Brave is essentially just Chrome with an adblocker, a bunch of bloatware, and a bunch of controversies.
Brave took BAT donations in YouTuber’s names without their consent, with them keeping the money if the YouTubers didn’t claim it. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-browser-no-longer-claims-to-fundraise-on-behalf-of-others-so-thats-nice/
Brave’s search engine crawler hides itself from websites by pretending to be Googlebot, and Meta (Facebook) buys API access from them to train their AI. https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/
The business model of Brave rewards as a whole is to block all other ad networks to replace them with their own, which is unfair as only YouTubers and websites that have joined can make money from most Brave users.
If Brave actually cared, they would create an acceptable ads style feature which was free for everyone and allowed simple contextual banners while blocking ads which track you, take up most of the page, or have NSFW content.
Their approach is monopolistic as they have full control and can strangle YouTubers and websites by dropping pay at any time.
And Brenden Eich has said on Twitter that he plans to release “Brave Origin”, which is a paid version of Brave without the bloatware. That name is ironic as he is admitting that his browser is commercialised and bloated, which is similar to when gorhill gave uBlock way to Chris Aljoudi who commercialised it, which led him to create uBlock Origin.
If you use Brave, ditch it and look at using Librewolf or Helium instead, which both include no ads nor tracking and don’t have Brave News, Rewards, Wallet, Talk etc bloatware.
Sadly firefoy is still not really an option for android if you care about security the most. On Mastodon Ironfox writes about the current state of fossion (Android site isolation). I’m open to any suggestions but so far brave seems to still be the best option for android if you disable that whole ad and rewards crap. In desktop I’m all the way Firefox because there’s no drawback in security. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice security for it, just my oppinion.
But don’t you just kinda have to “trust” that brave has solid security, when all signs point to they don’t give a shit about you?
Sure there is trust needed, but isn’t that one of the big benefits of beging opensource? Also as far as I’m aware they always are among the fastest to fix known vulns. I’m really not a fan of brave in any kind, I just differenciate between their shitty ad/ crypto scam and the browser that’s there beyond it.
It’s always weirded me that they have an open source browser with proprietary features attached. But I guess it makes sense if you know that disabling the proprietary stuff actually disables it, and I know I HAVE read that chromium itself is more secure than firefox
Have you tried Cromite?
I used Bromite before and back then I haven’t noticed it being discontinued. So I was vulnerable for some months. That’s one of the reasons I try to use only browser that get their security updates regularly and in time. Cromite got the last activity on git 3 weeks ago. Are they reliable with security updates?