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Comment by graynk | Hacker News Reader

I would really like people to stop recommending Brave :(

It may be an okay-ish browser, but the company behind it _repeatedly_ does shady things (installs VPN without asking, overriding links to insert referral codes, collecting donations for YouTubers without YouTubers even knowing about it, etc, etc), I am honestly not sure why people are OK with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers...

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Brave is still the best browser on the market. Trying creative things for monetization (and failing loudly) is a million times better than anything else that any other browser is doing -- including Firefox.

If you don't want the Web3 crap you can turn it off -- as I have done for years now. But someone please help me understand how a browser that takes in half a billion dollars from Google annually to function as controlled opposition in case of an antitrust case is somehow OK to recommend, but a browser that is independent is somehow bad because of bad business decisions made years ago.

Brave is organizationally independent, sure. But it also relies on Chromium, and so isn't independent from the Chromium code base.

Firefox is at least any kind of opposition.

I would also add the dead simple point that Brave is yet another Chromium-derived browser. If someone likes Brave just because they like it then, sure, whatever.

But it doesn't belong in a conversation about browser diversification away from Chromium. I am so bewildered why it keeps getting referenced in "let's get away from Google Chrome" threads

> I am so bewildered why it keeps getting referenced in "let's get away from Google Chrome" threads

At the end of the day, it’s not Google Chrome. I’ve mentioned in other comments that Brave isn’t my top 1, 2 or 3 choice, so I won’t rehash that here, but I think it absolutely belongs in a conversation as an alternative for people that want to get away from Google Chrome. The basic skeleton that composes Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers mostly isn’t the issue, because Chrome is and always has been technically excellent. It’s all the other crap Google started grafting on top of it that is, on top of their stance (backed up by many many web developers here) that the standards and web technologies that Google supports should be the standards and web technologies that all browsers support and prioritize.

Brave is better than Chromium in the same way that a sore throat is better than strep throat, when what everyone really wants is a vaccine.

All the arguments in favor of Brave over Chrome are going to apply tenfold to browsers fully independent of Chromium, and it's a perilous place to be, a boat on the edge of the Chromium whirlpool forever rowing (Brave repeatedly branching and forking the parts of Chromium it doesn't want and reconciling them to new updates) to not get sucked in.

I wouldn’t put it in as strong a terms but directionally, I think we agree that Brave isn’t the strongest possible alternative to Google Chrome. I don’t think it is invalid to include it in a conversation about alternative browsers to Google Chrome that aren’t Firefox, nor is the use of Chromium sufficient criteria to disqualify alternatives.

That said, I do have a general preference for browsers that aren’t Chromium-based as well.

It’s so frustrating to me that the Brave boosters can’t seem to fathom that I don’t want a “better ad experience.” I want a /”no-ad experience.”/

It's equally frustrating to me that some people don't seem to realize that you can opt-out (once, at initial setup) and have a completely ad-free experience.

It's the same kind of iterative creep of compromises on privacy that initially raised alarms with Mozilla, which culminated in Mozilla's "don't be evil" moment (or, their, erm, not-"don't be evil" moment).

You can opt out now while they are trying to gain market share. Honestly everyone on here should know this game by now. There is no such thing as "free" product made by a for-profit corporation.

That's what a lot of us have. Brave's own ad systems are opt-in, and a majority of users don't opt-in. It's a minority that are interested in the crypto features. I just left the crypto stuff off, hid the icons and have a degoogled Chromium with strong adblock and some nice quality of life extras.

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