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Just use Firefox.
Firefox + uBlock Origin + arkenfox user.js gives you privacy, security and anti-tracking. The only way to fly IMO.
White list firewall. Because this is the real reason everyone has a right to ad block. Ads are hidden links to other websites. It’s like walking through a gauntlet of pick pockets bribing the credit card company just to make it to the checkout at your local grocery store, or some asshole you invite into your home that goes to the bathroom, opens a window, and lets a dozen random people in your home if they pay a dollar for the access. The entire system is based on stalking people. It is criminal.
And a Pi Hole for good measure.
A dns blocker cannot do anything more than ublock. It is nice for other apps though.
A DNS blocker is great for other devices on your network!
Librewolf
No android version = no buy
Mull for android
What does Arkenfox do? I’ll definitely add it if it’s beneficial.
It changes many default Firefox preferences in
about:configto be as private as possible. The main selling point is resist fingerprinting (RFP). I highly suggest reading the wiki. It can break some websites, but you can configure it to fit your needs.
With brave I never see any pc or YouTube ads. With Firefox even with ublock origin I can’t get rid of those damn ads. That’s what keeps me on brave
Doesn’t Firefox do telemetry and other shady shit out of the box? Ofc you can turn it off but I don’t get the fanaticism over this browser.
Every now and then, you’ll see some journalist uncovering the great revelation that Mozilla is doing unthinkable things, but I have never these stories actually being relevant, if you do more research on the topic.
Some examples:
- Mozilla use Google Analytics! → Yes, but they have a special contract with Google to protect user data: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14
- Mozilla uses Google Safebrowsing! → Yes, but they have technical measures in place to limit user identification (on top of Google stating that they do not use Google Safebrowsing data for tracking): https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/how-safe-browsing-works-in-firefox/
- Mozilla has privacy-invading ads on the new-tab-page! → Again, they have technical measures in place to avoid privacy issues: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy#w_what-data-is-shared
And telemetry by itself is not evil either. It depends entirely on what data is actually being sent. You can look at what Mozilla sends by typing “about:telemetry” into the URL bar. In my opinion, that is perfectly fine.
Ultimately, though, they enjoy so much trust, because they have no profit motive. The Mozilla Foundation is legally a non-profit and the Mozilla Corporation is a 100% subsidiary of the Foundation, so cannot pay out profits to anyone either.
Any ‘evil’ shit they do to make money, they do it to pay wages and to invest further into Firefox & their other projects.
You can criticize that the CEO takes a salary she can’t possibly spend (yet is below industry-standard, to my knowledge). And you can argue whether they should be taking so much money from Google rather than other sources.
But all in all, that still leaves them far above companies who need to exploit users as much as justifiable, to make the maximum amount of profit.
Firefox and mozilla aren’t your friend.
They like to play the “user and privacy friendly” company. Meanwhile they are hemoraging users, and laying off staff needed to actually build a great browser.
Mozilla ceo pay increase + layoffs in 2020:
In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated “I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That’s too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to.”
In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, her salary had risen to over $3 million. In the same year the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic.
I dont know why anyone would leave chrome and land on something like brave.
If youre ditching chrome, which you should, go to an actual different browser and use Firefox.
Streaming services seem to lower bitrate when I’m using Firefox vs Brave, so Brave is my go to for streaming.
I use Firefox for everything else.
Chromium has metric shit tons of work done that seems to perform great. What I would love to see is for Mozilla to fork Chromium, staff it with enough people to maintain it, add/remove the features they feel are appropriate/inappropriate, and thus reuse the tons of free work Google and others have already done. As a software engineer, I don’t buy the argument that it’s easier to correctly implement every new web feature anew than maintaining a fork. Every large org that ships anything based on Android for example maintains a fork of an even bigger codebase. It’s not as complicated as people make it out to be. It’s not a new problem and there are strategies to manage it. If Mozilla does this, they’ll be able to play an active role in steering by far the biggest rendering engine’s direction, instead of playing opposition with no stake in it. Now downvote away! 😄
The more market share chrome based browsers have, the easier it is for google to inflict their agenda for the internet on everyone. If firefox didnt exist, every web developer would be optimizing their sites only for chrome, and responding quickly to any change google wants to make.
