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Comment by cute_boi | Hacker News Reader

can we trust brave? They have become too shady in my opinion like inserting referral etc?

I tried brave a year ago because I heard good things. I stopped using it within a month. The cryptocurrency and referral stuff told me all I needed to know: their motives are not aligned with the user. If you let your monetization strategy alienate your users then you won’t be getting far. Early adopters need clear messages of trust.

When the messaging is “we’re desperate for money” and I don’t trust you, why would I expect you to value my privacy? I won’t be trying brave again until they at least try to address this.

What is the referral stuff? The crypto is optional.

They got caught with the fingers in the cookie jar and quickly backtracked:

"Brave Software's co-founder and CEO, Brendan Eich, said on Twitter that he didn't believe there was anything wrong with injecting affiliate codes into web addresses. However, it seems the backlash worked, as Brave's developers are introducing a toggle for the suggestions, and the functionality will be disabled by default starting with the next stable release."

https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caugh...

We fix bugs we didn't know about as soon as they're reported. To assert malice not stupidity needs more evidence, or else it's just based on your ill will. ICYMI, thread:

https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1367161348166017024

If it were a bug then why say it is fine? I'm not saying it wasn't but normally I don't see people calling something a bug and at the same time defending it?

The only defense from me was for refcoded keywords (all browsers do this).

As someone new to Brave, threads like this only increase my trust in Brave. Any comment negative about Brave is voted up here on HN, any comment in favour of it is voted down, and as soon as someone asks for evidence of Brave's negative behaviour, they backtrack and shift to a different argument or share something flimsy and intentionally misportrayed. At this point I'm not sure if it's intentional FUD or just some people's knee-jerk reaction to anything crypto-related (along with political biases), but I've learnt that criticism of Brave should never be taken at face value here.

Yes listening to the CEO who earn money from good pr is smarter than listening to smart people on HN. Try that life philosophy out elsewhere too.

Should we not fix bugs? As for “smart people”, if you are flattering yourself, give it a rest. I just replied to your misguided comment that we should switch engines and go out of business to fight Chromium monoculture. Not smart!

Seems to me that you're a small minority, and that most Brave users feel that the company IS aligned with them. The cryptocurrency was a key aspect for early user adoption, and the referral stuff is something that I only ever see mentioned on HN by clearly-biased commenters.

The messaging is not 'we're desperate for money', it's 'we're not funded by selling our users' personal data and are working to make a browser product that can self-sustain', something that, as of now, no other browser has been able to do.

Does Firefox/Mozilla sell users' personal data? They claim not to.

Not sure, I don't use Firefox. I'd assume they don't, given that a lot of the privacy ethics in Brave carried over from Mozilla.

I personally trust Firefox way more than Brave.

User data mostly has short shelf life so what happens is API renting, not selling. That's what Google does via its ad exchange, which is fed by many signals but notably by search. Search ads also make Google the most money, but all their businesses use a single ad exchange.

Firefox has a default search deal with Google that makes most of their revenue. So does Safari (edit: the Safari deal of course does not make most of Apple's revenue, but it is rumored to be big, multiple $B/yr). These are how personal data flows to Google for big money back. (Chrome is worse: if you log into a Google account in any tab, then unless you opt out via your account settings, your navigation is tracked by the mothership.)

Brave doesn't have such a Google deal, and Brave Search won't collect personal or re-identifiable data.

When someone flags legitimate concerns you can’t dismiss them with them being “clearly biased” and saying “most people don’t feel that way”.

When I ask, “why should I trust brave?”, the response I get is biased gaslighting. I guess that means I shouldn’t trust them.

The amount in which I've experienced this exact scenario on Hacker News is quite disheartening.

When I provided a cite wherein Brave was caught whitelisting trackers, I was responded to with basically "those who are so quick to criticize Brave" don't give the same scrutiny to other browsers. Whelp, other browsers don't position themselves as the Privacy King like Brave and its adherents do.

Whataboutism isn't a defense.

Your description of it being gaslighting is very apt.

And why is it whitelisting them?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26338560.

You never could trust Brave. Their business has been unethical since its founding.

People are so desperate to like Brave that they can't see the bad things. I wouldn't trust Brave, especially when there are better options like Mozilla that isn't part of the monolith that is Chrome. It's the new Internet Explorer no matter what skin you theme it with.

Mozilla depends almost entirely on Google for revenue. As Firefox loses share, it gets less. This looks likely to spiral down until a collapse of some sort. I was stunned to learn that Apple has hired 35 people (almost all engineers) from Mozilla over the last few years.

And when Firefox dies what do you think will happen to chromium? Suddenly APIs will be removed if needed by Brave or adblockers (already happening). Brave is helping keep chrome as the defacto standard, IE. helping nailing the coffin shut above Firefox. Brave is part of the problem, not the fix. The better Brave gets the worse it is.

Edit: Spelling.

Engine monoculture is a problem requiring deep pockets to fix. Servo was spun out but I don't think it has a single sponsor who will gut it through to market. Blaming us at Brave for not dying on this hill is deeply wrong. We don't have the funding or people to do it. You should save your ire for Mozilla, for mismanaging Firefox and Servo.

I doubt Google will mess more than they have with Chromium, with Microsoft, Samsung, and Opera (not to mention Yandex) all using it. This is the way evolutionary kernels work (see Constantine Dovrolis's work). Get over it, and stop blaming the little browsers!

I blame all browsers based on Google's work. No-one forces anyone to use blink in their product. I'm no fan of Mozilla either btw. But it's the best option we got.

If we switched engines, we’d fail. You say you care about Chromium/Blink monoculture but your advice to us, all else equal, makes it worse by cementing it via Chrome’s monopoly. Please reconsider.

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