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.
This is pretty nihilist to say, but we probably need to stop using what we’re calling the internet today.
The web is not the innocent platform it once was in the 90s and early 00s. Privacy is practically nonexistent and the workarounds like disabling javascript break so much of it that what’s left is hardly usable.
There’s no worthwhile alternatives imo. There’s no major competing internetworks or ‘web browsing’ alternatives outside of modern html/css/js… and there really should be.
The internet evolved towards money making and nobody really stopped and made offshoots that are just cool fun things without the endless goal of capital.
We can still build small, text-based websites for free.
I have built fileshare and chat before switching to OSS solutions, which I can selfhost.
No adblocker needed, I can enjoy my part of the internet with people I care about.
Also Wikipedia.
Not the Internet, but rather the World Wide Web. The once-humble webpage has become such a complex stack of technologies that it’s impossible for small dev teams to make alternatives to the established web browsers.
The problem with the internet is not the internet itself, but the big tech platforms.
By using sites like Mastodon and Lemmy, using a browser with uBlock Origin installed, and disabling Web & App activity, personalised ads, etc on your phone, you are taking a stand, and routing around the bad stuff exactly as intended.
It just isn’t enough man. We’re still dependent on a handful of sources for everything. Adblockers break for me practically every single day.
I don’t have solutions. I just see privacy slipping away at scale and i’m afraid where we will end up in just a few years.
We can’t opt out of the system either because too much of it is necessary. Can anyone truly say they don’t need google? ever? I stick to stuff like lemmy and I use duck duck go, but I don’t think ddg is permanent.
Everything just seems aligning for us to have digital IDs and fingerprints that are tracked with metadata and sold freely to any buyer with enough money. Combine that with technologies like flock and all the facial recognition tech everywhere, payment being basically completely digital today and sold/shared to anyone willing to pay… and every move we make is completely tracked and known.
We’re at a point now where the tech used in The Dark Knight by batman to solve crime at the expense of everyone’s privacy is here, and it’s even worse. Nobody will destroy it because it’s too powerful to make money and crush dissent. With how dire the political situation is and how they are literally telling us now to not believe what we see, instead believe what we say… i’m worried, like so many others are.
No one person should have as much power as even a billionaire has, and there are so many who have more than that. The only end to tyranny is our lifespans, until that is no longer a limiting factor from technology.
Yes. I switched to Qwant some years ago, and about a year back I switched to Kagi. Haven’t seen the Google Search page in years at this point.
The only thing I use from Google still is YouTube. There are also alternatives, I’ve spent some time with PeerTube and found things I enjoy, and I don’t mind supporting Nebula, which is also a nice platform. That said, I could probably just cut it all off. It frees up time to do something else.
Using Invidious or other front ends allows me to watch YT without Google tracking.
My Gmail address is only used by as backup to access my own domain and I am ready to move that away from Google.
I don’t need Google.
Using a different frontend to access a Google service is still using Google …
Install uBlock Origin and disable any others then the ad blocker problem will be solved.
As for other things, look for backups. If DDG shuts down, search up alternatives. If piefed.social shuts down, find another instance, and do on.
Technically, there’s Gemini (protocol) and Gopher as alternatives to the usual web stack, but they’re still pretty niche in usage.
I’d say we don’t need go go so far as to stop using the internet (there are open and free services we can use), but I’d agree that we need to reduce our overall internet usage as way to fight aginst the system. Many times, there aren’t alternatives to things, and the alternative can be doing something else! Doing something with out life time that the corporations have been stealing.
And the tech industry have become the main players int he economy and in many destructive and unethical practices in the world, that by reducing our internet usage, we are working against them.
If you want to experience the old internet: https://kagi.com/smallweb
A curated list of sites with specific criteria, I’ve found a bunch of good stuff from there