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.
Honestly what do people have against Firefox that can’t be fixed with plugins? It’s the only decent browser that isn’t chrome based, and I think that deserves support. And with plugins and sync it’s a great experience.
With sideberry and second sidebar, it’s literally the best browsing experience that exists currently and it’s not even close
Provided I can still use about:config to clear out all the Mozilla crap then I’m happy with Firefox. The only add-on I use is ublock-origin on my phone and also NoScript on desktop.
Firefox is great. Mozilla, however, is making some weird moves every now and then. A lot of people don’t quite trust Mozilla to have their interests at heart anymore.
The obvious solution is to use a Firefox fork. I have no idea whether there’s a meaningful difference between the various Firefox forks, and would welcome a summary.
I switched to LibreWolf, which is a Firefox fork that prioritizes anonymity and privacy. I like it, but there are definite quirks:
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it will tell every website your time zone is UTC+0, which breaks some stuff. Proton Calendar works if you tell it your actual timezone.
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no password saving and cookies delete every session, so you have to log in to every website every time you restart. This is intentional but I don’t understand the rationale. You can install a password manager though and self-host it if you want.
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because your device fingerprint is generic, a lot of websites incorrectly assume you are a not. I have to use FF for GrubHub, for instance, as they won’t play nice with LibreWolf due to restrictions on the HTML5 Canvas element, for instance.
All of this should be configurable per site. Lots of sites do not need to know my timezone, location, cookies or fingerprint, but some do. I want to give sites I like, those where I’ve intentionally created an account, usually, permission to these things while denying it to every random article I happen to click on.
You can set exceptions for cookies on per site basis. I know because I also thought this for long time before finding it.
Settings - Privacy & Security - Cookies and Site Data - Manage exceptions
One item off the annoyance list. :)
You can turn off the fingerprint protection in the Librewolf tab of the settings page.
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Mozilla changed their privacy policy and terms of use about a year ago in ways that show they cannot be trusted. I think Librewolf offers more privacy/security features than Firefox can with plugins (disabling some canvas features that are used for fingerprinting for example). I think Firefox has some advertising/tracking crap enabled by default too (PPA API?). IDK, I just don’t trust them anymore with their policy changes. Mullvad Browser is even more “hardened,” but less convenient than Librewolf.
For me it’s a combination of Mozilla making strange business decisions (removing of the “we never sell your data” policy) and the fact that a lot of websites take forever to load on Firefox.
I’ve tried forks, LibreWolf pisses me off. Too many settings to change just to still have a broken browsing experience in the sake of privacy. If I need that level of privacy, I’ll use I2P/Tor.
I hate the fact that chromium has won, but it’s getting difficult to avoid the fact that web developers don’t give a rats ass if the website doesn’t work well on Firefox.
Brave was my primary for a while, but I switched to Vivaldi after reading about some of the BAT bait and switch.
My main browsers are FF or Zen (a fork of FF), but I think a lot of sites aren’t able to work with just a plug-in due to how deeply they are coded for Chromium. Some of them being Amazon sites like Luna, Amazon Music, and Audible (pretty sure their other media sites/services also refuse to work if any hint of non-Chromium browsers are detected. I have run into non-Amazon sites with media or similar tell me to “update your browser” or “use a supported browser” (which is at least more honest than telling me that my FF is “out of date”).
While there are likely elements in some sites that actually can work with FF (I have had really random moments where I got part of a song to play on Amazon Music but then gives the “browser is out of date” message). The Chromium focused coding is IE all over again. Just a self-fulfilling cycle of making it look like FF is not as capable. And I hate that in the instances where changing the User Agent to be Chrome works, that it just keeps stats looking like Chrome and forks are what people are using (and might lead to seeming like FF is used less than it actually is).
I haven’t encountered anything like that, but maybe that’s because I wouldn’t touch anything Amazon with a 2 metre stick
Not a bad stance. But they are a major provider of media that regular users might use. They also tend to be the people that would rather not bother with FF if they see it as “not as capable” and never leave Chrome. Which further feeds the goals of Google to be the default just like MS did with IE (but much more cleaver by providing the base for endless forks).
MS fucked up by caring that IE was the “only” option and didn’t push creating such a good base to have forks to keep their versions of “standards.” Google did an amazing job at pouring money into getting Chrome past the early years of lack of mature features (and while they still had good will of helping to get people away from IE).
An extra reason: Eich is a homophobic asshole and an anti-masker
…and? Are you going to stop using the transistor?
Man’s dead.
Don’t matter what he thought when he’s rotting in the ground.
Does when you’re still alive
I hope you never use JavaScript then. Eich created that too.
Oh I see, outrage of convenience.
No.
It’s very simple: if someone is alive and holds detestable views, then giving them money gives them a chance to then use that money to lobby for their views. And in many many many many many cases, they do exactly that.
