I Switched to Brave Browser After Firefox Frustrations
After nearly a year of complaining about Firefox and Mozilla's AI strategy, I tried Vivaldi but found it too cluttered. I installed Brave, hid its crypto and AI features, and now everything works as expected on Ubuntu and Android. The UI is simple and dark mode switching works. Despite founder Brendan Eich's controversial views, I plan to keep using Brave as my primary browser.
But Brave is objectively a good piece of software that does what I need it to do, and does it well.
- glenstein
I knew the "elephant in the room" section of the article was coming before I started reading... but then it wasn't even about the right thing! The other different, bigger, angrier, elephant in the room is about Brave being YACB (Yet Another Chromium Browser). A browser built on the Chromium project is riding on top of that elephant trying to tell it where to go.
I think Google created a "moat" in terms of hyperaccelerating browser development with disproportionate firepower that nobody else could keep up with. And one potential non-terrible use of AI might be diminishing that moat and with it Google's ability to steer the whole web into their ecosystem. So if you want to be an optimist maybe that's a silver lining that will grow with time.
- montroser
> I had some messing around to do up front, like hiding all the crypto and AI nonsense...
Switching to Brave from Firefox due to AI and ethical concerns seems like a lateral move at best if being generous.
- mjorgers
It may be better in the shorter term, but using yet another Chromium based browser doesn't really improve the current situation with Google's browser monopoly. I'm personally using Firefox Nightly, and so far it has served me well.
- atraac
Also been using Brave for a while. All the crypto stuff needs to be turned off but besides that for me, it's just better Chrome. Firefox always felt slower to me, Safari is just a weird kid from the neighborhood I could never get to like. I LOVED Arc. I think its a near perfect browser, but lack of proper mobile browser and Browser Company dropping Arc in favor of the new rebranded Arc with AI just left me with distrust. Brave just works, I can use it on all my devices, OSes, I can have uBlock Origin on it and vertical tabs. I don't really need anything else at this point.
- drnick1
I won't be using Brave until it is built and packaged by a mainstream Linux distribution, following a process I can trust. I absolutely do not trust Brave's binaries. The company has a history of deceiving users (it was caught injecting affiliate links) and is openly hostile to forks, very ironically. The fact that it comes bundled with crapware is concerning enough.
- Cider9986
Brave is the only Chromium browser recommended by Privacy Guides which is why I chose it. It has a good update schedule and I never have problems with ads.
Once I set it up, it's been just a clean, ad-free browser. Based on Little Snitch, which is free on Linux, like Brave Origin, Brave has a clean list of default connections.
While Firefox may be considering shipping Brave shields for ad block, wouldn't Brave be more opposing to Google's monopoly considering it blocks their business model? Firefox is funded by Google and has bad privacy by default. It connects to Google servers when you first set it up.
- Trannosaur
Isn't the problem with Brave, even after his departure that they keep making suss decisions? Over and over and over? Like they can keep apologising but if they keep making suss anti-privacy decisions, well, they can't really be trusted can they?
- yipinwong
nowadays, it's just one thing that catches one's interest that sticks.
I use edge sometimes, chrome once in awhile, FF etc.
Never do I use brave ever because one incident I forgot about (not about the founder), and it was good enough reason not to go back.