I’m choosing a main browser, and I think that firefox with ublock and brave are probably equally good in terms of privacy and security, both of them look quite nice, and both are FOSS. The final thing that I’m considering is resource consumption. This reddit post shows that firefox is better than brave in benchmarks and ram consumption, but what about when firefox has ublock running and brave has all their preinstalled “extension” like brave rewards and wallet disabled (except brave shields is left enabled)?
Edit: some people are mentioning brave’s cryptocurrency. I don’t want to use that, and I would just turn it off and use brave as an improved chrome.
Please don’t use Brave. It’s got a bunch of crypto bullshit built into it, has a terrible track record of doing scummy shit, and to top it all off is based on chromium anyway.
Just use Firefox!
I don’t want to use the crypto, if I just turn it off and use brave as an improved chrome, then which one is better?
Brave still doesn’t have your best interests in mind. They’re a for profit company. They’ll eventually drop the crypto garbage because it’s worthless anyway, but rest assured they’ll attempt some other way to wrangle money out of you and it probably won’t be good.
Again: just use Firefox! It’s the opposite of all of that.
Reminder that stock firefox is less privacy-oriented than Brave and they use Google as the default search engine
I know that. In the title I said that I’m comparing brave to Firefox with ublock
You are probably better off switching back to Edge, Opera GX, Chromium or even Chrome instead of Brave if you still want to use a chrome based browser. They have made some questionable decisions in the past.
BAT cryptotokens
So brave rewards you with their own injected advertisements with crypto, probably their most discussed feature. Could be a good idea if implemented correctly. But the real issue here is that they block advertisements and then add their own “privacy minded” advertisements back into the page for which you and they earn some crypto. So not only do you still see some ads with the default settings, now the site/content creators get nothing and brave earns money of your page views.
Creator donations
Speaking of content creators: At some point brave also had donation links on Youtube for those content creators that now earn less trough blocked advertisements and make brave money. Showing these donation links for specific creators, with their name and photo attached, with no opt-in or consent from creators themselves. Tom Scott even asked if they could refund everyone that donated to which they replied “Refunds are impossible”. It looks like they changed the way that works after feedback though so no funds are being donated anymore unless the creator verifies in brave.
Affiliate links
At some point brave changed URL’s from binance, even when typed in manually, directly to their affiliate link. They even publicly apologized after that. Which shows they are willing to change URL’s to earn some money off you.
So yeah you could probably still use Brave even if you disable the crypto aspect but from actions in the past they have shown they really want to earn money off you. And they haven’t hesitated to explore boundaries of what people find acceptable to get that money in the past. I personally wouldn’t trust them to not do something questionable in the future either, crypto or no crypto.
So what if I don’t log in when I use brave? Then it would have no way to get money from me.
You think they can’t earn money from users that are not logged in? Sweet summer child.
They will still show ads on the search page. The dirty affiliate redirects they will think off will still work in their browser. You are effectivly using a software platform they have total control over. Offcourse they are going to find ways to earn money.
It’s like saying Facebook can’t track me because I’m not logged in. Or Google Ads don’t earn money from me because I’m not logged in.
I don’t use the brave search engine (I’ve always been using ecosia) and just use it as a pure browser, would that be fine?
A comment I was waiting for. “Brave is crypto scam, period”. OP you won’t get an objective insight from Firefox community.
Use Firefox. Brave is Chromium. Brave’s crypocurrency stuff is shady, I need a browser not a crypto. uBlock (arguably the best extension) properly only works on Firefox. There is LibreWolf (Firefox mod) if you want ready to use, hardened browser.
I don’t want to use the crypto, if I just turn it off and use brave as an improved chrome, then which one is better?
uBlock (arguably the best extension) properly only works on Firefox
Isn’t brave’s adblocker just ublock?
Still no, try ungoogled chromium. Unlock is much more than adblocker, their page describes it better
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With how ripe the Chromium Monopoly is for abuse, I would strongly consider using Firefox. Or even better, Librewolf.
