this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
1439 points (91.3% liked)

Privacy

31958 readers
1030 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
1439
Please, do not use Brave. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 

I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.

Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.

Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.

After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL's. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.

Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I'd say the answer is a very clear no.

One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.

Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don't mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Of course it is! But Peter Thiel isn't bipartisan, so idk what that has to do with his involvement in Brave. He self-identifies as far-right. Not leftist, liberal, or independent. And since we're talking specifically about Brave and Thiel, I don't really care about whataboutism in this context.

[โ€“] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago

I don't see how you can acknowledge this being relevant but also consider it whataboutism, those seem like opposite positions. If it is whataboutism, that's a claim that it isn't relevant. It is relevant because partisan affiliation is not a reliable predictor of how someone will approach this issue, which matters for whether considering it in this context makes sense.