this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
1587 points (91.5% liked)

Privacy

32424 readers
309 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
1587
Please, do not use Brave. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

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.

Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.

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 a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.

Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don't mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

making (presumably) thousands of dollars off their users

I agree with this post completely but for some reason you finishing with this makes me chuckle.

Oh no! Thousands! They might be able to pay rent for a month or two!

I'm just being cheeky, and while its true what they did was scummy, it also feels like a really.... smallish amount of money?

If we're literally just talking thousands, and not tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands.

But yeah, fuck Brave.

Firefox gang and Hardened Firefox gang here to stay.

Mozilla's got its own problems but that's a story for another day.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well thousands could mean hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands. I kept it small because I can't really give a real number.

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

That's fair, but in that case you might just say "they likely profited handsomely off this venture" or something similar, because if you reach for dollar amounts like that, it can kind of undermine your point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well the issue I linked to said "making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money." and I didn't want to just copy it word-for-word. I don't think it hurt my point that much, but it definitely could have been worded better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Oh for sure, it didn't undermine your point excessively, just a little, I was mostly just being cheeky, just how it read to me. As I said, I agree with all the things you're saying. Cheers!