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by mcint 1119 days ago
Brave's encroachments can be turned off. On a new install, I disable the search bar Rewards icon, extensions area Wallet, and new tab page Sponsored Images, News, and Cards. (And maybe others still). Each of these requires active engagement from a user to produce and signal for a 3rd party.

Meanwhile, they also fund novel privacy and security research [1], including preventing advanced fingerprinting. In essence, the maintain a patch set on top of Chromium (the open source base of Chrome, that Edge also builds on) which more convincingly respects user privacy, security, and choice[2][3][4]. See how much effort they put into keeping Brave Ads convincingly private [5].

Each of these is less intrusive than changes (to stay recent and relevant) include direct partnership for promotions [6].

Or to base beliefs on a series of news reports that sound bad, see a longer list [7], though it's quite noisy list.

[1]: https://brave.com/research/

[2]: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/14942

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_Learning_of_Cohorts

[4]: https://brave.com/why-brave-disables-floc/

[5]: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Bra...

[6]: https://itsfoss.com/firefox-looking-glass-controversy/

[7]: https://chefkochblog.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/mozilla-histor...