If someone is dead and holds detestable views, they’re unable to do anything about it (cause they’re dead)
I dislike any browser which blocks content (such as ads) by default. It may sound silly, but Imo, that’s not what a browser should be doing. It’s job is to act as an HTTP client, render HTML and do caching, storage and all the management which goes with it and offer any tools to tinker with it.
The meaning of the content displayed should be of no concern to the browser as it is subjective.
I will install an addon to deal with unwanted content as I see fit. Firefox is getting kinda bloated with all the things which come with it (pocket, accounts, default bookmarks…), but I can live with that.What if we start from the premise of a browser being judged by its most popular use case?
I’m happy to change some default settings to customize for my use case, knowing that most users that don’t know/care about such things are getting ads blocked by default (let’s be honest, I like crawling through settings each time I install new software regardless :P )
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Desktop = Librewolf, Mullvad and hardened firefox browsers. Strictly separating uses. Mobile (Android) = Cromite, Brave, Firefox and Tor. Again, separating uses.
Don’t forget that they used to add referral parameters to links you clicked so they got a kickback from you clicking things from anywhere even if they didn’t make that link for you.
I don’t like Brave or the amount of bloat. Sadly what is missing from basically all Chromium forks is even basic browser anti-fingerprinting. The only other real example I can think of is Cromite, which is what i recommend people use instead of Brave.
I’m just glad people are finally starting to mention LibreWolf as the first go-to.
Do people realize that if Firefox dies (in the many ways that could be interpreted), all of these downstream forks will also die right?
Like, the work to in essence remove unwanted parts of a code base is admirable but its an utterly miniscule fraction of the work that goes into maintaining a modern browser, keeping up with standards, sending people to be voices at conventions, etc.
The beauty of open source projects is that if they are abandoned, other people can pick them back up. Sure it may be difficult, but if it wasn’t FOSS it wouldn’t even be possible.
To those asking “which browser other than Firefox”
It’s fantastic. It’s Chrome, stripped of junk, with full (not lite) Ublock Origin natively supported and shipped. What more could you want?
And it can coexist alongside Firefox.
Cromite is also great, but its antifingerprinting is so hardcore it breaks some sites. That’s perfect for shopping/private browsing, but a bit much for daily driving unless tracking resistance is your #1 priority.
On iOS and OSX, Orion (from Kagi) is sublime. It’s Safari based (which you want for Apple stuff), but heavily modified with a native blocker, and supports extensions if you really need them. There aren’t many Safari “forks” like it.
I say this because I’ve been through a gauntlet of trying a bunch. Bromite, ungoogled chromium, waterfox, pale moon, Thorium, Vivaldi, all sorts of iOS apps and Firefox/Chromium forks. And these feel like endgame to me. Helium is just about perfect (as long as its development isn’t dropped), and Orion is close aside from some UI quirks.
Thank you for the recommendation, I will try out helium
Where are we on zen browser?
Eh. Firefox is fine.
The only FF fork I’ve ever used for some time is Cachy Browser, as it shipped with my distro and was ostensibly amore optimized. But even they depreciated it in lieu of vanilla Firefox.
And Firefox gets faster security patches anyway.
I’m more interested in Chrome forks because it’s Google spyware. And, as much as I don’t like it, I find Chromium-based browser to be faster. That doesn’t matter so much on desktop, but the difference is pretty dramatic on Android.
If you used Ungoogled Chromium why did you switch and recommend Helium? Can’t you achieve Helium settings and tweaks on Ungoogled Chromium? Why add an additional party to potentially delay security updates?
Ungoogled Chromium does not support full uBlock Origin. Last I checked, it wont auto-update itself on Windows without a 3rd party tool, and I remember it having some other “quirks” from the stuff it strips out. The delay for security updates seems pretty minimal, too.
And personally, I like the bangs feature, now that I’m using Orion on iOS anyway.
But its based on ungoogled-chromium, so if you prefer to use upstream, that makes a lot of sense. Helium’s main pitch seems to be an “easier to install” ungoogled chromium anyway.
No mobile apps
Orion is mobile. So is Cromite.
DDG is pretty good too. I like its approach, with a UI that encourages whitelisting sites.
But they don’t sync with helium afaik
Orion syncs cross platform, DuckDuckGo does as well. And I believe you can sync with extensions.
Sadly no linux client for duck duck go otherwise I’d use that. Will look into orion tho
No Linux client for that either, though it seems to be planned.
I’m waiting for Servo to able to play YouTube videos then I’ll stop using Firefox (Floorp)
Use Invidious?
I can use invidious but what I mean is that if Servo can play videos on Youtube then it can render like 90% of the entire internet without any weird format issues
Has it been working lately?
