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Stop using Brave Browser
(www.spacebar.news)
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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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I love Brave, use it daily, and this article didn't convince me at all. Vaguely motioning at the founder's ancient political donations or the optional crypto features, doesn't make a strong case.
You see, when someone is known to make bad choices it makes sense to approach what they do with apprehension. This guy not only has a history of bad choices, he's also the CEO.
You're free to do as you like of course, but I'd say it's hardly fair to say the article is unconvincing.
Depends. As long as he doesn't rub it in my face by putting it into the browser, I don't care much. So I understand people who are pissed off because crypto is being rubbed in your face with Brave. But since I can disable that (and disabling it syncs to my other devices), I am also fine with that.
In return I get a browser where I like the sync model, with integrated Tor private browsing mode, and which is based on Chromium (which has sadly still the best dev tools, IMO).
Even MS Edge has some nice features and I used it for a while (I very much like that you can specify in which browser profile you want to open external links in). But they started to put more and more of their Microsoft bullshit into it with each version trying to sell me on all the different fucked up services they offer. Saying "no" once or twice: no problem. Saying "no" every fucking time they update the browser: fuck off.
Given their crypto functionality uses a third party which has been found to skirt the legal system I'd be a lot more concerned about this integration even if I don't intend to use it.
Keep in mind the stuff you read about is only what has been surfaced so far. Who knows what skeletons are still hiding?
Personally, I don't see any point risking it when there are perfectly viable alternatives such as Firefox. Granted the same guy infected Mozilla, but they stood up and ousted him so credit where credit is due.
Go and have a look? https://github.com/brave/brave-browser
My argument is that Brave is a Chromium browser with questionable business goals, but it is also the most private and secure, open-source, mainstream* Chromium browser. These keywords cannot be said about Vivaldi, Ungoogled Chromium and many other projects unfortunately.
That said, I primarily use Vivaldi because of its customizability and added features, something Firefox seems to reduce with every new version.
Being open-source doesn't automatically make you secure or reputable. Especially considering the open-source ecosystem in particular is a big target for exploitation right now. And auditing a software project of this size by its source code alone is no small feat.
"Mainstream chromium browser" is doing most if not all the heavy lifting there. Fair enough if that's what you're after, but mixing "private and secure, open-source" in feels disingenuous.
Last time I played with either Vivaldi or Brave you had to literally monkey patch the source code in order to customize things further than what the extension SDK allowed you to. You could do the same thing with Firefox, except they make it slightly harder because much of the source code is shipped in archives.
That said it's been years, maybe this can now be done purely through the extension SDK? It'd be news to me.
They offered a tenuous high yield lending program, that the SEC only jumped on after it collapsed from the FTX contagion. Litigation is pending afaik and depends on whether the program qualifies as a security, but the SEC has been losing ground in their optimistic claims of what they think qualifies as a security (outcome of Ripple lawsuit etc.).
Don't get me wrong, any such program is sketchy and I trust Gemini less for having offered it, but IMO it doesn't put them on the same tier as an exchange like FTX or make me think they would inject malware into software they have a connection with.
Yeah that's fair. I'd say it falls into the same boat as the argument against the CEO; they haven't done anything clearly malicious, but their bad decisions are enough to give you pause and reconsider.