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Tf did you smoke today? I definitely want that stuff too!
Brave is chromium.
Some counterpoints:
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I like the idea of a system where users get a share of the revenue from the ad networks, which then can be used to support other content creators or businesses online. I think that if most of the web worked like this, we wouldn’t have people being treated as eyeballs and we would still have the power to vote with our wallets to choose who is actually worth of our attention. Is there any other browser or company doing anything like that?
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People keep talking about Firefox as if it’s a paragon of virtue, but casually forget that they are only alive because they are completely dependent on Google to survive and are nothing more than “controlled opposition” nowadays. They also have done a ton user-hostile shit like sponsored links in the frontpage and completely crippled pocket, and let’s not forget that current Mozilla execs are raking in millions while laying off people and disbanding key projects.
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The crypto part keeps called a scam, but their system has been working perfectly fine and it has always been liquid enough for me at the exchanges. Is their BAT token needed? Certainly not, and I would be fine if the 3-8 euros worth of BAT I receive every month (depending on my mobile usage and on their success as an network) were sent to me directly via SEPA. But can anyone realistically say that there is any efficient worldwide way to distribute payouts? For every dollar you sent to someone via Patreon (or Ko-Fi, or any alternative), how much do they get to keep? With the Brave creators program, all of the $15/month that I send to the different people get to them.
All in all, I will stop using Brave in a heartbeat if there is anyone else providing any alternative with a slight chance to fight Surveillance Capitalism. None of the Chromium or Mozilla forks are doing that.
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Brave’s objective is to create a system that looks altruistic but they control it and take a ever increasing cut.
I don’t see how? All they control is the ad network. Viewing the ads is opt-in. The ads they displayed are stored in device, and the code that selects which ads to show you is open source. The system for verifying ad views can be audited by any party. The token is on the blockchain so they can’t manipulate and the contract does not have any special rules.
Assuming a world where Brave gets significant market share, the “worst” they could do would be to change the promised revenue share, but if they went to do that then users would lose the incentive to opt-in into the ads, and they would more likely lose revenue and open themselves for competition. (That’s a risk that could run even if they did everything right, by the way)
using a different browser is the only good way to protest.
That is not true. “Though Brave uses Chromium, Brave browsers do not (and will not) include WEI”.
A problem would be if those contributions affect the project in a negative way.
And I could make the argument this is in the case with Mozilla and Firefox. Mozilla being so dependent of Google’s revenue means that they will never take any measure that could be seen by Google as a credible threat to their business. Ask yourself why Firefox never included an ad-blocker by default or has kept its mobile browser crippled for so long, or got rid of FirefoxOS…
Firefox never included an ad-blocker by default because an Ad-blocker kinda does the opposite of what the web-browser is supposed to do.
A web browser shall render the web page according to specification. Blocking content hinders this behavior and will even break some websites.
I think most people have forgotten that 15 years ago web browsers had barely started becoming standards compliant, with Opera being the first(?) to pass the Acid2 rendering test in 2006.
For reference: https://hyperborea.org/journal/2006/03/opera-passes-acid2/
A user installing an ad-blocker is perfectly fine, and hopefully the user makes an informed decision of advantages and the possible disadvantages that said ad-blocker might have.
And it’s also fine for fringe browsers like Brave to have a default ad-blocker, but there’s a big difference from that to just putting one in a product that’s used by millions, even though most users would likely be happy with the change.
Sorry, this is a terrible and senseless pontification. They could have always bundled an ad-blocker without having it enabled out-of-the-box.
Sure they could have.
But why would they?
Just because you, clearly, disagree with my opinion doesn’t make it terrible or senseless.
The strength of your conviction, or in which you convey it, isn’t a stand-in for rational arguments and logic based debate.
But why would they?
Because it would be one very interesting marketing point? For a browser that promotes itself as “focused on protecting users” and “not selling you out”, having a built-in (even if not enabled by default) ad-blocker would make a lot more sense than adding integration with Pocket.
rational arguments and logic based debate.
There is nothing logical about claiming “Firefox is a browser and browser need to render the page as is”. First, even that were true it does not require them to enable the ad-block by default. Second, this definition is contrived and seems picked up just to give a rationalization that gives them some moral ground about their omission. We could just as easily say something like “a web browser is the user agent to access the www and as such it can always modify the web page in favor of the user”. Why is that you choose to go for a definition that just happens to favor the business of their biggest source of revenue?
Orion does everything you’re asking for and has none of the baggage. Also, Safari? I mean it sucks, but it literally does what you say you want.
Both are for MacOS (I’m on Linux) and neither are open source, which is also something important to me.