For all my folks on android a really good chromium browser would be Cromite which is a fork of Bromite a really good privacy browser. I use it with Kagi as my search engine and it works so well for me.
For FF, I used IronFox for a bit. But it had issues with using alternative search engines as defaults. But it’s still a solid browser.
I recommend using the TOR browser as a heavy security measure and for privacy if you need it the most. Remember to change the defaults to the strictest security measures for the best privacy and protection from Malware (ads) and the works.
Waterfox is an option too
i recently installed cromite to find its adblock completely non-functional, anyone knows if it’s just me?
(i mean the obvious ones like google ads were shown…)
just disable the in built blocker and use ublock instead
sir there’s no extension support in cromite…
Adblock was purchased by Google years ago and now allows “non-intrusive” (is Google) ads by default. Use uBlock if you can.
lol ik, i’m not talking about adblock™ but instead i mean the ad blocking feature integrated in the cromite browser. afaik it uses ABP engine/filters tho
Am I the only person who uses mobile tab grouping and sees it as a must-have? Its ridiculous that Firefox is over 5 years behind on this incredible QoL feature. To me it’s almost as bad as if a browser didn’t support bookmarks. It’s just ridiculous at this point.
What is this feature?
I posted an insane rant with a video here :
I already use librewolf on desktop which is a great experience. But Firefox on mobile is just so horribly laggy and has a dated UI, the only offering it has is ublock origin and reader mode. Brave is the only real mobile browser choice I have since it has pretty good tracker blocking and I can disable nearly all of the problems you’ve mentioned here.
I’m kind of surprised to hear you say that. I’ve been quite happy with Firefox mobile. I haven’t experienced any of the lag or whatever you mentioned. The ability to use extensions far outweighs any updated visuals in the UI department for me. It does everything I need a browser to do.
What is it that you need that isn’t already there? (genuinely asking)
If Firefox used a more modern Material UI and fixed some of the gestures (the expanding website menu makes no sense, it doesn’t follow your finger) it would be much more appealing. As it stands now chromium based browsers naturally use standard material components and feel a lot nicer to use on my phone.
When I scroll in Firefox, there’s quite a lot of stutter and it struggles to maintain 120 fps.
If any 1 of these 2 issues were fixed I’d switch to Firefox in a heartbeat, ublock origin is great
Fair. Thanks for answering.
Tab grouping is the killer feature for me. Chromium lets me group tabs into boxes, color code and name those boxes, easily switch between tabs in that boxed group with icons on the bottom, close all the tabs in the group, and reorder the groups. Here’s a video showing this awesome, intuitive, actually valuable feature that many people have begged Mozilla for for years only to be ignored: https://youtu.be/P6mcduJFSsM
It allows me to keep lots of tabs open, social things, shopping things, travel research, etc etc. Without needing to bookmark everything (a lot of stuff you only need for a few weeks, and bookmarks are kinda supposed to be forever).
If you haven’t used that feature on mobile, it’s hard to see how life changing it is. Like actually life changing in the sense that it allows me to keep an eye on much more things, remember about them, follow up on them, and easily get rid of them when their usefulness is over. If I’m looking for information on some event I can have a group for that and with just one tap access any of like 10 tabs and quickly cross reference them. If I’m shopping I can have products in different tabs, groups for the different things I’m shopping for.
There are no Firefox extensions that provide this functionality, which, to me should be an absolute baseline feature for any web browser now that’s been awhile since its been introduced. Especially for mobile browsers where screen real estate is so limited, and where we use our browsers for all sorts of sudden brief things that are ephemeral enough not to bookmark but also longevitous or time-consuming enough that I want to have them open for more than a few minutes.
Compare this with firefox, where all I get is this clumsy two column list of tabs which quickly becomes navigable, and the worse-than-useless “old tabs” feature or whatever they call it that automatically hides tabs I’ve had open too long. On Chromium I will literally have hundreds of tabs on there at times, and it’s great because I can quickly access a “workspace” of things depending on what I’m doing right now. On Firefox the best I can do is roughly reorder them, and even then it takes two taps instead of one to switch to one of my choice, in addition to scrolling if it’s more than 4 away. It’s such trash that it makes me mad every time I use it and every time I think of it, because I KNOW the Firefox team could replicate the Chromium feature, but instead they fuck around adding AI doodads, while ignoring this silver bullet feature that single handedly keeps me from switching to them as my only browser. Keep in mind this functionality has existed in Chromium browsers 5 years ago, albeit slightly less usable than it is now. It has been this great for probably 4 years. I just can’t go back, for certain things.
That was informative. I stopped using Chrome/chromium browsers on mobile specifically because I was attempting to lighten my google-load. I’ll have to give the grouping a try sometime. FF has it on desktop, I use it a lot now that it’s on there. I think that was somewhat recent. I never even thought about it being on the mobile version, yeah, that would be handy.
