this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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tldr:
I think this is making mountains out of molehills. My understanding is that he had a very good working relationship w/ LGBTQ people in the org, and he had been working for many years at Mozilla before this point. The issue was his private donations to an anti-same sex marriage initiative. He didn't push for any company policy change, didn't advertise the donation, and didn't use company funds (used personal funds), so it really shouldn't be anyone's business.
I personally disagree with his political views, but I think he was a fantastic candidate for CEO of Mozilla. How he votes or spends his personal money shouldn't be relevant at all.
I like this idea in principle, but not in implementation. Brave should have worked with major websites to share revenue, but what Brave actually did was remove website ads and insert its own, forcing websites to go claim BAT to get any of that revenue back.
My preference here is to not use a cryptocurrency and instead have users pay in their local currency into a bucket to not see ads (and that's shared w/ the website), and that should be in collaboration w/ website owners.
This is a big nothing-burger.
Basically, Brave had a way to donate to a creator that wasn't affiliated with the creator. The way it works is you could donate (using BAT), and once it got to $100 worth, Brave would reach out to the creator to give them the money. They adjusted the wording to make it clear they weren't affiliated with the creator in any way.
Yeah, this is totally wrong, and they reversed course immediately.
Not a fan, but at least you can opt-out.
Mistakes happen. If you truly need the anonymity, you would have multiple layers of defense (i.e. change your default DNS server) and probably not use something like Brave anyway (Tor Browser is the gold standard here).
Also a bad move, though I am sympathetic to their reasoning here: they just don't have the resources to get permission from everyone. Search has a huge barrier to entry, and I'm in favor of more competition to Google and Microsoft here.
This was for better UX, since it broke sites. Not a fan of removing this, they should have instead had a big warning when enabling this (e.g. many sites will break if you enable this).
Fair, but that should be a separate consideration from whether to use a given product. Using Brave doesn't make you a right-wing dick.
You probably wouldn't like the CEO of any company whose products you like, so basing a decision of what product to use based on that is... dumb.
I personally use Brave as a backup browser, for two reasons:
My primary browser is something based on Firefox because I value rendering-engine competition. But if I need a chromium-based browser, Brave is my go-to. I disable the crypto nonsense and keep ad-blocking on, and it's generally pretty usable.
Using software made by people who are politically aligned to sell out your country to russia is stupid stupid stupid and makes you an idiot, idiot, idiot.
Its not just politics when the politics are treason and electing a kgb asset. In a normal country and time it wouldn't be a big thing wether your browser maintainer wants feee public transit or not but in current time right wing means you literally voted to destroy the entire us in order to weaken nato for the russian invasion.
It sounds like you need to step away from social media and touch some grass.
But let's say you're right, pretty much every big company is sucking up to Trump, and you'd be hard pressed to find something in your shopping cart that doesn't benefit someone that supports him. That's an untenable position.
The better approach, IMO, is to avoid products from companies that mistreat their employees. That's why I avoid Walmart, Amazon, and a few others, because that sends a clearer message and funnels my money to a better cause.
Avoiding Brave is just virtue signaling, it doesn't actually accomplish anything. If Brave goes under, Eich will still be conservative and probably still donate to causes you don't like, but we'll have one less competitor to Google's absolute hegemony over the web browser market.
Use Brave if it solves your problems, don't if it doesn't. Don't base that decision on the personal views of the person who happens to be in charge.
Brave isn't a competitor to Google, it's an enabler. It uses the same engine, which is all Google cares about: Their engine, their internet.
It absolutely is a competitor. Yes, it uses the same engine, but it blocks their ads. And at the end of the day, serving ads is what Google wants to do.
But again, Firefox (and forks) is my main browser, and it's what I recommend to everyone. But Brave is on my list of acceptable Chromium browsers, assuming you need a Chromium browser (I do for web dev at my day job).
Which means nothing, when Google can, and is, pushing technology to freely unleash their ad network on all web pages, as a function of the engine itself.
No, it's not a competitor. Excepting in their ad markets, and frankly, it's not a competitor, it's a statistical blip.
AFAIK, there's nothing in Blink (the rendering engine), V8 (the JavaScript run engine), or any other low level pieces of the browser that does this. What they're doing is hamstringing extensions and building in a layer of tracking into the browser on top of the engine. A fork can absolutely keep the engine bits and remove the tracking bits.
The problem with Chrome's hegemony over the rendering engine has nothing to do with their ad network, but with their ability to steer people to use their products instead of competitors' (e.g. "Google Docs is faster on Chrome, switch today!" just because they introduced a chrome-only spec extension).
Brave absolutely is a competitor. They block Google's ads, have their own search engine (and are building their own index), and provide a privacy friendly alternative to Chrome without any compatibility issues. That's why it's my backup to Firefox (and forks), sometimes things don't work properly on Gecko and I want a privacy-friendly alternative to chrome. That used to be Chromium w/ uBlock Origin, but with that extension taken from the chrome web store, I reach for Brave, which has it built in.