Also, where do any of these provide “a system where users get a share of the revenue from the ad networks”?
You didn’t say that was a requirement. You said
All in all, I will stop using Brave in a heartbeat if there is anyone else providing any alternative with a slight chance to fight Surveillance capitalism
Both of those browsers accomplish that.
I despise argumentation-by-gotcha. if you need to be so pedantic, here is another qualifier to my choices: “these alternatives must not violate my basic freedoms, so anything closed source is out.”
Dude it’s not argumentation by gotcha, whatever the fuck that is. All I have to go on is what you said. I don’t know anything else about you, your one comment is all the context I get. What you said and what you clearly meant seem to be two different things.
Look at the very first item in the list of counterpoints in “my one comment”. Do Safari or Orion provide anything like that?
All in all, I will stop using Brave in a heartbeat if there is anyone else providing any alternative with a slight chance to fight Surveillance Capitalism.
Your first item in the list literally says “I like the idea” not “this is a requirement”. Then later on you literally say “all in all”, indicating that the only thing that matters to you is what you are about to say next. Maybe you speak English as a second language, but I literally only have what you wrote to go on. And what you wrote was clear that all that mattered was the final sentence
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It should’ve been as simple as stop using any chromium-based browser, but the CEO is also super bigoted, doing ad theft, and pushing crypto scams.
Even the crypto people don’t generally like him. He tried for Bitcoin integration first and got booed away before starting an ICO - nothing about this needed another coin. Pay-to-surf is a Turing test; his idea doesn’t even work in theory.
nothing about this needed another coin.
I really don’t get this take, at all. Payment is at the root of almost all problems with the modern Internet. Ads, censorship, mega-cooperation monopolies, etc. There are few problems that can’t be traced by to payment.
Crypto provides a means to fix that by making digital transactions easy, such that small creators can host their content and earn from their own stuff, without a middle man.
Does crypto fulfill that promise? Not quite, but it’s still better than nothing and is currently the only solution in sight (until we get an official digital currency from a country). And for whatever faults it might have, it sure beats crawling up Google’s bumhole in search for more ad money.
Crypto will never be a thing. We’ll be in a Star Trek style post-economy future where the concept of money is worthless before crypto will ever be a viable alternative to fiat currency, at least for anything aside from buying drugs online from dudes with roman statue avatars who talk like anime villains.
How will we coordinate on building that Star Trek future without it being censored?
another
Any of the existing cryptocurrencies can already handle payments. We don’t need yet another one for each use case of money.
Here’s my current problem: I use Firefox mainly, but I need a chromium browser for work occasionally. I feel like brave is better than chrome proper right? But the CEO is also terrible. Is there something I can use that’s chromium based (occasional usage) that is at least “the least bad” option?
If you’re on Mac I would suggest Arc browser
Safari might be worth a try
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If you need chromium, your best option is probably ungoogled-chromium which is basically just bare bones chrome with as much telemetry and tracking taken out as possible.
don’t forget the absence of easy to install addons! such a delight!
What, you don’t like to install the Web Store through a separate extension crx download, mess around in the settings, and enable dev mode? Wait til you hear what you have to do to get DRM working (Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, etc). Hint: It’s a separate zipped download of Widevine that you have to extract deep in the AppData folder, assuming you’re on Windows.
Yeah it takes a few extra steps to get extensions/chrome store stuff like that. Probably not the best option if you’re just trying to slap it on a work computer in 5 mins.
That’s where Firefox comes in!
True that’s what I use the vast majority of the time, but the OP specifically needed something chromium based.
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Vivaldi seems to be one of the least bad options.
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Vivaldi is proprietary, which makes security and privacy virtually impossible to guarantee
Cromite was suggested to me and it seems to work well: https://github.com/uazo/cromite
Ungoogled Chromium
While I agree with this, it’s kind of a pain in the ass if you use extensions. You have to roundabout install the Web Store through a crx download, tinkering in the settings and enabling dev mode, then use that extension to install other extensions. And may the cosmos grant you mercy if you need to use DRM for Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, etc, and have to download the Widevine DRM stuff separately and unzip it deep in the AppData folder.
It’s not impossible, but I guess I’m just saying that this probably isn’t going to be the answer for the everyday, average person.
OC said for occasional use, I do agree that it’s difficult to get it set up
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Use one of the “clean” versions of Chromium (not Chrome) from Woolyss.com
If you want updates to be handled automatically, you can use ChrLauncher
EDIT: I guess you can’t use the latter on OSX.
