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The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

davidgerard.co.uk

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Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#141

Post by DangerousPie »

doc_gunthrop wrote: post #60
meerita wrote: post #15

Being a happy Firefox user and watching all the browser drama from the backyard. I still don't understand why people uses Chrome or Chrome variants claiming privacy things.

With Chrome taking the lion's share of the browser user market, you end up with a lot of sites that work well in Chrome but not so well with other browsers. So even if you use Firefox as your main driver, you'll still want to have a Chromium-based browser as a backup. Now the problem for Android users is that, in light of this news, there's now one less (seemingly) viable option if you're using Google Play services.…

> With Chrome taking the lion's share of the browser user market, you end up with a lot of sites that work well in Chrome but not so well with other browsers.

TBH the only sites where I have noticed this are Google sites like Hangouts and YouTube. But even those work fine, they just seem to use quite a lot more CPU than I think they should. I do have Chrome as a backup in case something doesn't work, but I can't remember the last time I had to use that.

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#142

Post by luxurytent »

FillardMillmore wrote: post #26

I am an enthusiastic Brave user - but seeing stories like these make me wonder if I'd be better off configuring Firefox to be more secure/private and using that. As a privacy and transparency advocate, it disappoints me to see Brave fail to pass the test, especially considering that privacy and transparency are supposed to be the browser's MO.

Not too difficult to configure Firefox imo. My recommendations on plugins:

* HTTPS Everywhere: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywh... * DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-fo... * uBlock Origin Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#143

Post by DangerousPie »

andai wrote: post #96
alexruf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Not sure what else needs to happen to encourage Chromium users to finally give Firefox a try.

Latency. Just tested with a "hello world" page (18ms ping). Chrome takes 102-200ms to render the page, Firefox takes 150-400ms. 1.5 to 2x slower -- and that's after all the performance upgrades they've done with Rust and Quantum. Network inspector says Firefox is spending 150-270ms "blocked" before it even initiates the connection. On Chrome the block is 3-18ms (15-50x (!!) faster). There's also UI lag. When I press…

> Chrome takes 102-200ms to render the page, Firefox takes 150-400ms. 1.5 to 2x slower -- and that's after all the performance upgrades they've done with Rust and Quantum.

How did you actually measure this? I wonder whether these small timing differences may just be differences in how the respective dev tools report the timing info.

FWIW I also don't think the relative difference will be this large for bigger sites - I'd be very surprised if a site that takes 1s to load in Chrome would take 1.5-2s in Firefox.

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#144

Post by egypturnash »

From the same browser that brought you “Hey we’ll just start taking donations for everyone whose ads we block, and we won’t put any effort into contacting anyone to tell them about this - and if they do find out, the process to start getting those donations is a giant pain in the ass!”

I’m tempted to add some browser sniffing to my site just so I can block this scammy thing. I don’t even have ads on my comics any more, just a Patreon. And I fully expect at this point that anyone clicking my Patreon link on Brave would get redirected to some weird site they built that skims my Patreon posts, makes you pay in crypto, and only pays me 5¢ out of every dollar you think you’re paying me.

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#145

Post by cmdshiftf4 »

tygrak wrote: post #33
alexruf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Not sure what else needs to happen to encourage Chromium users to finally give Firefox a try.

I still don't understand why everyone moved away from Firefox back in the day. Is it really just the fact that Google put up so many ads everywhere?

I can’t speak for the users of other OS, but for a long time Firefox was essentially unusable for me on OSX.

I have always liked Mozilla though so kept trying builds over time, eventually leading up to Quantum the nightlies became better and better and it was easy to switch back at that point.

What a shame it happened in the first place though.

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#146

Post by dbeley »

molticrystal wrote: post #57
phnofive wrote: post #5

> However, Eich is very sorry that Brave got caught — again — and something will be changed in some manner to stop this behaviour, or at least obscure it. No surprise there. > There is no good reason to use Brave. Use Chromium — the open-source core of Chrome — with the uBlock Origin ad blocker [...] or use Firefox with uBlock Origin — ‘cos it blocks more ads than the Chromium framework will let anything block. Is th…

How is the android scene for Chromium based browsers that either have extension support or adblockers? I am aware only of Yandex & Kiwi as Chromium browsers that support extensions that allow you to install an adblocker. So perhaps Brave is trying to integrate itself there somehow by having it built in. Anybody know a better breakdown than this for mobile browser market share? https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-marke…

Try Firefox Preview

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#148

Post by egypturnash »

throw2308230492 wrote: post #129

This article is highly inflammatory. These are not random websites they are hijacking for affiliate money like the article purports. These are all advertisers / partners that appear on the new tab landing page when you sign up for Brave rewards...This is affiliate tracking for advertisements baked into the browser itself not some nefarious scheme to skim off someones else's traffic.

This is not on the new tab page, this is hijacking links typed directly into the address bar. “If you’re using Brave and try to go to the Binance crypto exchange, Brave hijacks the Binance link you typed in, and autofills with its own affiliate code.”

There’s an animated screen capture of this happening here: https://twitter.com/cryptonator1337/status/12692014801055784...

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#149

Post by chipotle_coyote »

davidgerard wrote: post #132

OP here. Brendan Eich is now publicly calling me a liar, though he's inexplicably failed to detail the claimed lies. I've asked him to do so. https://web.archive.org/web/20200606232839/https://twitter.c...

A few months back typographer/programmer/lawyer/acerbic writer Matthew Butterick wrote an, ah, let's say pointed critique called "The Cowardice of Brave," in which he argued that Brave is neither innovative nor particularly honest: "It's just substituting one set of ads for another... for publishers, it's the same old shakedown, but run by Brave instead of Google or Facebook; for users, Brave is still going to collect data about you." It's worth a read, even if one ultimately disagrees with it.

https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html

Anyway, I bring it up because I linked to it from my Twitter and got a cranky response from Brendan Eich about how Butterick was wrong. Eich's response to Butterick was, like the one to you, not really a rebuttal of any of the critiques beyond "this is all wrong and inaccurate." I looked back at Eich's Twitter feed and discovered he was clearly searching for links to Butterick's article and tweeting links to his non-response.

And sure, responding to criticism is normal, but that "must find all who referenced this critique and CORRECT THEM" approach is... just... it is sure a thing.

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#150

Post by chipotle_coyote »

egypturnash wrote: post #144

From the same browser that brought you “Hey we’ll just start taking donations for everyone whose ads we block, and we won’t put any effort into contacting anyone to tell them about this - and if they do find out, the process to start getting those donations is a giant pain in the ass!” I’m tempted to add some browser sniffing to my site just so I can block this scammy thing. I don’t even have ads on my comics any mor…

Nothing I've read about Brave has ever made me want to use it instead of any other browser with a basic ad blocker, and this whole "we will save the web by substituting other people's ads with our own and making them all party to our business model whether they want to be or not, also something something cryptocurrency woo" shtick was the main reason. It continues to be the main reason.
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