And yeah, it doesn't have a ton of users. That doesn't mean they're not a competitor though.
My take: No other browser is sustainable without advertising. Orion looks to be that guy, but we will see. We've already seen many other browsers stop development, like Mull and LibreWolf, due to lack of resources. Firefox itself is on the chopping block with Google potentially being forced to sell Chrome. We'll see what Kagi is able to manage with Orion, though releasing it with pretty much all the features one could want for free doesn't appear promising. I think taking a "private advertising" approach is the best we're going to get. This makes Brave sustainable.
The CEO is a dick, no doubt, but they pretty much all are, and every browser has it's drawbacks.
As far as the useragent, I kinda agree with Brave on that one. Sites want to be crawled by Google but they will block anyone else, which obviously creates an anticompetitive environment in an industry that severely needs competition.
As for the fingerprinting, I kinda get it. I'm sure some users were turning on strict protection and then complaining about the browser not working properly and ultimately ditching it while complaining to others. That being said, even with "standard" fingerprint blocking, Brave is the only browser I've used on CoverYourTracks and it returned "you have a randomized fingerprint". I'm not any sort of tech genius but I think the folks at EFF are and I trust them.
My take: We can have an open source browser. No resources are required. We don't need ads to view content we make. There is no need for a megacorp or any entity taking money and controlling us.
Most browsers are already open source. They're all funded by advertising (except Safari which is a whole other problem).
Are you planning to imagine it into existence?
When you find one that has some sort of sustainable model that isn't advertising, please let me know. I'll be all over it.
Okay are you ready?
The model:
I don't think you understand. It would take you time to do that. A whole lot of time. Probably thousands of hours. Time is what's known as a "resource".
I understood perfectly, your claim is that it takes advertisement. Not time. And nobody has said it doesn't take time.
You very clearly did not and still do not.
Somehow you managed to gloss over the only point of my statement while also simultaneously fabricating things that I never said anything about.
You said "no resources are required". As I've just finished mentioning, time is a resource.
Wait, what?
Two things:
When did Librewolf stop development?
On funding, they say in their FAQ:
Librewolf seems to very consciously not looking for "resources" from advertising or donations, or etc. The only resource they seem to want is motivation.
Which I think is one of the big issues with OSS projects - many are based around a very small number of people being motivated to work on something for free. And it dies if that stops.
I think that having expectations and funding to continue is important, like you say.
But I'm still confused about what you mean by the "resources" comment re: Librewolf.
https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/issues/1906
"Hey all, I'm on the LibreWolf team, and it's true that since the departure of @fxbrit the project has taken a total nosedive when it comes to keeping up to date with Arkenfox and settings in general. We're still making releases, but settings did not get updated."
"As @threadpanic said, since fxbrit left we have been in a kind of "maintenance" mode in terms of settings. Mainly because we are really only three people left"
"LW since fxbrit left/died/who-knows has gone to shit - I worked with him behind the scenes to make the right choices and while he would do his own analysis, we always agreed, and his voice influenced them. Now they don't know what they are doing, and in fact have compromised security and make really stupid decisions. Same goes for all the other forks - really dubious shit going"
Exactly.
"Resources" can refer to many different things, in this case it is motivation/prioritization.
Thanks.
I can somewhat understand the overall criticism, because Librewolf - as far as my understanding goes - would be in trouble without the work being done on the code upstream.
Personally, I know that this does not exist (yet), and to some people that put privacy above everything else with a more libertarian slant, this might sound like the worst option imaginable, but my "dream" way to handle it within the current economic system would be:
Have an open source, FOSS base, web-engine and all, developed with public funds similar to public broadcasting in many countries (Bonus if carried by international organisations instead of just national. Think a UN institution like UNESCO or WHO, but focused on making the internet accessible neutrally and to all). On top of that code, projects that want to put privacy above all else could still feasibly built projects like LibreWolf (an even Brave), relying somewhat comfortably on secure fundamentals.
I know, sounds like a dream, which it is at this point. But every other solution within the current economic status quo I personally thin of, I see no chance of enshittification not always encroaching and creating crises, if not outright taking over.
But that didn't answer my questions
Oh, yes, it wasn't a direct answer, also, I'm not the person you answered to. Ultimately, my comment was more meant as an overall addition to the discussion, building on the idea of what a solution to:
might be.
But as answers to your two points. #1 - I have no idea where they got that from, myself #2 - I think you answered that one yourself rather well, and I wanted to build on that one.
Sorry if that was confusing, my brain is also good at confusing myself at times, can't imagine how that is for others at times.
I missed you weren't the person I responded to. Thank you.