zlacker

It's always surprising to me when I hear people using the brave browser... It's by a company that initially tried to replace their blocked ads with their own "safe and non-intrusive" ads as far as I remember, until they backpaddled because of the outrage.

It's also a for-profit company and you're not the customer, as you're not paying them money.

I'd be way more worried how they're using the data they're collecting on you vs Google or MS

>>411111+(OP)
People still like to defend Brave when it gets caught on shady things over and over again. I guess there are no too many other options. For some people it is already too difficult to install uBlock or know its existence.

>>411111+(OP)
We have these cropping up like ants.

Mullvad

Brave

Opera

Vivaldi

Microsoft

Heck zoho is in on a browser now

What net gain does each of these companies provide over skinning chromium that isn't in Firefox?

Last time I asked brave fanboys why they don't redskin Firefox and the response was "Firefox is pita to build" all the while we have projects like palemoon and waterfox that are hobby projects. If they can work with firefox, so could someone else but no

>>411111+(OP)
> I'd be way more worried how they're using the data they're collecting on you vs Google or MS

Why? They don't even have access to my emails and texts like those other companies do. I also don't see the names of their top executives and founders showing up in articles about connections to Jeffrey Epstein every few months.

>>2Gkash+K5
opera offers a free vpn and builtin adblocker

i would use it daily if the UI/UX was better, or more similar to firefox

>>411111+(OP)
You are a victim of the Mandella effect. There never was anything related to replacing ads in-page, yet if you ask all detractors what they don't like about it, that's the first point they bring up.

>>2Gkash+K5
Have you worked in any project that required a forked browser?

I did. When we folded less than two years later, one of the CTOs biggest stated regrets was that he went with Firefox instead of Chromium. The extension story in Firefox was easily 10x harder. Interfacing with the OS as well. Getting dbus services to work was a fool's errand.

>>rglull+w8
Cool so your company folded but as I said, palemoon and waterfox seem to be running just fine.

Thunderbird also works.

I happen to own a brwoser extension and have both chromium and Firefox extensions. I kinda know myself.

>>rglull+l7
I think some initial news articles claimed this and everyone went with it. Which is basically how it worked, replacing ads, but in a different way, and actually more annoying.. block everyone else's ads...and have their own little popup ads, and if you enabled that, you'd get paid in BAT tokens per view too.

>>rglull+l7
As a detractor and therefore a part of the set "all detractors", I do not believe this. I just don't buy their shady marketing and try not to support engine monoculture.

>>rglull+l7
They don't replace ads in-page, but they do something very very similar.

They block the in-page ads and instead provide their own ads through popup notifications.

So they are replacing advertisements on websites.

>>nicce+82
It's because a lot of people are bought into BAT (Brave's cryptocurrency) and have a strong financial incentive to shill Brave.

>>2Gkash+K9
> palemoon and waterfox seem to be running just fine.

GNU/Hurd is also a very interesting alternative OS, the design is a lot more elegant than GNU/Linux, it's still under active development and it has a surprising number of active users.

It's still a very bad idea to build the foundation of your tech stack on it.

>>rglull+l7
Seems you're wrong. Here's an archive link to Braves page in '16 were their planned add replacement is explained:

https://archive.md/W0k4j

>>lalala+5k
Ah that makes sense why brave fans post a bit like cryptobros.

>>2Gkash+K5
Brave literally started on Gecko.

>>soundn+cm
Is brave currently forking chromium or not?

By your logic, opera was having their own engine till 2013. So what?

>>tokai+Ik
One minor note: they made a slight change in plans from that initial design.

How it works now is that when Brave replaces an ad, they put the new ad in a popup, not in-page

>>lalala+Sj
Every time this comes up, the argument is the same. People always forget:

- The ad blocker works separately from their own ad service.

- Their own ads are opt-in.

- People receive 70% of the revenue from the ads they see.

- The ads from Brave do not track you and whatever personalisation happens in-device, no data is mined.

