That’s why i use Firefox.
Buy brave token. It price should go up
firefox is so laggy nowadays. the scrolling is also weird.
Respectfully disagree, I have no complains about the browser itself. just that lazy web devs don’t test on ff, or actually, only on chrome.
Firefox is now faster than Chrome as of the latest benchmarks.
Upgrade to a computer built in the 2010s maybe?
Core2duo with Nvidia 9400 does very smooth scrolling once you use Wayland. Yes, Linux of course.
i wish i could use linux on this pc.
Business issue or hardware? If it is hardware there is always help, e.g. high level kernel devs cared about my HP boot issue or NetBSD.
Eh… I have absolutely NO PROBLEMS on Windows, Linux and MacOS. You should know that some extensions can cause problems. Try a new profile.
I had been pretty happy to find brave search as an alternative search engine, but this is kinda making me rethink using their products… :(
It’d be cool if someone could build an open source extension for Firefox that takes their idea of using browsers as a distributed crawler, but while making it clear that a website is being crawled and not selling the data for AI training, but honestly thats just me daydreaming. I’d love an open and private search engine that isn’t just a meta search :(
Edit:
Mojeek is UK based, open and private and actually have their own index, they aren’t just a meta search, but they dont have much in the way of any kind of summary or highlighted answers if you’re looking more for an answer to a question than the list of websites
Yep doesn’t come up as much when people mention privacy, but makes decent privacy claims, and aims to build a more fairly monetized search engine by giving 90% of money from ads to content creators (no idea how that will eventually work, but its a compelling concept)
Quant seems to have decent results from my initial couple searches, but like mojeek doesn’t seem have any kind of summary or answers function.
I think I’ll give all three a try each time I have a difficult search task and see if any of them might be worth switching to. Right now I often have to switch over to google even from brave when I’m having a hard time finding something.
Don’t let the Firefox fanboys cloud your judgement with their constant shilling. Most of the claims in the article have been retracted after Brave responded, and the issue didn’t affect users anyway.
Also, Brave is a completely independent search engine now, which is why they have web crawlers like the guy in the article is complaining about. And speaking of a distributed crawler, Brave Browser has an opt-in feature for that where sites you visit will be indexed by Brave Search.
Brave Search is the only real contender to be an actual competitor for Google Search, but these Firefox fanatics have such a hate boner for Brave they just want to see it fail. All of their arguments against Brave really aren’t serious and don’t affect users at all.
I mean personally for myself, was gonna use Firefox regardless- I’d rather support the open source option and web engine that isn’t chromium based; the question for me was whether to use brave search, and if brave search was providing rights to web content to those who’d like to use it for AI training. I had generally liked brave search okay as my google replacement (though I will say I tired quant looking for a brave alternative because of this article, and qwant is pretty good too! I’ve been impressed!)
Not disclosing sites are being crawled is iffy, but I genuinely do understand the justification given in the email reply that the article updated to add- as long as they’re not selling rights to other people’s content for AI training.
I’m a little out of my depth here from a technical perspective so that probably doesn’t help, but honestly between the comment provided by brave and the original authors interpretation of the email response they received, the whole situation feels pretty muddy. The author and brave seem to be kind of fundamentally at odds about what they’re describing brave as doing, so it’s a little hard to gauge. Even if brave is accurately describing the product they provide (“it’s an api you can make calls to to get ai outputs based on web content”) which doesn’t seem totally consistent with some of the descriptions on their api products page, it still feels somewhat ambiguous because of the fact that websites can’t opt out of their content being provided through an api, whether it’s been filtered through a LLM or not. It all seems very, very mudy; hard to make heads or tails of. I’ll be curious to see any additional updates to the article.
Most of the claims in the article have been retracted after Brave responded
That’s not true, the author pretty explicitly maintained the most important claims…
and the issue didn’t affect users anyway.
So…? You can do unethical things without it affecting the user…? There’s an argument to be had around whether it’s unethical, but it not affecting the user is frankly kinda irrelevant.
Also, Brave is a completely independent search engine now
Indeed! That’s why I was using them. If folks are looking for a brave alternative with their own index though, I’d say qwant has seemed very competitive, and it like their interface even better, though they do lack the helpful ai summary tool- perhaps both for better and worse.
which is why they have web crawlers like the guy in the article is complaining about.
