[BLKNSLVR]

I've been using Brave for a good couple of years, and the only ads I see are when I open a new, fresh tab, and I don't find that it gets in my way at all. I open a new tab to immediately put an address into the navbar.

Most of the "new tab" ads are pictures, and any branding is generally way down the bottom, a screen's depth away from the navbar where my attention goes.

I'm relatively militantly anti-advertising and I barely notice it (but maybe I'm losing my edge - no pun intended).

[pennybanks]

brave is the most shady. at least google microsoft tells you while they spy on you. brave has:

installed a vpn with a running service without telling its window users in an update. also made it reinstall every update until they got called out and users kept complainiong. i mean they did eventually..

if you use brave search without the brave browser they would turn on on the send analytics option back on no matter what you do. ofc this was in secret like after you reopened the browser etc. every other setting would save.

the most popular privacy browser comparing site is owned by a brave employee. it was almost impossible to find this disclosure but they since have made it a bit more easier to spot. still the way they do tests is pretty sus. like testing out the box when they know they have a blocker and certain important settings on

etc etc. i mean i guess its not so surprising their job is hiding thing.

i used to use brave. even when i switched off i used brave search default. but the fact i couldnt turn off analytics, or more so they fact they made it look like i could turn it off made me never lose the last amount of respect i had for those guys. i mean i dont even care about privacy anymore really, i use edge. its just the shadiness that turns me off

[aftbit]

>militantly anti-advertisting

>I see [ads] when I open a new, fresh tab

These two things don't seem to go together. I open a new tab >100 times a day. I'm not willing to even see recent sites there, let alone ads! My Firefox new tab page is literally blank.

[BLKNSLVR]

I literally do not notice it, for me it's equivalent to a blank page. Maybe I've trained myself to ignore it, but that's where I am.

There's no movement or sound, and it doesn't get in the way when all I'm doing is creating a new tab to then chuck a URL into the navbar and load up the page.

[thesuitonym]

Brave is “militantly anti-advertising” because it hides everyone else’s ads to make room for its own.

[kerkeslager]

Well, you just described the definition of adware--your defense of it is that it's easy-to-ignore adware?

[BLKNSLVR]

I barely even notice it and it doesn't slow me down in any way. That works for me.

If that's where Internet advertising settles, then I might actually be OK with that. And there's plenty that I'm a long way from OK with.

[kerkeslager]

I mean, that's your prerogative, but why settle for ads at all? Especially from a browsers that blocks ads from advertisers who don't pay them?

[professor_v]

So what's a good alternative for Android and Windows/Linux usage? I've tried Opera, Vivaldi and Firefox and disliked them for one reason or another.

[consteval]

Honestly, firefox.

I've had numerous performance and memory issues with Firefox but from my testing over the years it's the closest to Chrome/Chromium you can get.

Also Firefox gets new features fairly regularly. It's still an "innovative" browser, as opposed to Chromium which is mostly stagnant. Vertical tabs are pretty cool.

Personally, I just got to like Firefox over time.

[BLKNSLVR]

Tell you what, I'm going have a crack at Firefox as my primary. It used to be a long while ago, not really sure when / why I switched.

It is more true to my ideals.

[scottyeager]

You can disable those. There's a few options for the new tab screen--I just use a solid color.