So, no. They are not "replacing" anything. They are not stealing anyone's revenue (and no matter how much Linus from LTT argues, he is not entitled to any revenue just because I watched any of his videos) and Brave's own ads are from deals that they closed themselves and a essentially fraud-proof compared with whatever payouts are given by largest ad networks.

In other words, they are just offering something that happens to be infinitely more user-focused than the status quo. Every attempt at framing this as unethical came from an uninformed or biased source.

>>throwa+w6
If am not wrong, Opera is owned by some Chinese company and they are known for doing some really shady stuff [0][1] in African countries.

[0] https://blogs.opera.com/africa/2022/05/free-data-with-opera-...

[1] https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/01/21/opera-predatory-loa...

>>lalala+rn
Correct. I've been using Brave since their very first versions on the desktop, and there never was any in-page ad insertion.

The one type of in-page modification they used to do is that they would add a "tip" button to the content creator of some social networks like Twitter or reddit. That had nothing to do with "replacing ads" though.

> replaces an ad, they put the new ad in a popup

Incorrect. There is no 1:1 replacement. You as the user can define how often you want to receive notifications, and even then the notifications only come when you are switching context between any action. It won't interrupt you while you are watching a video, working on google doc spreadsheet or reading though HN.

>>lalala+rn
"replaces an ad, they put the new ad"

That's not how it works. If you turn on Brave ads, they show up every once in a while, completely independently of webpage ads. And they work whether your ad blocker is on or off.

>>rglull+zy
You're responding to a comment that gave you a link to their inital plan, which was literally replacing the ads.

click on it, your horizon might be broadened by the added knowledge.

>>Timber+Xv
True, right now lots of folks from the original Opera team (including CEO) work on Vivaldi. If one day Mozilla forces me to ditch Firefox, I will probably switch to this browser.

>>lalala+5k
BAT gives like no money, especially after the crypto crash. Its far more likely its just the browser wars of old, but with even less options to choose from people are going to be more adamant their choice is the best.

>>411111+Cz
That was their original plan, yes.

lalaland1125 is making claims about what they actually did, and those claims are not correct.

>>lalala+5k
I do not use BAT or any crypto. Brave just works, and it blocks ads automatically when I tell friends to install it on their computers.

I used to recommend Firefox, but Mozilla has totally jumped the shark (privacy violations [multiple], wastes too much money, blocks APIs that are useful with no real security risks while approving APIs with little use that do have security risks, etc, very user hostile).

Chromium is obviously not trustworthy at this point, let alone Chrome. So that leaves like, Safari and Opera?

Brendan Eich is the CEO of Brave, and I trust him. Mozilla was good until he was ousted for political reasons.

>>boondo+XB
> Chromium is obviously not trustworthy at this point, let alone Chrome. So that leaves like, Safari and Opera

Brave is like 99% of Chromium + uBlock…

>>nicce+ZG
Right, I should have said "the main Chromium branch is obviously not trustworthy". It is possible to remove the untrustworthy bits, however, and there are a variety of de-googled Chromium builds.

Chromium is a great browser, unfortunately the official branch has been poisoned by Google.

>>2Gkash+K5
Mullvad is actually a Firefox fork and it directly uses Tor's privacy enhancements[0] to Firefox for a private web browsing experience. As a matter of fact, it really looks like Tor Browser but with a VPN baked in instead of Tor.

[0] https://mullvad.net/en/browser

>>411111+(OP)
There are multiple ways you can pay Brave.

https://brave.com/firewall-vpn/ https://account.brave.com/?intent=checkout&product=search https://brave.com/search/api/

>>2Gkash+K5
Uh. "cropping up like ants" is definitely a take. Not a good one, as most the browsers here had their first release date of 199*. I will list them out.

Mullvad, is the Tor Browser with the Mullvad VPN included, and released 2023. However, the Tor Browser, which it effectively is, is from 2002.

Brave, the one in this article, is from 2019.

Opera is from 1994.

Vivaldi is from 2015, and is developed by Opera's previous dev-team after a bad sale to a Chinese company.

Microsoft's first browser, Internet Explorer, is from 1995.

I can not comment about Zoho's browser, as i know little about it.