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The shady world of Brave selling copyrighted data for AI training
(stackdiary.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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I use it as my main browser and I honestly can't go back to Firefox, but I really dislike some parts of it and of it's community. The browser itself is fast, its default ad-blocker is awesome and there are a couple functionnalities that are nice to see, like Tor integration. But they block ads to show you their ads instead, that you cannot block even if you deactivate the "Brave Rewards". The whole reward system in BAT is kind of shady; they need to authenticate you before you can withdraw anything and it's worth peanuts anyway. When I complained about those issues on reddit, I got answers that looked like they were produced by sect members, and it wasn't even on a related sub.
I really despise Firefox because (checks notes) I, uhh... love giving Google hegemony over web standards?
Sure, I can, but it would be a hassle and I'm kind of comfortable with what I have now. The first thing that hit me when I tried to get back to firefox (a couple weeks ago) was actually the time to load a page. It felt long compared to what I am use to. Sure it's anecdotic, but I opened a game called factoryidle that ran capped at 200 fps on Brave, it was only at 70-80 fps on Firefox. The adblocker I had installed was also inferior to Brave's. I guess it may be due to some extensions or I don't know, but something was wrong and I didn't want to do the effort to fix it.
It's like I want to believe, but as you say, I'm too lazy. I will try Ungoogled Chromium since you recommand it.
I am forever a Firefox fan but Chromium is just faster on all my devices. Chrome without Google is great.
Can I ask where you see Brave ads? I deactivated everything and haven't seen any of their own ads
If you use Brave News (to display a RSS feed), you get "news" about Brave's functionnalities. They appear as any other widget in your feed, but are marked as "Advertisement" on the upper right corner. Here is an example from my feed : https://imgur.com/a/RJV2Px2 .
Looks like it's not the case anymore, but when I opened a new tab, some time ago, I used to get ads from Binance or other cryptocurrencies exchanges displayed as "cards" on the right of the window. Right now, I only get "cards" showing about "Brave Talks" or rewards, but it used to be advertisement about other products, such as Binance or other cryptocurrency company.
I can't reproduce it right now, but some "new tab" backgrounds are (or were) also advertisement for crypto-related products.
There was also a controversy some time ago where they were injecting their own referral link when you typed a cryptocurrency exchange's URL on the search bar : https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caught-adding-its-own-referral-codes-to-some-cryptcurrency-trading-sites/ . They stopped after it got viral.
At least they are tagging their ads as such, but it's weird how you can't block any of it when they decide it's there.
I see, thanks for explaining. I used to get ads on every other new tab, but found that I could disable that in the Customize menu. I've only been using Brave for a few months, but it's been a really good experience as it's been the fastest browser for me, especially for maps. I still use Librewolf as well, which I highly recommend. I am privacy-focused, but honestly this article doesn't deter me from using the browser and it seems like a lot of the comments here didn't read the article or don't understand that Brave Browser is different from Brave Search. I've been happy with Duck Duck Go for years, so I don't use Brave Search.
Brave ads are opt-in.
At some point you opted-in.
If you don't like it, then next time opt-out now or don't opt-in next time.
I opted out and I still see ads. That's the problem.