Personal anecdote:
When I initially decided to drop Chrome, I moved to Brave because - as a chromium-based browser - it supported the same set of extensions I’d grown accustomed to.
That being said, the crypto stuff weirded me out enough that, once I’d weaned myself off the extensions, I switched to Firefox.
What extensions does chrome have which are useful that Firefox doesn’t?
My only recurring issue with Firefox, which may have been fixed I dunno, is it for some reason it “isn’t officially supported” or whatever exact wording to use hardware security keys (like yubikey, which I use on every account that allows it). It’s only certain websites that don’t want to work though. Like google, Microsoft and many others were fine but I think paypal didn’t want to work properly but it does work on Edge, Chrome, probably Brave. Overall annoying as fuck at times but I deal with it to be out of Google’s-world
Damn didnt know it was that bad.
They also lack any documentation about how to use their policies on Linux (where you can disable all the bloat). But it should be doable, I will give it another try.
Is the browser even FOSS? Can you compile a working version yourself?
I do that with Firefox and it is really cool.
Why was appointing Eich as CEO so controversial? It’s because he donated $1,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, which was a proposed amendment to California’s state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Besides this I cannot find another good reason not to use brave. Nobody point to a specific line of code that ruins privacy, not enough reasons.
So you’ve read all the way up to that line and closed the article didn’t you ?
There were 3 points:
-
CEO is a dick: not enough of a reason
-
Swapping ads: I have ads disabled anyways so what do I care. If I did care I wouldn’t block ads in the first place
3.1. Promoting/friendships with crypto: ¯_(ツ)_/¯
3.2. Privacy leak: it happens ¯_(ツ)_/¯
3.3. Partnering with weird people: ¯_(ツ)_/¯
3.4. IS AN ADVERTISING PLATFORM: ¯_(ツ)_/¯
-
They block the website’s own ads, but inject their own instead. So the user still gets ads, but the profits go to Brave. I know that if the site’s owner is aware of that and goes through the process of registering with Brave they get a share of the profits, but this should really be opt-in. As it is, the whole scheme is shady as fuck.
Because Firefox is better.
I don’t care what the CEO of a corporation is doing because most of them are conservative pieces of shit.
I agree that you shouldn’t use Brave browser cause of things they’ve done in the past but, oh Jesus, that article is so stupid it reminds me the Hogwarts Legacy boycott.
The ceo is a bigoted asshole, Brave is chromium, it was initially funded by Peter Thiel and they’re literally just trying to make their own adsense network.
The self-proclaimed privacy focused browser is tracking your browsing and want to serve you personalized ads, and I think they want to use that tracking data for AI training as well, meaning other people can potentially access it.
And lets not forget about their crypto currency that you can earn by turning on special ads. Which they seemingly unironically called it “Basic Attent Tokens”…
TL;DR: The company is basically a sham company trying to usher in a dystopia. Where you’ll get paid for staring at ads, while having all your data stolen and sold back to you.
I see no reason to use any other browser than Firefox and maybe Librewolf.
I am using Brave on iOS mainly because of its superb YouTube support - It has a built in ad block, can download videos offline and play minimized. Is there any way I can achieve this with any other browser? I would switch immediately.
Firefox on desktop is awesome. Firefox on mobile is painful.
If you put aside the crypto crap, Brave is an okay browser. Sometimes I use it for web development. But I don’t like the direction the company is heading towards.
Most of the time I use Firefox with Extensions and Librewolf for everything. Firefox has been my go-to for years and I sure hope it stays that way.
The fact that their founder wants to ban gay marriage is enough reason for me to avoid it like the plague.
He fucking what?
He made a thousand dollar donation in support of proposition 8, a constitutional amendment in California that strips gay people of the right to marry. He then proceeded to argue that such a donation does not make him a bigot or an enemy of LGBTQ+ people, because he’s a delusional piece of filth.
This effectively prevented gay people from marrying in California from 2008 to 2013 until the fascists that supported it were finally done trying to argue how this doesn’t violate the US constitution.
