[sph]

There's none, to be quite honest.

Chrome is spyware, Edge is spyware, Brave has too many crypto sponsor for my liking, Firefox is going off a cliff, Vivaldi is the definition of bloat.

The web browser ecosystem is frankly appalling, and it's so complicated it's impossible for new competitors to appear and improve the status quo. We just have to put up with it, and I am furious Mozilla, one of the shining beacons on that landscape, now is sitting idle redesigning the UI just to justify their existence.

I use Edge, with custom scripts to turn off as much phoning home as possible, and it's still bad.

[ALittleLight]

To my knowledge the crypto rewards feature on Brave is opt-in. How is that an argument against Brave?

[hunterb123]

Notice how Brave had the weakest reasoning. A little talking point about crypto pushes it away, even though it's the only browser actually taking privacy seriously, not just as a marketing technique. Safari comes in second, but Apple actively cripples it due to the threat of PWA breaking the walled garden.

You have to opt-in to Brave marketing like you mentioned. It allows people to earn BAT if they want to, so they can tip site owners. Better than ads right? The only other complaint is the home screen where you can buy crypto and they get an affiliate payout, which is how they make money. That can be disabled and have you seen the default home screen of Edge? Its news is just ads and paid campaigns.

Brave also supports more protocols like IPFS, Web torrent, and Tor, its telling other browsers don't.

The power of propaganda is strong. The GP uses Edge that he knows is spyware and doesn't even consider Brave because one little talking point that simply gets summed up as "crypto".

[Adrig]

Was the affiliation links inserted in the browser opt-in? Was the unethical business model to show custom ads in place of existing ones an accident? Or the crappy marketing campaign to lure content creators into their ecosystem by playing on ambiguous terms?

I own cryptos, I like cryptos, but the team behind Brave has proven to be scammy and unethical.

[hunterb123]

> Was the affiliation links inserted in the browser opt-in

I believe it was a mistake that it wasn't, and it was quickly made opt-in.

I think it's more scummy that Mozilla makes money from having Google as the default search engine, a still active campaign.

> Was the unethical business model to show custom ads in place of existing ones an accident?

As far as I know that's a lie, did they ever replace ads with blocked ads? Brave ads are text notifications, not banner ads.

> Or the crappy marketing campaign to lure content creators into their ecosystem by playing on ambiguous terms?

Nice word salad, doesn't mean much. Which marketing campaign, how are they luring, how are terms ambiguous, please expand.

> but the team behind Brave has proven to be scammy and unethical.

Yeah that's the punchline of the propaganda, but you should provide better reasoning if you want to convince anyone.

Your scale of ethics comparing browser companies is extremely inconsistent.

[Adrig]

>I believe it was a mistake that it wasn't, and it was quickly made opt-in.

Sure it wasn't. And if you think having Mozilla getting paid for their default search worse than trying to profit off affiliate marketing, we really have different views on the world.

>As far as I know that's a lie, did they ever replace ads with blocked ads? Brave ads are text notifications, not banner ads.

That's still hypocrite. You block off every ads on the internet, but still display your own. Your business model is still based on the "watchtime" but you forbid actual content creators to benefit from it. It was the same thing with adblock plus. Having a stance against ads is one thing, relying on them while blocking the whole internet of their revenue is a dick move.

>Which marketing campaign, how are they luring, how are terms ambiguous, please expand.

They accept donations for creators without their consent. It is now clear on the module when a creator has no account yet to receive the tips but at launch it wasn't the case. They lured users into donating and used this money to contact creators and try to leverage the generosity of their community to bring them on board. That's quite a low growth hacking tactic.

Don't worry about my consistency, I think I'm alright.

[hunterb123]

> Sure it wasn't. And if you think having Mozilla getting paid for their default search worse than trying to profit off affiliate marketing, we really have different views on the world.

Google paying Mozilla for search engine referrals is the definition of affiliate marketing. And you can choose to believe it was some plot to sneak through after they reversed it, it's unfounded. Mozilla still doesn't inform the user of their affiliate deal.

(edit: also listen to yourself, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28783639)

> That's still hypocrite. You block off every ads on the internet, but still display your own. Your business model is still based on the "watchtime" but you forbid actual content creators to benefit from it. It was the same thing with adblock plus. Having a stance against ads is one thing, relying on them while blocking the whole internet of their revenue is a dick move.

That's a different accusation after you tried to state your lie. Brave has an opt-in text notification rewards program.

It's common to run ad blockers in other browsers because ads have become so intrusive. Yes you should subscribe, donate, etc. if you frequent a website, but you shouldn't have to view ads against your will.

Brave has that adblocking built in for the user foremost. The rewards network is to allow those who need to block ads to donate to the website owner instead. When you use FireFox and uBlock, you don't have the option if that site owner doesn't have a PayPal etc.

> They accept donations for creators without their consent. It is now clear on the module when a creator has no account yet to receive the tips but at launch it wasn't the case. They lured users into donating and used this money to contact creators and try to leverage the generosity of their community to bring them on board. That's quite a low growth hacking tactic.

> They accept donations for creators without their consent.

If they don't create a wallet and accept the funds are returned to the donor, Brave doesn't keep it.

[lifepillar]

You may be interested in this analysis: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf

[cookiengineer]

You forgot Opera. /s these days Opera feels like trying to rebrand its ecosystem into dozens of skins for the same Chromium. "Opera Gaming Browser"... srsly?

Sadly most of my favorite "tiny" browsers all have switched away from webkit and are either dead or an electron based UI now.

I'm concerned that libchromium is eating the world :-/

[soundnote]

Would be wiser to use Brave and turn the crypto stuff off. Better privacy, though less UI fanciness.

[Ageodene]

The crypto stuff in Brave is opt-in to begin with.

[marto1]

I feel like the 2000s internet would've just split off and made their own thing(e.g. new protocol) in this situation. But it seems we've passed the inertia barrier for things like that.

[birtoise]

You can turn off crypto sponsors on brave. God cant ppl read anynore?