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Goodbye Brave

arunmozhi.in

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Re: Goodbye Brave

#111

Post by iJohnDoe »

All these posts mentioning Firefox.

If anyone has read HN for any length of time, then you’ll know all the shady stuff Mozilla/Firefox has done. And not just hand waving “crypto” stuff that Brave gets accused of doing, but truly slimeball stuff. Firefox and Normandy, when the certificate expired, it also disabled NoScript in the Tor browser which disabled some security. Might not be a coincidence in the attempt to expose some targets. Using Tor. Their horrible start page that pushes political agendas, and gets reimplemented even when you have specified your tab and start page. Pushing their VPN when you launch Firefox. The list goes on and on that is pretty embarrassing, that none of the other browsers even come close to that level of behavior.

Re: Goodbye Brave

#112

Post by cycomanic »

i13e wrote: post #34
sombremesa wrote: post #4

Weird that this person doesn’t even consider Firefox, the only browser that lets you have Adblock and other addons on mobile (but not on iOS, sadly).

I find it strange that on threads about Brave people promote Firefox and vice versa, whether it's a positive or negative article. Free software isn't a competition and if it were Mozilla lost to Chromium a long time ago.

Free software is not a competition, the fight for the freedom of the web certainly is. The mozilla guys are the ones consistently being on the users side and are often pushing back on proposals from Google and others (e.g. FLOC) in the various standard committees. Without a significant marketshare (it's already bad enough as is) their voice will just be ignored.

Re: Goodbye Brave

#113

Post by ACow_Adonis »

whakim wrote: post #35
cmeacham98 wrote: post #6

Hi author, if you're here on HN please consider ditching sketchy extensions like Ghostery (sells your user data) and Adblock+ (participates in paid bypass of "acceptable ads" program) for the open-source and user-focused uBlock Origin ( https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock ). Also, if you haven't tried Firefox since the quantum days come back and give it another try.

I think it's at least worth having the discussion about "acceptable ads". While reasonable people can disagree, I personally think that unobtrusive advertising that doesn't harvest your data should be a valid business model.

isn't that for the consumer of the data to decide?

in fact, I'll go so far as to say that's exactly what most proper ad-blockers are: user implemented acceptable ads. if the user wants to view ads, they have it in their power to whitelist a site or domain.

perhaps a business could be made where you provide a list of acceptable ads and people can pay money to view them. on the one hand, I think that's a more reasonable business model than the one you've suggested, as at least it aligns the user's interest with their own explicit actions.

of course, there is the little problem that such a business model would probably never work, because fundamentally, most people don't want ads. they tolerate them because they don't know they could have a choice otherwise...

Re: Goodbye Brave

#114

Post by cycomanic »

schleck8 wrote: post #5

I think this is due to Brave proxying some Google requests through their own servers, because otherwise the same people would complain that a Google server is being contacted. > I am thinking of going back to [Chromium] with the usual extensions like Ghostery, AdBlock+ > [Brave's] amazing ad-blocking and tracker protection If you just need an adblocker, sure. At this point everone should have heard of uBlock Origin.

Serious question, why not Firefox? If open source and freedom of the web is important using Firefox is the best option.

Re: Goodbye Brave

#115

Post by rglullis »

whakim wrote: post #35
cmeacham98 wrote: post #6

Hi author, if you're here on HN please consider ditching sketchy extensions like Ghostery (sells your user data) and Adblock+ (participates in paid bypass of "acceptable ads" program) for the open-source and user-focused uBlock Origin ( https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock ). Also, if you haven't tried Firefox since the quantum days come back and give it another try.

I think it's at least worth having the discussion about "acceptable ads". While reasonable people can disagree, I personally think that unobtrusive advertising that doesn't harvest your data should be a valid business model.

"Acceptable ads" still track you. Now it's only a racket run by the current owners of AdBlock.

Re: Goodbye Brave

#116

Post by [deleted] »

roenxi wrote: post #76
ahelwer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't pick out the issue with large corporations sinking billions of dollars into trying to manipulate your behavior?

No, I can't. There are many things that influence my behaviour and that is low down on the list of influences that worry me. Even Hacker News is probably a worse influence than the average ad. What do you think is the problem here? And it isn't billions, you need to normalise by audience size. Any company spending billions to influence my behaviour is bankrupt, I don't have enough money for them to make that back.

[deleted]

Re: Goodbye Brave

#117

Post by ACow_Adonis »

WoahNoun wrote: post #58
roenxi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a surprise to me, but there is a group of people - possibly native to tech circles, possibly a broader group - who appear to be genuinely angry about the existence of advertising as a thing. Let alone if they personally have to view ads. It is a bit confusing to be honest. There seems to be something very upsetting happening but exactly what is causing that response I can't pick out.

Yea this confuses me too. Many advertisements have made me aware of things that I would be interested in but didn't know about. Marketing and advertising can be valuable to those on the receiving end.

If people genuinely thought this, there could be a market where people pay money to be advertised to or targeted towards.

In many ways this is what trade magazines are/were, but the absence of a general market for such generalised interest is so absent its the kind of witness evidence that is deafening in its silence.

Re: Goodbye Brave

#118

Post by [deleted] »

roenxi wrote: post #76
ahelwer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't pick out the issue with large corporations sinking billions of dollars into trying to manipulate your behavior?

No, I can't. There are many things that influence my behaviour and that is low down on the list of influences that worry me. Even Hacker News is probably a worse influence than the average ad. What do you think is the problem here? And it isn't billions, you need to normalise by audience size. Any company spending billions to influence my behaviour is bankrupt, I don't have enough money for them to make that back.

[deleted]

Re: Goodbye Brave

#119

Post by leodriesch »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #106
weq wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to firefox after NEVER using it before when google started forcefully logging me in. Honestly, i havnt missed it all. Firefox on mobile is awesome - plugins work! Plus, no longer does google know where i am anymore. Its ability to track and suggest ads to me is pathetic.

> plugins work! Only certain ones from their recommended program. Add-on support on mobile is still very limited from what it could be.

Not certain with this, but it might be a limitation of the Play Store rules. You are not allowed to publish some sort of App Store on the Play Store, which the Firefox Extension Store would kind of be.

Re: Goodbye Brave

#120

Post by codezero »

newscracker wrote: post #70

Emphasis mine in the below quote: > "Arunmozhi is a freelance programmer and an open-source enthusiast." I'm surprised, shocked and dumfounded that Firefox is not even mentioned while Vivaldi and Chromium are being considered. For someone who put up with Brave for years and its other issues, it really seems strange that Firefox is not in consideration.

This seems like a No True Scotsman fallacy [0]. Being an open source enthusiast is a huge spectrum and if someone doesn’t check a box that you consider important it doesn’t signal anything special. I think asking about the omission makes sense, but it has nothing to do with a passing tag line that means almost anything to anyone.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

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