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Comment by justfortechnews | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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