[TheRoque]

I have a serious question about Brave. I would be glad to use it, but I am a bit scared of the fat that it is linked to a crypto (I didn't dive in the tokenomics, but maybe the team is driven by the money ? or other shady things ?), and also the fact that I go ads for this browser. Getting an ad for the browser make me question: what are their incentives ? Why would they invest money to attract people ? What is their business model ? The fact that it's a for-profit, just like the other browsers (except Firefox), make me think that they might push things for money, not for the users despite all their claims of being so focused on the user safety, privacy etc.

[rvnx]

Most likely: You will become their product that’s it. Be sold as part of their audience and then crypto-bros can invest into you and search advertisers will get you watching their ads so you will eventually invest into a token + have your local browsing history analyzed + your searches spied by their search engine (but it won’t be Google they promise, and they will keep their promise).

At the origin, Brave was supposed to be an adware that replaces the ads of the website with theirs.

Just pick your poison but all browser developers need money to live.

The only way to be sure a browser works in your best interest would be if you accept to pay, and nobody wants to do that.

See what has happened with Neeva.

[ksey3]

I have the wallet/bat token stuff turned off. Its not even turned on when you install Brave.

The main reason I moved to Brave is Firefox's bizarre updating model on Ubuntu which causes it to randomly shutdown all the time. Plus on Android, brave just blocks a ton off ads, that firefox doesn't without extensions and fiddling about.

[heinrich5991]

Is it Firefox's bizarre updating model or Ubuntu's bizarre updating model? On my Arch, Firefox updates work fine.

[bjord]

I have it installed via flatpak (on Pop!_OS), which turns off auto-updates, and gives me full control over when updates happen

[jadamson]

The crypto element is entirely optional and can be hidden with two tickboxes. Maybe they'll start pushing it harder, at which point someone will come along and fork it, and I'll have to copy my bookmarks over to the New Thing. It's an eternal cycle.

[pbhjpbhj]

The crypto feature is a way to allow web content to be paid for, but it's super easy to turn off.

From my perspective it seems that the current FF CEO basically did a hostile takeover of Firefox, that involved maximising their personal wages. Firefox is absolutely for profit, the $millions the CEO takes is ridiculous. I read that they got a personal stipend from Google too, but I've not been able to confirm that. Maybe you're confusing them with the Mozilla Foundation. The way they structure things so you can't donate to engineering on Firefox is skeevy, far worse than a system designed to enable content owners to get paid.

I was a supporter/promoter of FF for 18 years, fwiw.