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Comment by SkyMarshal | Hacker News Reader

You can use Brave and never even enable its crypto wallet. It’s an opt-in setting iirc.

Opt in setting doesn't mean much here. While it's technically true the crypto stuff isn't "enabled", it's constantly pushed to you with no option to remove all of that during installation.

I'll walk you through it:

Upon loading the browser on a fresh install, you are greeted with a new tab page pushing Brave Rewards. With manipulative UX, there is no button to disagree or remove the feature, only a button for "start using rewards". You can hide it by clicking the 3 dots, which for most users they're never going to do unfortunately.

Looking at the address bar, there's a triangle up there with a badge. Hiding the new tab Rewards card doesn't hide this triangle. Clicking on this does not show a remove feature option. Beside that, there's a sidebar button and a wallet icon again with a badge. Clicking on this only shows a learn more button. I can right click both of these, and finally see a hide option.

Finally all of that is hidden. Maybe I browse a page or so, and then open a new tab. I'm shown an ad on the new tab screen. Right clicking it shows no hide button. So I'll try the customize button. Here's where you have to scroll down and disable the "show sponsored images" option.

All done, right? Ok let's browse Reddit for a bit. There's where you see the "tip" button under every post. Right clicking shows nothing about hiding it. So into the settings you have to go to finally remove the last bit of the feature and be prompted to relaunch the browser.

I don't see any of that. Its all disabled in my Brave browser.

I don’t recall any of that but it’s been a long time since I set up Brave. Anytime I install a new browser the first thing I do is go through all the settings and configure it, so I probably turned all that off on day 1.

I've found Brave to be more than tolerable. In relation to your annoyance with the customize HTML:

Hamburger menu -> Settings -> Brave Rewards -> Uncheck the boxes (Reddit, Github, Twitter)

---

...or the baroque but useful to know:

Hamburger menu -> Settings -> Shields -> Content Filtering -> Create Custom Filters -> reddit.com## .action-brave-tip

(which you can get to quicker with a right click context menu)

> Ok let's browse Reddit for a bit. There's where you see the "tip" button under every post.

Wait, that actually sounds like a great feature! Is there a way to get it for other browsers?

Yeah it'll be built off of web environment integrity the same way this is built off of brave's ad ecosystem.

And all of that is still less scummy than Google.

Is it less scummy than firefox? More importantly, is it less scummy than continuing to give Google control over the internet through the blink browser engine?

The only actual counterbalance to google's power in web is the firefox browser and it's basically dead because "wah wah they bought pocket wah wah there are two tiles on the new tab page that show popular websites wah wah" so alright I guess we will just do the whole IE6 debacle again this time with less willingness from regulators to fix our bullshit.

I disabled all the nonsense for a new profile just now, didn't take much. I know what bits annoy me, though. But one pass right clicking annoying UI elements, one pass through new tab page's Customize menu, one pass through Appearance in settings and you're done.

Leaves you with this:

https://i.imgur.com/LriOYog.png

The crypto related settings are also literally the only settings that don't sync across devices, and you have to manually turn it off on every new installation, I wonder why that is.

My feeling on the matter that nothing is free and every time a team like this spends their resources on some extra bauble, they are drifting from the core goal. Like Mozilla.

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