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.
Money is involved because people want to make a living off of their project. Also, every major browser has been backed with huge amounts of funding because supporting a browser is very difficult.
That said, that doesn’t mean every browser project is good, either. Just that it’s reasonable to see why people would want to get income from their work.
PS the Brave CEO sucks so I’m not sympathizing with him here.
This person was talking about the making money aspect (the rewards program) in the browser, not the browser itself making money off their users. At least that’s what I believe they were talking about.
Indeed. I am curious about why it needs to be there at all even as an opt-in. Some thought process went into implementing it into the browser in the first place. Did this solve any problem someone had? I am actually curious and actually do not understand.
Oh I see. Not sure what they mean by “pay once”, that was what made me think it was about buying software.