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.

  • kadu@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    and as a web developer

    If you’re already techy, why simply not install degoogled Chromium and two or three extensions? Why bother with pre-packaged versions of the browser that will inevitably mean: waiting before upstream improvements reach your version, depending on the quality and exceptions made by the built in blocker, trying to argue the added data collection is worth it, and so on.

    Just grab Chromium, add uBlock origin, your favorite private DNS and that’s it.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      why simply not install degoogled Chromium

      Because it contributes to Google’s hegemony over web standards, and that’s bad for the Internet.

      • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I don’t see how it contributes any more than installing the Chromium-based Brave or Vivaldi, which are the comparisons being made in this specific thread.

      • kadu@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We are way past the point individual action would ever make Chromium not the default web standard.

        Also, we are talking about Degoogled Chromium vs Chromium-based pre-packaged browser. So your point makes no sense.