Why was appointing Eich as CEO so controversial? It’s because he donated $1,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, which was a proposed amendment to California’s state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Which is all the reason I need.
If he had changed his tune since then and done something to offset that, I might be willing to cut him some slack.
But, instead, he seems to have doubled down…
They had me at invented JavaScript
I use Brave as a secondary browser mostly for government websites because sometimes my firefox privacy settings breaks them and since many of them are poorly designed a technical issue over your account may result in hours on the phone to resolve.
Why not use chromium or one of the many other chrome forks? What about Brave works better?
Because it works, has okay configurations out of the box, and I just don’t really care enough about the points mentioned in this article to make the switch. I only use it for cases where I don’t expect privacy like government websites. As soon as you open an account there they got all your info anyway.
I’m pretty sure I’ve read this news a couple of times now the past week or weeks?
It’s only a matter of time until Eich sells all of Brave’s users down the river.
I use Brave as a secondary browser for PWAs on the desktop. I wish Firefox would support it again.
what do you need PWA support for? any clue why Mozilla reduced/removed support?
They dropped it during or right after (can’t remember for sure) their massive layoffs where they fired like half of their best employees for no reason, that’s also when Servo died! :(
There is a bugzilla entry that states the removal was due to too little user benefit for the development effort required. And since I don’t necessarily need this feature, I can understand they directed the resources to where they are needed more. Nevertheless, it would be nice to have.
The way I use it is primarily for applications that produce audio output, so I get appropriately named per-app volume sliders in pulseaudio/pipewire and not just a bunch of audio streams titled “Firefox”.
Thank you for the excellent answers to both of my questions! I understand your earlier comment perfectly now 👌
Now it makes sense why some of the Fox News-parroting, right wing people I know use Brave. I had no idea about what the author mentioned about the browser, I just know it is based on Chromium which I will not use. Thus, I am on Firefox. And for many reasons, including those the author laid out, I’m happy I chose wisely.
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if you useanything alphabet like chromium, then YOU are the problem.
Firefox ftw
I think it’s pretty unfair to put all of the blame on everyone who uses a chromium browser, considering that most people with a computer have no idea what the hell you are talking about.
Google Chrome is the single most popular web browser. Everyone’s work uses it, everyone’s school uses it, why would they possibly question it? And then they discover a new browser someone recommended - why would they look into “chromium” and what it all means? It’s just not reasonable to expect of nearly the entire population at this stage.
Take your anger out on the company and educate people. This is a problem of education, not selfishness (on the part of the user).
If you’ve found your way to the technology community on a federated lemmy instance, youre techy enough to take the blame for using chromium
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Bro, eat a snickers…
What do you mean by “on the backs of others”? Are you saying that then using chrome impacts others that don’t use chrome?
Please, be(e) nice when using Beehaw. Enjoy a three day vacation from here.
Dude, touch some grass. You’re being way too aggro at someone explaining why a person might use a particular browser
This is true, and there are people who are required to use it at work due to bad and outdated policies, but I do think it’s fair to say of anyone who does know better yet stubbornly persists in using Brave or Chrome.
I have seen people reply that they don’t care if they’re supporting an untrustworthy homophobic cryptobro because “everything is bad” or something like that. Those people are part of the problem. We’re spiraling toward a situation where internet is the new cable TV, under full control of two colossal corporate entities (Google and Microsoft), and I think it’s fair to expect more from those of us who do know better, but stubbornly persist for whatever reason.
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I agree, but I think it stems from the frustration we all feel that we’re losing our privacy and now we’re even at risk of losing the ability to choose our own services (with Google’s proposed DRM changes and the possibility of gutting certain services in Manifest v3).
It’s accurate that a very small slice of the pie are non-chromium users, and so I understand what you mean by “no one uses Firefox.” I’m not quite sure what to do to change that.
Also, I can understand why people get upset about this and might seem unhinged. For me, worst-case scenario is I simply no longer use the internet unless I’m required to for work; but for many people, the internet hosts their only comfortable spaces. For example, I’ve seen an interactive map where LGBT+ people post from where they live, and there are people living in the absolute middle of nowhere in rabidly conservative towns of less than 500. I can understand that the prospect of losing our privacy and the only safe spaces they’ve got must feel devastating.
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I totally get that, yeah. I understand.
I work for a large agency of the US government. We get the “choice” between chrome and edge.
I’ve worked for a similar employer! I’m supposed to use Chrome at my current employer, and it sucks. Zoom, too.
I’m sure part of it is that I’m just used to Firefox, but I don’t know how people choose to use Chrome. All of its “features” are creepy and stalkerish.