That’s definitely not what he was complaining about. He was complaining about how they’re crawling the web. Tons of people have crawlers, but most do a better job of respecting website consent than brave seems to (even if brave may have understandable reasons, which they might), and that’s especially important given the broader context of the story.
Brave Browser has an opt-in feature for that where sites you visit will be indexed by Brave Search.
Yes, that’s exactly what I was referring to… It’s a cool feature, and I wish Firefox would implement it and maybe use the results to make an open source web index that any alternative search engines could use to supplement their own indexes in order to support competition with bing and google.
Brave Search is the only real contender to be an actual competitor for Google Search
That’s an entirely baseless assertion, I literally listed 3 alternatives to brave, all of which have their own index (and I’m pretty sure there are others, but I may be mistaken), and of those 3 I’d say qwant provides very competitive search results with brave, maybe even better. I plan to keep testing them but its cool for there to be more than one decent private search engine that isn’t a meta search!
All of their arguments against Brave really aren’t serious and don’t affect users at all.
That’s the second time you make this argument and it still doesn’t matter. If were to steal the entirety of other people’s content and copy it 1-1 without attribution that doesn’t affect users either, but that sure as hell doesn’t mean its okay. And I already explained that it genuinely is ambiguous whether what brave is doing is okay- if they’re selling people’s content to train large language models, that’s definitely serious, and for right now it does remain kinda ambiguous whether they’re doing that or not
I get that you’re frustrated and feel like people are biased against something you like, but getting angry, making poor arguments to defend a corporation that doesn’t care about any of us, and calling everyone who says they prefer not to support Brave is more shill-like behavior than the folks you’re frustrated with, it might be worth dialing it back a bit.
Edit: adjusted wording for accuracy, and some of my original wording felt a little more passive aggressive than it need end to be (and some of it kinda still is but I’m tired and don’t wanna edit more 😅 apologies for tone that comes across as somewhat hostile)
just a few counter points:
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brave is open source too
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AI copyright precident has not been set by courts, there is no precident for any of this. i don’t see why this is such a big deal you’d stop using their search.
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As a pirate, I think copyright law is bullshit anyway and holds us back as a species. Most copyright law is outdated and stunts creativity and innovation
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most people only care if it affects them. which this does not. it is relevant because that is how people operate if they’re not virtue signaling
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there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. every large organization does some shady shit. Brave in comparison to most hasn’t done anything to warrant such a huge campaign against them. maybe some criticism, sure.
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I meant brave is the only good alternative to Google. all the others have terrible results. Brave is almost as good as google
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and I’m not defending a corporation, I am just tired of Firefox fans jumping on any small thing and making a mountain out of a molehill to try and save their dying browser market share
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also no idea why you think I’m angry about this. I’m just annoyed at the constant Firefox circlejerk/astroturfing campaign
brave browser is open source too
I actually didn’t realize that, thank you for pointing that out to me. I do generally feel better about supporting Mozilla’s web engine since otherwise chromium has a monopoly and google has generally been shitty with the power that has granted them in the market, and Mozilla has generally done a great job of championing a free, open, and inter-compatible internet, but that’s a personal choice on my part; chromium will be better suited to the needs of plenty of users 🤷🏻
AI copyright precident has not been set by courts, there is no precident for any of this. i don’t see why this is such a big deal you’d stop using their search.
I don’t really agree that because something isn’t illegal its therefore okay. Especially when its because laws haven’t has a chance to catch up. But regardless, laws don’t determine whether something is good or right.
As a pirate, I think copyright law is bullshit anyway and holds us back as a species. Most copyright law is outdated and stunts creativity and innovation
I generally agree, I think modern copyright law is broken as all fuck and only exists to further the interests of massive companies at the expense of everyone else. But I do think its important for people who do creative labor to be able to profit off of doing so, which requires some amount of protection since intellectual labor can be copied without doing the labor again. Coming up with a novel idea or writing an article requires creative labor, but copying them does not, as opposed to like manufacturing a physical product, which generally requires the same effort and resources to reproduce (all other factors being equal). But modern interpretation of intellectual property law is complete and utter bullshit, I 100% agree. That being said, if brave is selling people’s content that required intellectual labor to produce, personally I find that pretty unequivocally wrong, the question is whether that’s the actually the case here, and the nature of AI, plus the ambiguity around the specifics of this situation, really muddy the water.
