Brave is essentially just Chrome with an adblocker, a bunch of bloatware, and a bunch of controversies.
Brave took BAT donations in YouTuber’s names without their consent, with them keeping the money if the YouTubers didn’t claim it. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-browser-no-longer-claims-to-fundraise-on-behalf-of-others-so-thats-nice/
Brave’s search engine crawler hides itself from websites by pretending to be Googlebot, and Meta (Facebook) buys API access from them to train their AI. https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/
The business model of Brave rewards as a whole is to block all other ad networks to replace them with their own, which is unfair as only YouTubers and websites that have joined can make money from most Brave users.
If Brave actually cared, they would create an acceptable ads style feature which was free for everyone and allowed simple contextual banners while blocking ads which track you, take up most of the page, or have NSFW content.
Their approach is monopolistic as they have full control and can strangle YouTubers and websites by dropping pay at any time.
And Brenden Eich has said on Twitter that he plans to release “Brave Origin”, which is a paid version of Brave without the bloatware. That name is ironic as he is admitting that his browser is commercialised and bloated, which is similar to when gorhill gave uBlock way to Chris Aljoudi who commercialised it, which led him to create uBlock Origin.
If you use Brave, ditch it and look at using Librewolf or Helium instead, which both include no ads nor tracking and don’t have Brave News, Rewards, Wallet, Talk etc bloatware.
I am pretty set with Firefox in Android and desktop to be honest.
I cringe a little when users praise Brave as being the best ad-less YouTube solution (especially android users since we have revanced here!), no bro, there is no way using the web version of YT is better than revanced, or any other apps on mobile.
been using firefox since before it was called firefox, and netscape before that. while i do use ‘other’ browsers, too, their use is limited to testing and a few select sites or purposes only (for instance, i use a ‘portable’ opera for mail, and only mail).
On iOS it might be though, because there’s no revanced and browsers can’t have plugins so the only way to adblock is to use a browser that bakes it in.
This means (afaik) Brave, DuckDuckGo or Opera. IME adblocking for youtube specifically is patchy with Opera, can’t speak for DuckDuckGo.
Or just don’t use iOS. I don’t much but we have an iPad for occasional use
Orion on iOS has support for both Chrome and Firefox extensions. So you can use uBlock Origins directly. It’s made by the same developers as the search engine Kagi.
Only downside is that it doesn’t sync with Firefox, if you use that on your desktop.
And now Morphe too, continuation of the revanced project, and it’s acually really good i have to say
Their shields AdBlock is very good though, it’s done in ram in a memory safe way, arguably doing it through an extension like ublock is not great. I can’t wait until a project facelifts shields and puts it on top of an unbloated security focused chromium (or Firefox grows some balls and builds it in). Vanadium pls 🥺
Firefox is becoming a shitty ai browser now. Consider waterfox or librewolf
Or even Firedragon which is a fork of both librewolf and floorp, best browser i have ever used! I recommend trying it out.