Right, but if I take your perfectly reasonable and mature position then I can’t prove to the web how edgy and superior I am!
Very strongly worded, but yes.
Brave have had a history of controversy since their inception. Every time something happens, the CEO went on a marketing campaign across social media and drummed up enough new users to drown it out. However the attitude of the business is clear: it would take a very small sack of money for Brave to sell out its users.
If you’re going to use a Chromium web browser, there are non-commercial open source projects that don’t have a history of shady shit. However Firefox forks are better.
Which forks do you suggest?
Not the OP, but here are some alternatives anyway.
Firefox:
Chrome:
Ok, but why? What’s wrong with Firefox and how do the forks address those points?
I posted the list of alternatives simply because OP asked for forks.
What’s wrong with Firefox
Me posting this list shouldn’t be an implication that I believe Firefox to be bad. I’m offering alternatives as the OP requests.
and how do the forks address those points?
Every one of the links I shared have detailed information about how their product mutates the original Firefox or Chromium browser. Do you really need me to copy-paste that information into a comment?
I use fennec from F-droid on mobile
Also Mull and Iceraven from F-Droid
Mullvad , LibreWolf and Tor.
Other people have given desktop examples. For Android, I use Mull, which also has a companion Android System Webview implementation (Chromium) called Mulch. These are baked into the DivestOS ROM, which itself is a fork of LineageOS.
Does it support extensions like Firefox?
Yes, full support for desktop Firefox extensions. I think it also comes with uBlock Origin by default.
Just saw it does support custom add-on collections like Firefox beta and nightly… I’m going to give it a try
Edit: it supports startpage as search engine out of the box as well!
All I can say is try DivestOS :)
My opinion: It doesn’t have full customisation (compared to eg. CRDroid) but it does at least have call recording and long press back button = kill app process, along with traffic monitors for the status bar. All regular phone calls have a banner at the top reminding you that they’re not secure (as opposed to E2E encrypted chat calls over the internet) and Location permission settings seem to be a bit more expansive than other ROMs.
Absoutely. I mostly use Firefox because I’m so familiar with it by now but the privacy is generally much better and it doesn’t have a massive monopoly on the web. I’m just a lot more comfortable with it.
When I have to, I use ungoogled-chromium on desktop and Bromite on mobile. I recommend those to anyone familiar with Chrome.
STOP USING JAVACRIPT
There is nothing wrong with Brave. It’s a great browser. I like the cryptocurrency aspect of it.
There is plenty wrong with Brave, the business.
Brave, the browser, is very useful in a practical sense. It has some nice features out of the box, and if you disable the naughty out of the box features it’s pretty decent. However, you have to trust that each update from the developer is good, and past experience raises very serious questions with this particular business.
Maybe you might be seeing some returns from the cryptocurrency. My undestanding is that users have lost far more than they’ve gained - and that’s before you actually look into the true value of what users are sacrificing in exchange for their tokens. Meanwhile, Brave are pulling a steady revenue making money from their users, milking them just so.
Crypto is a scam and you’re being duped.
“Crytpto” is not a scam. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the future of money.
There are a lot of shitcoins out there, but don’t let them fool you into staying poor. Fiat money is dying.
Crypto is a dead end at best, a scam at worst. I mined for years and can’t believe I drank the koolaid tbh
All money is fiat money. It has an agreed upon value outside of its intrinsic worth. If you want to get away from fiat money you have to go back to barter.
That’s not true. Fiat money is money created and managed by a government. We need separation of State and Money.
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
noun Legal tender, especially paper currency, authorized by a government but not based on or convertible into gold or silver.from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun economics Money that is given legal value or made legal tender for money debts by government fiat.from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun money that the government declares to be legal tender although it cannot be converted into standard speciyou should read “what is money” by mitchel innes. he shows very well that pretty much any money ever has been fiat money
Fiat money via WIkipedia:
Fiat money can be: * Any money that is not backed by a commodity. * Money declared by a person, institution or government to be legal tender,[5] meaning that it must be accepted in payment of a debt in specific circumstances.[6] * State-issued money which is neither convertible through a central bank to anything else nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard.[7] * Money used because of government decree.[2] * An otherwise non-valuable object that serves as a medium of exchange[8] (also known as fiduciary money).[9]Doesn’t have to come from a government. Crypto is three of these. The article even starts with “Fiat money is a type of currency that is not backed by a commodity, such as gold or silver.” Nothing about government there either.
at this point we are just arguing over semantics.
The differences and implications are important, and it’s hard to make a convincing argument if your base premise is incorrect.
So you prefer your currency to backed by the full faith and credit of… nobody? And you think you’re not being duped. Hilarious.