most people only care if it affects them. which this does not. it is relevant because that is how people operate if they’re not virtue signaling
I absolutely disagree that anyone who cares about issues that don’t directly affect them is virtue signalling- to me the term ‘virtue signaling’ intrinsically implies that someone’s care about an issue is disingenuous or insincere. And I also think that only caring about issues that directly affect you is a horrible way to go through life. I’m getting the impression that we may have somewhat fundamentally different worldviews on this subject; to me, caring about things that are harmful or damaging to others even if they don’t affect me directly is a moral imperative unless I wish to loose any shred of respect I may have for myself. I think we could go back and forth on whether most people do or don’t actually care about issues that don’t directly affect them, but I am generally of the mind that people should. If you look at this differently I understand, and am more than happy to chalk this up to a difference in worldviews.
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. every large organization does some shady shit. Brave in comparison to most hasn’t done anything to warrant such a huge campaign against them. maybe some criticism, sure.
I don’t think that just because nothing can be perfect that one option can’t be less bad than another. That being said, I’m really not super in the loop on any controversies that have happened with Brave though, I honestly have no idea whether they’ve been involved in past wrongdoing or not. I’ve definitely seen bad press they’ve gotten, and I’d never really enjoyed how closely integrated crypto stuff is with their browser (I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with crypto, it’s just been involved in so many scams it makes me warry at this point, especially if it’s showing up somewhere that doesn’t feel like it belongs like a browser) but that was never a big enough deal that I felt it should affect whether I use something of theirs like a search engine. If this turns out to be nothing then I’ll likely just decide between qwant and brave based on preference, I’m curious to continue comparing them and see how they stack up against each other.
I meant brave is the only good alternative to Google. all the others have terrible results. Brave is almost as good as google
That’s fair, that’s what I understood you to mean, I just don’t know that I agree it’s the only meaningful competitor. Though I do certainly agree there aren’t many, and brave is among the best options. Like I said, I’m genuinely really curious to continue comparing brave, qwant, and probably also mojeek though so far it hasn’t impressed me as much. I think there may have been others I considered before going with Brave I could continue comparing, but I’d need to find them again. Techlore on YouTube said he ended up picking brave for search so when I got tired of duckduckgo, I kinda just ended up using Brave.
and I’m not defending a corporation, I am just tired of Firefox fans jumping on any small thing to try and save their dying browser market share
I can understand that frustration. Personally I’m super happy with Firefox and am glad to support it, but I think the open source world in general can kinda just “be like that” sometimes when they feel its better to support one project or another. I often agree with them on what I’d like to support, but I do think there are helpful and unhelpful ways to express one’s opionons on that kinda subject, and people often express them in a way that just kinda sucjs sucks. I think its kinda just an eventuality that discourse ends up that way, given the open source community’s particular cultural mix of genuine care about supporting good projects, varrying levels of “moral superiority” mindset about said projects they support, and the echo chamber aspect of any online community with lots of people sounding off about what they think and why. It really can get frustrating, especially if you’re supporting a project that isn’t what the general majority has chosen to support.
I appreciate your willingness to engage in sincere discussion with me :)
Thanks for the understanding and reasonable reply. I also appreciate the thoughtful discussion.
I don’t even dislike Firefox, I have it installed on my PC and my phone alongside Brave. And I don’t think Brave is completely undeserving of criticism either, just not to the extent that it is portrayed at large.
Of course. Always nice to have real conversation with someone online 😊
And get what you’re saying, I’ll be keeping what you’ve had to say in mind as I see more of that discussion about brave. Its not the right fit for me, but I’m not going to begrudge anyone making the choice that’s right for them.
Hope you have a great day!
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I switched to Duck Duck Go and Firefox and have never looked back.
Brave always seemed kinda scummy to me, like they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.
didn’t ddg have it’s own problems a while ago?
They sold data to Microsoft, iirc, but that was the Android browser, not the search engine (something people forget to mention)
Unfortunately, DuckDuckGo is just Bing with additional privacy these days. Effectively is is what Startpage is for Google.
