The comments in this thread are ironic considering the content of the post.
Brave exposes controls for all of its privacy and crypto features and you can easily opt in or out of anything that concerns you, making it a great choice for privacy.
It really smacks of hypocrisy that everyone is all for multitude of open source solutions, except when it comes to browsers. Mozilla has made many misteps regarding privacy and I've never seen attacks like this. To say that browser wars are political is an understatement.
Even assuming the worst, that being that Brave is trying to track you and build an ad network rivaling Google, that still seems in sum total a good thing. Google has gone down a dark path completely unchecked with their unimaginable omniscience and ad revenue, and I welcome an attack on their monopoly.
I'm impressed by how Brave and Mozilla are paying attention to users privacy
I'm using brave at the moment but I see so much news lately about Mozilla I'm considering switching (Apparently changing a browser is a big decision for me)
I've disliked Brave from the beginning. Initially because of the pretentious - and frankly appropriated - name, but now for the much more substantive reasons you've cited.
Seriously, if you want a browser that gives you control over your data and privacy, use Firefox. It doesn't do any of this shady nonsense.
As a privacy driven tech person, I find brave to be semi cringe yet at the same time one of the few companies that is actually trying to innovate on an approachable set of mainstream, privacy focused tools, a web browser, search, and a (more) privacy preserving ads platform for the web.
I don’t like everything that they do, but I respect the fact that they are actually trying things.
Saying flat out that a privacy driven tech person wouldn’t use brave at all is reflective of the counterproductive discourse within the community, where every tool in existence fails someone’s purity test. Firefox, ddg, protonmail, etc have all had their scandals.
Out of genuine curiosity. What does brave do that’s so privacy focused and how is it better than Firefox on this front? Is it beating Firefox at the privacy pitch somehow?
Brave’s market share seems to be siphoning off Firefox users primarily more than Chrome’s…
Isn't Brave supposed to be a security first browser? I thought this was their whole thing? So why are they using a non-local LLM? Forget your thoughts on AI for a second, and just consider what has to be done for these tasks. If you ask it to summarize the page (like the example) it has so send the information elsewhere, off your computer. Same with the PDF. This really undermines security and creates an way that exposes all your data. Their paid service even uses Claude so not entirely controlled by them either if you fully trust them to E2EE that data and then not store it.
So according to Brave, using their AI leaks:
- your searches
- What you're viewing
- What you're typing
Did Brave just turn into the Chrome that it once so hated? I guess it is just orange chrome.
Brave? So the cryptocurrency-laced browser made by the guy who donated $1000 to a Republican candidate who the year before said "our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide" and "homosexuals have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution"? [0] Huh. Really not seeing how that's somehow preferable over the company that.. checks notes.. demands transparency in funding for advertising, and calls for research into how centralized social platforms and their algorithms work and are affecting people -- none of which have anything to do with invading anyone's privacy.
Brave is based on Chromium, it lacks some of the privacy centric features that are found in Gecko browsers. 1st party isolation,tracker blocking, containers, anti fingerprinting measures and SNI encryption are some things I can think of right now (maybe chrome as caught up now?)
Plus, Google controls Chromium and Firefox is literally the only alternative now. They push changes that are against or in in ignorance of of web standards because they can. Downstream browsers like brave,edge and opera basically have to accept whatever Google says. This isn't good for the web at all. Frankly there should be an anti-trust suit against Google for this because it is very anti-competitive.
I just want to say Brave has been an awesome browser. It’s fast, it blocks ads, it upgrades connections to SSL, it’s stable. Runs great on desktop and mobile.
I’ve never once cared or noticed the crypto stuff. It’s a simple toggle off.
We’ve deployed Brave across our entire enterprise worldwide, mobile and desktop.
The negative anti-Brave campaign that comes sweeping through every time Brave is posted on HN is probably all (or mostly) from Google and Firefox employees. My guess is that they are very scared of Brave because they realize how good it is and they are scared of the competition.
Can you share examples of Brave having a poor privacy record?
I've recently switched to it as my main browser, enjoy using it and have recommended to others who want to opt-out of the Google ecosystem. However, if there are examples of privacy abuse I may revisit.
Yeah I'm fed up with unwarranted mentions of Brave. Indeed they are always "aggressive, misleading, promotional", and nothing close to informational. The article was supposed to be about Apple and Webkit, and Brave is just off-topic.
Brave is not a privacy-focused browser. It is an ad-focused browser and the business model of Brave is just this: ads, through Basic Attention Tokens. Privacy and BATs are in conflict and Brave will never be incentivized to respect the privacy of all its users. If you want privacy for you and for everyone, competition except Chrome is already better.
Brave is not a solution for a browser user's problem.
Brave is still based on chromium/blink. You might get more privacy, but you're still supporting the one monopoly of the web, Google deciding over all the web standards going forward. That is the real bad thing
Google isn't the hand that feeds them because of chromium. It's the hand that feeds them because of Google's privacy track record. If they weren't so invasive, then there would be no reason for brave to exist.
I honestly assume that 80% of what I've seen pushing Brave against all basic common sense is astroturfing.
Just use Firefox! Why would anyone ever choose Brave when it is proprietary and better free alternatives exist? This company's track record of disrespecting their users and sketchy monetization is so blatant, and its creator is a homophobic tool who is responsible for all of us writing Javascript instead of Scheme.
I'm uninformed. By what metric is Brave better than Firefox on privacy? I did some quick research and could only find clearly biased (and poorly-written) sources making that claim.
Brave claims to be a privacy oriented web browser. It is apparently based on Chromium and someone identified a Chromium feature that was phoning home (I.e. Google servers) with some informations reducing user anonimity
(At least that's what I understood from a quick look)
Brave exposes controls for all of its privacy and crypto features and you can easily opt in or out of anything that concerns you, making it a great choice for privacy.
It really smacks of hypocrisy that everyone is all for multitude of open source solutions, except when it comes to browsers. Mozilla has made many misteps regarding privacy and I've never seen attacks like this. To say that browser wars are political is an understatement.
Even assuming the worst, that being that Brave is trying to track you and build an ad network rivaling Google, that still seems in sum total a good thing. Google has gone down a dark path completely unchecked with their unimaginable omniscience and ad revenue, and I welcome an attack on their monopoly.
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