It’s backed by math. There is a fixed amount of Bitcoin. We have never had the concept of “digital scarcity” before. There are thousands of computers running independently that are following a consensus algorithm. it’s an open, permisionless, trustless system that anyone on the planet can be part of.
You would rather have money controlled by corrupt governments? Hilarious.
I think crypto could have its place as the cash of the internet. No one can watch your transaction, but if the other person takes your money and runs you are shit outta luck. No way to revert transactions, perfect for money laundering, but also anonymous, which can be a plus.
But all this makes it completely unsuitable in everyday use.
Also: yes, there is a fixed amount of Bitcoin. But you know what governments all over the world did when Inflation was sky high? Change the interest rates to change the amount of money that goes into the economy to make everyday items affordable again.
And for Bitcoin in particular, if everyone actually uses it as intended the artificial limit of the transaction rate would only allow you to perform one transaction every two yearsor something like that.
digital scarcity
ipv4 addresses. Also bitcoin is the worst example here, as it’s just an asset. It’s not bearable as real money, you can’t trust its always changing value. It’s also a victim of constant market manipulation. XMR on the other hand is a relatively stable currency.
Bitcoin is also a privacy and ecological nightmare.
In general it’s also really fun that you can lose all your money without doing anything wrong.There is a fixed amount of Bitcoin.
That is part of the problem. As long as the economy grows, then Bitcoin is deflationary. This encourages people who have it to hoard it, rather than to move it around and drive the economy. It is almost perfectly designed to be used as a speculative investment rather than an actual day-to-day currency.
Having a fixed pool of money to represent your economy only makes sense if the total value of the economy will never change. This doesn’t happen in the real world. Populations grow, new technologies add value, and poverty generally goes down. This is all fairly simple math.
Ah, I see, you think that because you can mint Schmecklebux or whatever and use it as a medium of exchange, you’re somehow exempt from the laws of whatever country you’re in when the trade goes down? Tell me, does your flag have a fringe on it?
It’s backed by math.
No, it’s backed by the power grid. Shut off the power, and you have nothing.
Also trying to create scarcity in a realm where none actually exists shows how greedy and scammy it is.
It’s worse than any other fiat currency. There’s literally nothing behind it.
“What if Chromium had its own fake money?”
Money is a social construct that only has value because people agree it has value. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the best forms of money humans have ever invented. Once we have privacy at the base layer, fiat money is dead.
This is the wild west of innovation. Scammers like money, so of course they will be attracted to cyrptocurrency. They are also very attracted to fiat currency.
All of the references on that page have to do with random NFT projects and shitcoins.
You should try to separate the concept of “Crypto” from the concept of base layer blockchain protocols that actually have value.
Ha. Hu ha ha. Ha. Hahaha.
Money has value because it is an efficient medium to facilitate trade. Specific forms of money have value because of what backs it and it acts as a medium for trade. And yeah I’m sure what society really values will at some point be a money that limits the ability to deal with economic crises. Or that slowly disappears, because privacy Bob didn’t believe in banks but his SSD failed, or because Crypto Karen forgot her password. Or a hacker loots an exchange.
I mean, it’s not like those are fundamental problems that could bring an economy to it’s knees right? But hey, at least the money has privacy (it won’t) and we don’t have to worry about inflation (deflation on the other hand…).
Cryptocurrency is the most efficient money we have. It doesn’t require any middle man bankers. Sure, hackers can hack and loot exchanges, but right now we have the government looting us with inflation.
The problems you mentioned are being worked on. There are ways to backup and restore your wallet that will become easy.
The global economy doesn’t need to only rely on Bitcoin, so the argument that we have to worry about deflation is just wrong.
Cryptocurrency is the most efficient money we have
You are either misinformed or brainwashed.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitcoin-carbon-footprint-electricity.html
you like baked in ads, crypto, falsely using people to promote your browser… oof
The browser works well. I am very much into crytpocurrency. I think Bitcoin and Ethereum are the future of money.
You don’t need to turn on ads in Brave. It blocks ads really well.
Pwrsonally I don’t use Brave due to it being chromium, outside of that itis a good browser. If they were a firefox fork I would absolutely use them.
I love firefox. It’s my main browser for everything. When I need a chrome based browser for testing things, Brave is my go to browser.
Yepp, I started just using vanilla chromium though instead, as that offers a barebones option to guarantee I don’t need to mess around to test something works.
Brave has built in ad-blocking that is good to test against. One of our tools wasn’t able to submit new issues to jira because atlassian.net was being blocked by the browser.