Brave Search is one of the only independent search indexes available these days. Others include Mojeek and Qwant, but neither are as good as Brave Search.
I don’t really wanna use a meta search engine that just pulls their results from bing or google though. That doesn’t seem like a sustainable way to build an actual alternative, since eventually google and Microsoft may just choose to change their api terms of service. I’d much prefer to support something independent if I can
Thats no reason for you to switch, just an explanation for why I went with brave. I switched to duckduckgo first and found the results weren’t great for me, so I changed to brave anf have found the results better, and they have their own index rather than taking other people’s search results, but instead they’re taking other people’s web content and selling rights to it 🙃. The company seems a little… Lacking :(
Didn’t they do some shady stuff before too? I was pretty confused why some people still recommended it
The browser is highly performant, contains (nearly) all necessary (usability and privacy) features and is suitable for beginners.
The search has a nice interface that is usable without javascript, has an onion site and should be low on telemetry. It also (in my opinion) has the best search results after Google. And these search results are Brave’s own results, not just resold Bing results; so they’re actually bringing real competition to the search engine market.
I know people advertise a lot of good things for Brave. But I’ve never seen them. It’s installed in my system, it’s what I spin up to enter shady websites (don’t ask), because it works well with ad based hidden link providers. But it’s not that performant, vanilla Brave is way slower than riced up Firefox on my system. It shows sponsored ads, it straight tells you that it might collect data, it’s bloated with buttons and crypto bullshit. I just don’t see what any of the shills are talking about, and it sells your activity on the browser to AI trainers because their search engine is just that, a meta search engine crawler, sorry but it’s just like any other browser.
happy firefox user for over 5 years now, glad i will never use chromium trash like this
It started with widgets showing crypto currency markets.
I immediately noped the hell off it.
As I user, how does this impact me?
FF add blockers kept failing me, got sick of it and switches brave a while ago, use it on my phone and tablet too. It works for me. Because Google won’t sell my data, I’m not that worried about what brave is doing.
I never understood why anyone would use Brave, the payouts are small, the utility of the crypto is zero, and watching/seeing adverts is a nightmare. I honestly believe that blocking all advertising and sending a small monetary amount to someone providing value is a better way of supporting the people you care about.
I don’t think people use Brave for any crypto stuff all that much. I use it to block ads.
I used it for the perceived level of privacy they pretended to offer. Guess I’m switching to Firefox tomorrow.
Yeah can I get adblock on iPhone with Firefox?
Like a lot of things, it was good at first. Then they made it shitty.
I had small ads that I barely noticed, no need for any crypto account, and it gave me 5~10€/month to automatically send to Wikipedia (or any website I felt like paying).
Now that crypto account is mandatory it’s just useless…
I still use it on a few devices but mainly because I’m too lazy to replace it by something else.
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I use Firefox over Brave simply because I have much more trust that Mozilla won’t suddenly turn into dicks.
(Also because Firefox is awesome now, and because competition in the browser world is a good thing, but it’s mainly the probably-not-being-dicks thing)
Firefox has been super good for me as well. I switched from Chrome a few years ago and initially had the occasional issue, but thinking about it now I can’t recall the last time I had an issue with Firefox that forced me to use another browser.
Firefox. The slowest browser, the least compatible browser, the most annoying when it comes to bugs and issues (Firefox snap anyone?)
I just cannot disagree more. You seriously have to gaslight yourself into liking it.
What a strange take. I switched from Opera to Firefox like 15+ years ago (whenever Firefox added extensions, so I could use Mouse Gestures (why I was on Opera in the first place))
I never have issues with compatibility or speed. I don’t use Google products so I don’t have Chrome to compare it to, but it’s certainly as fast as/faster an IE/Edge.
Firefox has been my browser for eons, but I admit I think Edge is faster. It doesn’t matter to me in the end though.
Edge is Chrome.
*Chromium, which is not the same. But I get your point.
Yes, there is a difference, but it’s minor and big stuff, like adblocking not working as well, are true of Chrome and Chromium.
Wow, that is quite a presumption there. Every couple years I try Chrome again and I am done with it in a few hours. The thing is archaic and its interface uncustomizable. And the only reason it could maybe have more compatibility is because of its market share and peoples’ bias towards it. There was once a time over ten years ago when it was good, but it’s not anymore. Not to mention the privacy issues.
