this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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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.

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[–] url@feddit.fr 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I personally don't use or like it. But nowadays I see it installed to people's phone. Which is thousand times better than chrome.
People around me are too Brain washed to understand " install a Firefox based Browser and install Ublock origin "

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

There aren’t as many good options on iOS.

[–] doleo@lemmy.one 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There aren’t ~~as many~~ any good options on iOS.

[–] limer@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

Which is why I use OP browser, even if it’s evil, to look at some news sites and YouTube. For other things I do not use it. I assume they do bad things to my browser and have a bad opinion of the management there

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Orion is great. You can install Firefox extensions on it, and use the full desktop version of uBlock Origin if you'd like. Hell you can install Chromium extensions as well, if you for whatever reason feel the need to have those gutted useless things.

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Thanks, haven’t tried it, but certainly will!

Edit:

Yeah, it’s great! Guess I’ll make this my daily driver instead of Brave now.