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Name a solution for a mobile phone webbrowser without ads including youtube ads that allows playing youtube while the screen is turned off and I am ready to switch.
Firefox… I mean, regular old from the app store Firefox… Not even Waterfox or anything, just Firefox.
How did you end up at Brave without knowing Firefox could do all that?
Dude, just use NewPipe or PipePipe from Fdroid. They are much better than using the Youtube mobile website.
Or Grayjay, I found NewPipe / other frontends had their fair share of issues while I was using them. Their desktop app however I’ve not used as it was failing to build on my NixOS machines.
or libretube
Do they work for you?
Yes, watched a few videos yesterday with PipePipe
Just use Gflghtdhh instead.
Have you tried Squootle? Just use Squootle with a pLib plugin, bro. All you have to do is load the community block list made by asianasspounder72 into your Squootle’s cld/000x24b3/v folder and update the file in notepad to edit line 124 to call pLib v2.4 instead of v1.6. Make sure you’re using the beta release of pLib, but not the latest one.
Why aren’t you using Squootle?
I really do not understand what you want to say with your comment. The user here asked for a better alternative than Brave for watching YouTube and PipePipe/NewPipe is exactly what they asked for. They are also not that complicated to install as you seem to suggest, you can simply install them with one touch from an App Store. So what do you want to say here?
That any time someone suggests a workaround, it always involves like 2-3 different obscure apps and plug-ins, and often people will recommend several variations that all do the same thing. All of these apps are also fairly new, with only a single developer or a small team with no proven track record, that are doomed to lose support or stop working at any moment. And yea, most of them are FOSS, but that only means that when they go under, a dozen differently named clones will pop up. All with their own weird flavor of drama.
“Noooo! You can’t use Fweeb, that’s just an offshoot of Squootle that was made after the Fweeb developer was kicked off the Squootle team for making some vaguely problematic Slack comments!”
“Yea, but Squootle is set to stop working within the next 18 months because of the upcoming YouTube ‘Screw Our Users’ update and the remaining Squootle team members have all fucked off to Hungary to raise free-range alpacas and aren’t pushing updates anymore.”
“Oh fuck, man, you’re using Squootle? Squootle is just spyware. You want to make sure you’re using Squootle Origin. That’s a completely different program with different developers”
Anyways, have you tried QwiDer? It’s really the only one you should be using, bro. Anyone not using QwiDer is behind in the times. Just get QwiDer and run it using a PLST script.
That’s kind of the way the whole category works. People are playing cat and mouse with a billion dollar company and are fighting a uphill battle against Googles countermeasures, app store policies and lawsuits. So there is really no perfect app that will work for all time.
Morphe takes the official YouTube app and modifies it to remove ads and add background play morphe.software
Ok, but which browser should we use.
I am on opera
Literally Firefox.
I feel like the reasons are obvious and I am constantly amazed at people who choose offshoots that end up having problems jsut as bad or worse than Chrome.
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Firefox actually uses an engine independent of Chromium
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Firefox keeps developer documentation for the actual open web in a a clear fashion better than anyone else with MDN.
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Firefox is responsible for all of the heavy lifting for any of the browsers downstream of it that people seem to want to switch to so that Mozilla is less supported and the browsers they are on also break (which is bizzare footgun behaviour in my opinion, and exactly why the people who are idealists inherently can’t win. They shoot themselves in the foot with idealism so hard that companeis don’t even have to care about their opinions).
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Firefox has more resistant than the engine makers of any other browser to anti autonomy web changes like Chromes manifest 3, tvarious new tracking mechanisms and more.
Excuse a little bit of snark at hypothetical responses below, but Im just so frustrated Ill let off a little steam here:
bUt Ai.
So they have a few AI features you have to purposefully find or stumble into, and that means you are going to do everything in your power to make sure your last actual chance to avoid completely Google domination dies too?
You are basically begging for the even more intense enshitification that will come if Firefox actually dies.
bUt SoMeOnE eLsE cAn CoNtInUe DeVeLoPmEnT
Oh yeah? Someone else is going to take on this project with a massive amount of legacy code, inside knowledge and hundreds of people working on it constantly to keep it completely up to date??
You must have been confused when I mentioned above Mozilla does the heavy lifting for the browsers down stream. Just because someone makes a fork that removes features doesnt mean they are equipped to handle the level of work done in the code they are downstream of.
Anyways, the bottom line is, for now, if you actually value open source, the answer is Firefox.
Or one of Firefox forks. I like waterwolf due having a mobile app
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You should try Librewolf and Helium.
Vivaldi, the only decent Chromium and from the EU (Norway), green energy server in Iceland (Geothermic energy)