Firefox has been my browser for 10 years or longer.
I got downvoted to shit on Reddit for saying stuff like this (on the weirdly frequent posts about how great Brave is)
Ig I’ve found my people now
Not that Mozilla has been 100% great either. Remember the Mr. Robot debacle?
If not: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robot-arg-plugin-firefox-looking-glass
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How so? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything negative against the company, but I’d love to know if I missed something.
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You’re going to need to cite some sources for these fairly wild claims.
You can notice it as well, since the browser is very subpar when compared to Chromium
This is the most egregious lie of the bunch. Firefox is extremely close in terms of features, performance, usability, HTML/JS/CSS support, developer tools, etc. It’s privacy tools are, if anything, significantly better. And once Manifest v2 extensions stop being supported by Chrome (which is coming next year) it’ll have significantly better adblocker support.
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HUGE lie. Firefox is so freaking slow compared to basically anything else.
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lmao still thinking moz corporation is your friend
I made roughly $1200 using Brave at work.
It is optional to open the ad or not and you do get paid half what you would even if you don’t view the ad. I turned on max number of adds per hour and clicked no most of the time. Took me maybe 10 seconds per hour while I was getting paid to work already. Sure the per ad money got poor over time, but at first it wasn’t so bad at first and I was making a couple bucks per day. Converted that to Bitcoin every month and that has nearly doubled in price. So if I converted to USD right now I’m at $1200 for a grand total of under 9 hours worth of work over 1.5 years. So my hourly pay plus clicking no to the ad I made $166 a hour on average.
My company’s software stopped working with Brave about half a year ago and now I use Firefox.
I might be wrong, as I’ve never used Brave, but isn’t it the case that they remove ads from the actual content owners and replace them with their own ads, basically monetizing other people’s content? I block all ads in my browser, don’t get me wrong, but what Brave is doing seems a bit shady to me.
No. The ads from brave itself are only on new tabs and notifications.
Converted that to Bitcoin
How does that work? I read that their BAT couldn’t be converted to real money?
Edit: well, I read you could only pay it out to other creators. So I guess you were paying yourself somehow huh? Wicked smaht.
the payouts
wait, what? I was just looking for a search engine that does least tracking and brave was recommended a few times, so I use that, but have never seen any ads or been offered any payout? Am I doing it wrong? (for the record, if they’d offered me payment to watch ads I would have never even installed it in the first place, and will now be removing it as my default on firefox)
no, you are right. there is a lot of talk about the brave browser in this thread, a chromium based ad blocking browser by the brave company that gives you their own crypto in return for unobtrusive ads on the start page, which can then be used to donate to content creators on the internet (i think) or be cashed in. you and the op are talking about brave search, a search engine created by the same company
I’ve been using brave browser for years and, while I vaguely know what you’re talking about, it’s not something I’ve ever even looked at.
The defining feature of Brave for me has always been the built-in ad blocking.
So glad Puffin killed itself… Why does everything good have to go away?
One of the founders, Brendan Eich, donated his money to take away the equal right for same-sex couples to marry in California (Prop 8). He never acknowledge that it was mistake, so I can only assume that he truly wants to see the marriages of same-sex couples erased, which is quite a hateful thing to desire.
Can anyone recommend a good alternative that works well under Linux and block ads and trackers well? In particular YouTube ads?
Libre Wolf with uBlock preinstalled could be what you need.
uBlock Origin for blocking advertisements everywhere, works with YouTube too. SponsorBlock for automatically skipping parts of YouTube videos with sponsored advertising.
Firefox with uBlock Origin has been working well for me, for ads at least. I haven’t looked too much into blocking trackers but I think Firefox has some ability to do that
Firefox with uBlock Origin ✔
What about a search engine though?
DuckDuckGo
I used to use it but switched to brave after reading that DDG lied about tracking.
Any others? (and not the one that requires a subscription, thanks)Startpage supposedly uses Google’s search engine without tracking your ip.
Not heard of them, will check it out, thanks!