Too many people here seem to be too focused on cryptocurrency and ignore the data mining that Firefox does, even when you turn off telemetry collection in Firefox settings.
I’m not saying Firefox is bad, but cryptocurrency issues of brave don’t compare to the data mining of Firefox. Use what you prefer, as either are very good browsers when setup right.
That sounds interesting. Do you have anything going in depth about what data is being collected by Firefox? I haven’t heard about that before now.
I like it with sauce, pretty please.
I know Brave has a feature to turn off inactive tabs to reduce memory consumption. Don’t think Firefox does
Firefox does
Natively?
Yep. Strangely there’s a discussion about it on Reddit from a few days before the blackout
Not sure if it’s an official feature somewhere but I use Auto Tab Discard and it works very well. It also has whitelisting supporting for when you want specific websites to never be discarded.
Not sure if it’s an official feature somewhere
I’m not sure either, but after reading the add-on description, it seems like it might be.
Unlike the “The Great Suspender” extension, this extension uses the native method for discarding tabs, which means that even if the extension is removed or the browser crashes, your browser will automatically restore everything for you.
It appears to me that the add-on simply allows for more control over which tabs are automatically or manually discarded, and it also indicates if a tab was discarded or not
The thing is Brave doesn’t discard tabs, just set them to some “sleep” mode afaik
The add-on’s name is misleading. The add-on does the same thing as brave
I don’t use Brave so I’m not sure if there’s a real difference in how it’s handled, but Auto Tab Discard seems like it does attempt to discard tabs in at least a slightly intelligent way:
This extension uses the native [Firefox] method for tab discarding, which means it does not suffer from the same issues as other extensions that use custom methods. When a tab is discarded by the native method, it is completely removed from memory and does not use any resources, but it can be restored to its previous state, including preserving page state such as scroll position.
Restores the state of a tab, including scroll position and text box content, after it is released from being discarded.
Just before all the Brave haters on this sub appear telling you Brave is crypto scam etc. - this is all based on lack of research and just blindly following headlines. You can turn off all the crypto features, Brave won’t force you to jump onto crypto train once you download the browser. They had some unfortunate accident of using affiliate links based on the page you’ve been visiting, but they quickly abandoned the idea. The way I see it is they want to somehow make money out of this as developing a browser is not a cheap undertaking. And yes, Brave is an ad company. But they’re trying to do all this in privacy-preserving way, somehow attempting to change how the ad business currently works on the web. However if you don’t wish to get any ads you can opt out (or just never opt in) of all this and enjoy good browser with good privacy defaults and built in adblocker. Brave is based on chromium though. Whether you wish to support chromium dominance on the web is your personal preference.
Yea no its still looking scam
Looks like a valid argument
“You can turn off X” is not a good enough excuse.
Once upon a time, I used to daily Edge when it was a pretty decent browser. But once it was handed over to the Bing team who started jerry-rigging garbage into it that was it for me. You could also “turn a lot of it off”, but that doesn’t help when new less-than-ideal features are introduced or setting it up on a new PC.
The default homepage on Edge alone is enough to make me never use Edge willingly.
I don’t know what that Bing/MSN abomination is but it’s reprehensible. It’s the most clickbait tabloid garbage I’ve ever seen. The fact that a company that makes hand over fist on enterprise is willing to sully their new browser with that fucking page makes me lose so much faith in humanity.
I know it’s an easily changed setting but there’s millions and millions of people that won’t change it at home or at work being exposed to that garbage.
I have to use Edge at work, and turned off all the BS. But Microsoft keeps coming up with new BS that they enable by default so every so often I have to waste time figuring out how to turn it off.
Actually know a few ex-Edge developers personally and it kills them seeing what Edge has now become. Opening it for the first time is just a tragic mess. It peaked around the Linux release and then slowly went downhill from there 😔
Shame.
Brave Rewards are turned off by default.
True
It’s a scam and they pushing it pretty aggressively.
Have you ever used Brave?
I moved from Vivaldi to Brave and used it for some time.
You can turn it off but the fact it’s in there in the first place is a big red stop light.
