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Brave, the false sensation of privacy

ebin.city

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Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#11

Post by gjsman-1000 »

I find Brave Rewards very egregious. You get lots of BAT and the marketing copy hypes it up immensely without mentioning, anywhere, that you need to provide your SSN and Driver's License to a third-party (Uphold) if you actually, you know, want to cash out.

This seems particularly irritating because, let's say you set your browser to show you the max amount of ads for a while. You saved up for a few months, decided you had enough, tried to cash out only to discover that slap in your face that they never mentioned. Of course this benefits them, but the fact that the browser puts you in the situation of giving up your privacy to receive money is ridiculous for a "privacy" browser.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#12

Post by loloquwowndueo »

auslegung wrote: post #2

I’ve been using Brave to watch YouTube videos in incognito mode ever since 1Blocker on Safari stopped blocking YouTube ads. This article brings up some good points, and I want to support Firefox more anyway, so I need to see how Firefox handles YouTube ads.

I use ublock origin on Firefox and it seems to properly block all YouTube ads. As with YouTube-dl it’s probably a bit of an arms race, so if your tool of choice stops working maybe wait for the next update and they’re likely to get it fixed / right.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#13

Post by tapoxi »

I don't like the crypto nonsense of Brave, and while I like Firefox in theory, its performance leaves a lot to be desired and they don't seem to know who their user base is. Microsoft Edge got a decent native vertical tab solution before Firefox did! Edge!

I wish some nonprofit would make a Chromium browser with sane defaults and take my donations. That's all I need.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#14

Post by gjsman-1000 »

tapoxi wrote: post #13

I don't like the crypto nonsense of Brave, and while I like Firefox in theory, its performance leaves a lot to be desired and they don't seem to know who their user base is. Microsoft Edge got a decent native vertical tab solution before Firefox did! Edge! I wish some nonprofit would make a Chromium browser with sane defaults and take my donations. That's all I need.

Does Vivaldi count?

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#15

Post by miedpo »

So I feel as if the author is missing the point.

Of course brave markets to you with ads. That's the entire point of the web browser. To ad-block, but then to replace it with a suitable privacy protecting alternative to the point that Brave (and everyone else) has no idea which ads you were served and what your browsing history is. The entire point is to mot just be an ad blocker, but to be private, and to provide a workable alternative to the ads that track us on websites.

Furthermore... brave lists on their website what they collect in analytics programs. And... it's not much. They also send the answers in what they call 'low resolution', which basically means multiple choice with ranges making it a lot harder to identify you compared to a specific number. Sure, it's not no tracking at all, but it's probably pretty close to the least you can get to serve relevant ads while serving a general populous.

It is true that it'd be nice if they forked off Chromium at some point so they are less in Google's hands. We can all use more of that.

So, at least for me, this kinda falls on deaf ears. It's missing the point as to why Brave does what it does.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#16

Post by wmitty »

> Their adblocker is just a fork of uBlock Origin,

This does not appear to be true. Here is the github repo for their open source adblock engine written in rust:

https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust

Here is a (somewhat dated) article describing it by the authors:

https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/

> Google will take decisions that benefit their advertisement business, like making impossible to use adblockers on any Chromium based browser.

Because the brave adblocker is integrated directly into the browser (ie. not an extension) the Manifest V3 limitations don't apply.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#17

Post by k33l0r »

tapoxi wrote: post #13

I don't like the crypto nonsense of Brave, and while I like Firefox in theory, its performance leaves a lot to be desired and they don't seem to know who their user base is. Microsoft Edge got a decent native vertical tab solution before Firefox did! Edge! I wish some nonprofit would make a Chromium browser with sane defaults and take my donations. That's all I need.

I tried out Edge for about 15 minutes but had to bail because of the amount of Bing and MSN nonsense embedded in the browser…

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#18

Post by gman83 »

I always find it odd that we worry so much about how much our browsers are tracking us, but almost nothing about what our ISPs are doing. Every time I've looked into it, it seems much worse. As far as I can tell, ISPs are legally allowed to sell your browsing history to third parties: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/for-sale-your-pr...

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#19

Post by fbcpck »

tapoxi wrote: post #13

I don't like the crypto nonsense of Brave, and while I like Firefox in theory, its performance leaves a lot to be desired and they don't seem to know who their user base is. Microsoft Edge got a decent native vertical tab solution before Firefox did! Edge! I wish some nonprofit would make a Chromium browser with sane defaults and take my donations. That's all I need.

> its performance leaves a lot to be desired

I'm not sure what you're talking about; this may be the case several times in the past, but you should check again because this is a thing that constantly changes. Firefox performance today doesn't really leave a lot to be desired IMO

> Microsoft Edge got a decent native vertical tab solution before Firefox did! Edge!

Tree Style Tabs has been around since like… 2007?. Or does the "native" part somehow make it a whole lot better?

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#20

Post by seibelj »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #11

I find Brave Rewards very egregious. You get lots of BAT and the marketing copy hypes it up immensely without mentioning, anywhere, that you need to provide your SSN and Driver's License to a third-party (Uphold) if you actually, you know, want to cash out. This seems particularly irritating because, let's say you set your browser to show you the max amount of ads for a while. You saved up for a few months, decided y…

I think your anger is misplaced - you should be angry at government who requires Brave (and eBay, and Etsy, and any company that is paying out money to people) to require this. If this wasn’t legally required they (and every other company) wouldn’t do it.
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