So yeah, may he, his browser, and any pathethic excuse that pretends to be human being who supported this abomination rot in the deepest depths forever.
Yeah, fuck this guy.
First, I have been online for almost 30 years. I’ve led an open source project for 14 years. I speak regularly at conferences around the world, and socialize with members of the Mozilla, JavaScript, and other web developer communities. I challenge anyone to cite an incident where I displayed hatred, or ever treated someone less than respectfully because of group affinity or individual identity.
So I hid my hatred from everyone for 30 years successfully. Now that everyone finds out that I donated to a cause to strip them of rights everyone wants to say I’m hateful? Give me one example where I displayed hatred…how about the time you donated to strip people of their rights? That might be a big one for me.
If software works I’ll use it.
I prefer firefox but I’m not going to tell someone not to use a piece of software because the creator is a retard.
Learn to be angry at the right things and grow up. Jesus fucking christ people are so god damn stupid now days.
“Waahh I don’t like this guys political position so I’m going to try to defame all his work and the work of hundreds of others because of one guys personal opinion”
If this had said something like ‘v3 manifest will be rolled out and they’re going to be anti-anonymity’ then I’d be salty because that would mean the software is becoming less useful.
Anyone who thinks like this should stop using the internet because, spoiler, the entire backbone of the internet has been contributed to by everyone of every faith, creed and philosophy which means thousands of people you ‘hate’ have contributed to your literal bitching about those very people online.
Get over yourselves. Actual fucking children.
This author is a moron.
Use firefox (or librefox).
I thought it was nice that maybe a private browser would be mainstream but then on second thought… Something icky must be going on if it’s mainstream, i mean the whole crypto part was an instant warning for me. Proud Librewolf user over here!!!
So the CEO is a raging alt-righter. Glad I never used his product then.
So, not trying to sympathize with Eich here, where do you get “alt-right” from?
Being against equal rights for gay/bi people is considered pretty right wing these days mate
And this is what’s wrong with politics now
I’m all for gay rights and advocate for same sex marriage. But if he doesn’t then he’s now boxed in with the skinhead kill-all-the-immigrants crowd? Where’s the nuance?
That said, I don’t really trust Brave the product. It’s pushing its privacy agenda a little too hard for me to trust it.
Just use Firefox if you want privacy
Where was the nuance in Proposition 8?
Brave is a marching band of red flags. It claims privacy while injecting ads, affiliate codes and crypto into the browser. It’s kind of sad to see someone like Brendan Eich who should know better turn to the dark side and pretend this is all fine. It isn’t.
Best advice I could give for anyone who wants privacy is use Firefox or a branch of it. Firefox is out of the box the most privacy conscious mainstream browser and add-ons make it more so. If you want absolute privacy you could even use a derivative like Tor Browser.
These people talking as if not all the crypto bloat would be opt in lol. It just take 30 seconds or even less to turn off everything of that.
Brave is more secure than Firefox out of the box.
I have absolutely no idea how Brave got the reputation it has. It’s business model is disgusting and extortionate, it’s like paying for warez. Been clear as day since day one.
it’s got crypto.
It’s got electrolytes!
It’s what plants crave!
A big reason to avoid it!
urghhhhh but firefox just doesn’t perform as well. i tried, i really did. i found a 15 year old (!!) bug affecting svg drawing performance that was fucking up a page i was working on, i’m not imagining it.
I’m not sure if it’s the same one but i just found a similar bug with a five year old comment saying i guess we’re not fixing it anytime soon… https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=483868
I do have it installed and check in occasionally but it feels like a downgrade when i try to use it as a daily driver.
is there any way to get a functional de-googled chromium build with settings sync across devices?
I use Firefox on PC and I’m happy with it there. But on my phone Firefox isn’t great. Scrolling and zooming is pretty choppy, not excessively but it shouldn’t be choppy at all.
Edit: after posting this I tried using Firefox again for a while. I take back the “excessively” part. It is distractingly slow, there’s no reason for it to be that bad
yeah I really notice the difference. I wish I didn’t, I’d rather use Firefox, but it feels slower and I want my settings syncing between devices
