Why I recommend against Brave
thelibre.news
If you are keen on personal privacy, you might have come across Brave Browser. Brave is a Chromium-based browser that promises to deliver privacy with built-in ad-blocking and content-blocking protection. It also offers several quality-of-life features and services, like a VPN and Tor access. I mean, it's even listed on

If you are keen on personal privacy, you might have come across Brave Browser. Brave is a Chromium-based browser that promises to deliver privacy with built-in ad-blocking and content-blocking protection. It also offers several quality-of-life features and services, like a VPN and Tor access. I mean, it’s even listed on the reputable PrivacyTools website. Why am I telling you to steer clear of this browser, then?

  • cannedtuna@lemmy.worldEnglish
    856·
    4 days ago

    This is a very well written an thorough article and I highly recommend reading it. If you don’t want to however, here is a summary of the key points:

    Edit: corrected a mistake noted below.

    • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
      251·
      4 days ago

      Prop 8 was not merely proposed, it was approved by voters and actually banned same-sex marriage for several years before it was ruled unconstitutional.

      Brendan Eich contributed to the actual banning of same-sex marriage in California for several years.

      • mke@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Might be nicer if they just didn’t care.

        Check the comment section for the video version of this article by Niccolò, or the comment section of the post on r/browsers, or the replies whenever these issues are mentioned on Twitter, and so on, and you’ll find a bunch of brave people saying stuff like:

        you unintentionally just made me like brave over firefox. now i can switch to a chromium based browser and not even feel bad about it

        Yes i am installing Brave after this advertisment!

        Thanks to this video I deleted Brave then redownloaded it

        These were taken directly from the video. They’re on the mild side. Throw in also some “stop inserting politics (other than mine) into tech” comments, and a few homophobes not even trying to hide it. Rather than not caring, many of them like it a lot, especially the right-wing politics.

        I don’t think every Brave user is a cunt, but fucking hell, are loud cunts seemingly attracted to Brave.

        To folks bothered by this: know that the lead developer of Ladybird is a big fan of Brendan Eich.

      • nocturne@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        151·
        4 days ago

        Every time I mention that brave is a bad choice that is basically the response I get.

      • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        71·
        4 days ago

        Every time someone uses Brave, I know I can ignore their opinion. They’re either a useful moron who is too dumb to look around them, or they support every single one of these things.

        It’s no wonder why 4chan’s /g/ loves Brave.

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
        116·
        4 days ago

        I don’t care about the personal life of the CEO, and I don’t care about crypto, and everything else is a giant pile of nothing. Ads in the home screen? Like who gives a shit??

        • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          121·
          4 days ago

          So the CEO of the company funding Prop 8 to overturn gay marriage is nothing? Stealing from the creators it claimed to be funding? Being a right wing hotspot is cool with you?

          Good to know that’s where you stand.

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
            55·
            4 days ago

            As long as his personal life doesn’t influence the product, I’ll just throw him on the pile with all the other Nazi supporting CEOs. which is most of them.

            • Chocobofangirl@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              3 days ago

              Okay but the very fact that Brave is a crypto-riddled mess that REPEATEDLY SCAMMED ITS OWN USERS (in what world do you think that’s stopped, and it isn’t just ‘we haven’t found out how they’re still doing it in 2025 yet’) is absolutely influenced by his views. His views are baked in to everything about that browser, up to and including YET ANOTHER bloody built-in LLM constantly popping up on interaction and trying to sell you on AI hallucinations being the future while wasting heck knows how much electricity (Leo).

              • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
                12·
                3 days ago

                They’ve never scammed their own users.

                trying to sell you on AI hallucinations being the future while wasting heck knows how much electricity

                Hello, I see you’ve been living under a rock. Welcome to 2025. This is literally every company. My pdf reader is trying to push an AI assistant on me.

    • Tristus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      3 days ago

      I don’t use Brave as my main browser but I think some of the accusations are not fair.

      1. TOR Feature. I don’t think it was deliberately done. Similarly Firefox revealed your up address even if you used VPN while using. As long as there was no malicious intent we can’t say anything other than that they software has big bugs.
      2. Yes, it is questionable what they do for getting money but same can be said for most donations or schemes that FOSS use. There was long discussions about the money Mozilla receives from Google, or things Opera did (basically similar to Brave)
      3. Getting news from right wing is useful if you ever need to do research, I had a course in uni about anti-islam and getting really right wings news was difficult. We all knew the same 2 sites.
      4. The political opinion of the CEO is concerning but not important enough. In that case I’m wholly on the same boat as the developer of the Factorio, if Hitler were to make good Browsers I’d use them.
      5. It is also important to note most of the problems are in the past. Sure it means there are likely a lot we could not find and it is annoying to use a product where they would exploit you if they are given a chance.

      That said Brave is still #1 Browser I’d recommend someone installing. If I can I’d install Firefox myself, but on the phone it is what I recommend. I don’t trust my uncle to install Firefox and install uBlock etc. on top of it. But I trust him to install Brave and use it.

      Most privacy minded Browsers like Libre Wolf have restrictions, like not enabling WebRTC out of the box, meaning using Zoom, Meet etc is not possible. There are people who are forced to use such software and not able to tweak with config files. Some people think just because they can do it, everybody should be able to. I think it is a good choice to recommend to people, very good in place replacement for Chrome, you can even take your bookmarks and addons with you