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.
I don't see why making money needs to be at all a part of using a piece of software. The only transaction that potentially needs to take place is paying for the software up front.
Same with social media sites like whatever BlueSky or Posts is doing. Why is money involved?
Would you pay for a browser upfront?
Yes, if it avoided this headache of ads, spyware and any other intrusive monetization. I'd pay for any category of software I wanted to use for this reason. Which is how software used to be sold before people got used to not paying for anything upfront and instead paid for it in hidden data harvesting.
Would you pay for each update as well? It's not MS Word where you can still be using Word 97. You need constant updates.
Usually the up front cost of the software would fund some number of years of updates. Then after that you would pay for a new version.
Sounds like a subscription would make more sense. Which exists BTW, there are subscription browsers.
Problem is, having loads of people using an outdated browser because they don't want to pay for updates could cause problems for everyone. Browsers need to be kept up to date.
Except the browser isn't the only thing that needs to have revenue, websites also do, so buying a browser upfront doesn't negate the need for ads
I'd pay for a browser upfront if free solutions didn't already exist.
That's the problem though, isn't it. Free solutions do exist, so browser makers have to find other ways to monetize
There are plenty of free, open sourced, browsers that don't monetize their users.
It doesn't...?
When you install Brave the crypto is opt-in, and to hide it permanently is literally 2 clicks.
The fact it's there in the first place should be enough to use something else.
I'm also tired of Firefox's bullshit pushing sponsored websites and Pocket and (before) injecting an extension to everyone to sponsor Mr. Robot.
But I don't see you complaining about that.
I'm not complaining about that because that's not what this post is about. I haven't heard about these controversies and I don't use stock Firefox anyway.
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.
Yeah! Not sure why you get paid to work the only transaction that potentially needs to take place is paying for your work up front.
Why is money involved?
I don't know what you are trying to say here. I'll do my best to explain my point.
When I go to use a browser I have never had the expectation that I should be earning money for doing so. I do not believe this is a use case that most people have had. Similarly with some of these new Twitter clones like BlueSky you can send people money for some reason. Again, this is not a use case that I expect from a social media platform. The transfer of money to myself or to other users in these scenarios does not make a lot of sense.
Where is does make sense to have money involved is paying for software.