E: a quick look tells me it doesn’t work with VPN, so that’s a no from me…
DDG lied about tracking
FWIW though, I think that agreement no longer applies. I getchu though, on the principle of the matter, assuming they actually lied about it. E.g., if they said, “we don’t let any tracking through,” without mentioning their deal with Microsoft. If they just said, “we block most trackers,” and let people hype it up in their heads though, that’s kind of a gray area IMHO.
tbf I didn’t know about the agreement no longer being relevant, but yeah, like you say it’s a grey area and weakens the trust at least some.
If I don’t find any better alternative I guess its back to the duck I go…I guess its back to the duck I go…
That’s the reality of the situation unfortunately. No infallible heroes, just fifty shades of grey.
Yeah it has some and if it doesnt work Extensions can help out. As it uses still the v2 manifest. It is just straight up better to use firefox ( or their “children” like librefox ( a bit hardend firefox browser ). It doesnt depending on chromium, its not a big Corporate that is super greedy.
This is the golden combo in my opinion. uBlock Origin is an excellent adblocker and it works best with Firefox. The built-in privacy features of Firefox are also decent, even when left at the default settings.
… Looks like it’s time to switch browsers again. Anyone got any suggestions? Preferably a Chromium-based privacy-focused browser without any crypto-related bells and whistles. And it has to be able to sync between Android and desktop.
TL;DR: Brave Software has their HQ in California and they are they’re stealing data and selling it and giving “rights” to other people. Lawsuits are probably already being filed by multiple companies come monday.
And it’s not in an “our AI ‘read’ the page and is making their own”, it’s straight up taking entire sentences and almost entire paragraphs from places like wikipedia and selling them as original data without attribution(which is required by the license used by wikimedia/pedia)
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I was a big Brave supporter back in 2019-2020 when it seemed to have a lot of momentum behind it. But they squandered any goodwill they had with their crypto add-ons and rewards
Damnit Brave.
I guess I gotta go figure out how to turn off ads in DDG for Android.
What’s wrong with Firefox + uBlock Origin?
I use ublock on my desktop (with a Chromium-based brow’ though) and like it. But on my phone, I just prefer to have a self-contained solution, instead of having to install other stuff like plugins.
Plus, if I can use the DDG browser, I can use the same app to generate duck emails from my phone as well, which might come in handy.
Their crypto autofill scandal is all one needs to know about this company. If you’re marketing your browser as privacy focused and then pull stunts like that you lose all credibility in my eyes. Forever.
Firefox or go bust
Not to mention the interesting bits of info you can find just by looking into the CEO of Brave, Brendan Eich. Plenty of reasons with him alone for someone to avoid the browser and search engine.
The big one that he likes to keep buried is that he donated money to an anti-gay marriage proposition in California back in 2011, which is what caused some of the pressure for him to step down as Mozilla CEO back in 2014 after being it for a few weeks.
What does his political donations have to do with brave’s misconduct here?
It has nothing to do with it, but I was commenting on a parent level comment to add more info about the stunts they pull that reduce their credibility, making it relevant to the parent comment, but not the overall post.
Also, he invented JavaScript. He got on my shitlist permanently for that alone.
… i mean, i see how javascript can be abused. But the web without javascript would be (and was) a very terrible experience, not everyone’s dying to go back to the 90’s
I don’t understand this crypto auto fill thing. Can you explain it in simple terms? What is it. Why is it bad?
Brave had a thing where if you went to website.com, they would add /ref=brave to the URL so they get a kickback as if you clicked on their referral link.
Sneaky? Sure. A huge scandal? I don’t think so. No user data was being collected, no privacy was being violated. If I was the company doing the referral system I’d be mad, but as a user, it does not affect me at all.
Firefox fanatics just need something to point to and say “brave bad firefox good” and that is the worst thing they can find on Brave. It’s all browser wars to them, like iPhone vs Android or Xbox vs Playstation.
The article in this post also does not affect users in anyway, and has been updated after Brave responded, with most of the worst claims of the article now retracted.
Stealing referral URLs is lowest kind of spyware/malware tactics. Topmoxie which was another for of advanced java app coming with Limewire did it.
Thank you.
They replaced links to crypto exhange Binance with their own affiliate links that they profit from without the users concent. It’s bad because they did it behind their user’s backs hoping no one would notice. Makes me question what else they’re not telling me about.
Ok.
