ or checking the browser comparison at eylenburg.github.io/browser_comparison.htm to know the details that anyone who actually wants a better browsing experience cares about. Better to lend a hand than push around.

If whoever reads this still can't get over it and needs to play a blame game with someone about why everyone should boycott Mozilla, Brave, Proton and other privacy focused FOSS companies because of what someone said, did or thought, please at least find a decent fork, toss a coin to it's devs, share their work and help others benefit from it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

At this point there is a pretty solid list of reasons to avoid Brave and use another FOSS privacy focused option.

Personally, everything I've read about Brave makes me trust them even less than Microsoft, and Google.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Thank you for posting this! I had a vague recollection there was something scummy about Brave, and I was surprised to see it recommended in so many of the "Which browser should I use?" posts. It's really handy to have a chronical of bullshit like this to point to when it comes up

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[–] sloppychops 13 points 1 week ago

The crazy conspiracy guy I know uses Brave, so that already put me off.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Oh boy, I shared the spacebar news article a year ago or so and was hit by a shitstorm of indignant comments.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

What better chromium based browser is there?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I normally stick with Firefox but, when there's the need, I use degoogled Chromium.

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