The bad news is, if you're not on Team Tux, you're going to have to pay $60 for Brave Origin. Granted, you only need to buy it once, and you'll get unlimited activations across all of your devices.
It's amazing people still believe this BS.
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
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Yet people keep recommending products by this scummy company and pile on Firefox for slightest missteps.
Alternatives being even worse doesn't make firefox good, or invalidate any objective criticism against it.
Mozilla should be scrutinized, even if Firefox is currently the best option.
I think the only think keeping them inline is loud community backlash everytime them make one of those misssteps.
Sorry man, but the minute Firefox added that keylogger, I dipped.
Firefox rendering engine is dogshit and they are massively behind.
This coming from someone that was using Netscape and Mozilla and Firefox since its release.
best
least worst
People dont seem to be scrutinizing though. Its genuinely unhinged and often completely misinformed. They will jump on a single line of a legal text and use it to springboard into a world of scenarios even when Mozilla is saying its not true.
It doesnt help improve the product it just makes people think all products are bad and fallback to whatever the comfortable majority is which is chrome.
Who cares it's a corporation, it doesn't have feelings. Anything to keep these corpos in line.
Sometimes corporations lie.
It's not being unhinged to say you don't like something. And the way that Mozilla is embracing "AI" is not welcomed.
They removed the paw, they are worse than Chrome! I'm going to use an alternative version that cannot exist without the main project to teach them a lesson!
Brave has always been a joke. And Brave users will always be a joke. And anyone who’s ever simped for Brave will always be a moron.
Eh, I use it for watching youtube.
For some reason (likely youtube fighting my adblockers) I get tons of errors and issues with youtube on firefox. But Brave works alright, and also blocks the ads. So it's my dedicated youtube browser.
never had issues with firefox and ublock origin and youtube and whatever and neither on android, linux, windows or whatsoever. guess i am just not dumb enough
Rude. But not inaccurate. Brave pretends to be better than Chrome and Google, but also Mozilla and Firefox at the same time, though Firefox has always done it better and has never contributed to the chromium monopoly. Greed over diversification of the Web and competition between browser engines to effect real change. The least Brave could do is make their own engine.
Rude. But not inaccurate.
This comment section is a great example of tribalism. The topic of web browsers always is for some weird reason.
Fuck that leaky browser. Asshole development.
Reminds me of a joke:
My dad always warned us about Septic Tank Steve, and that we should never pay him to do anything, and we should have listened. One day Steve came by and said if we gave him a nickel, he'd swim around in the septic tank. We thought that was hilarious, so we gave him a nickel, and he swam around the tank a while. Then he came and sat next to us on the porch and said "If you want me to leave, gimme $100."
Brave lets people use Origin for free if they're on Linux
lol
Brave thinks its users are suckers
Its founder and CEO thinks that gay people shouldn't have rights, too.
To be fair.....most of the general population are indeed suckers.
To be fair, brave users are suckers
I don't use Brave, but one correction. From the article: "Brave sells Origin to strip added features—a $60 one-time fee (free on Linux). "
Brave thinks its Windows and OSX users are suckers, not its Linux users apparently.
Can we agree that Brave:
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Is scummy.
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Has a shady ceo, and a shady history.
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Is possibly a security risk.
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Is still orders of magnitude better than using Google Chrome.
And that:
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This headline is both true and clickbait-ish.
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You can turn these things off in Brave’s settings, for free.
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That doesn’t make this feature not scummy.
Basically no one should be using Brave, but no one should be using Google Chrome either, yet here we are.
And the revolving door of “best unabandoned Chromium fork to use” (Helium for the moment, or Ungoogled Chromium if you don’t mind some broken features, just to name two), is buried under so much SEO that it’s legitimately difficult to research.
So… I’m not gonna go out of my way to flame Brave users. If they’re trying to do better than Chrome, good! Not-Google is good. They can pay for this I guess. I’m not installing Brave, though, I’m not recommending it, and this certainly isn’t making me want to.
use vivaldi if you want a chromium browser. its very customizable
Vivaldi concerns me a little, because I keep catching them trying to replace web addresses for major retailers with what appear to be affiliate links. For example, if I start typing the address for Amazon (I know, shitty company, but it's the first page that comes to mind) it will pop up an auto complete to click on. If I click it, I can see that I'm redirected to Amazon through what appears to be either an affiliate or a tracking link. However, if I type the address fully in the browser and don't use auto complete it takes me straight to Amazon, no redirecting or strange links popping up first. They do not disclose that they are doing this anywhere that I have found and I think it's shady as fuck. I don't have any extensions installed and it happens on multiple devices (phone, laptop, PC) and only on Vivaldi, so it's definitely the browser and not an untrustworthy extension or a compromised device.
that might be the search engine you are using. that doesnt happen to me. i use amazon every day
This seems to be disabled for me on mobile, but enabled on the desktop. Seems like a helpful feature, though they could've just done something like Firefox where it's an offline search for a website with the same starting letters.
Still, appreciate the writeup and trying to minimize data collection while calling a 3rd party service in the browser and the option to disable it.
Catch it and report it
Report it to who? Vivaldi?
The affiliate program. This is fraud.
Yeah. Or SRWare Iron, IIRC. Or DuckDuckGo or Orion on mobile. Cromite. Firefox, Zen, whatever.
There are tons of good options, certainly more than I know. But it’s a hard thing for the average person to research, especially when forks get abandoned or whatever.
The top comment on that site says you can already disable all of these features from within the settings. Is this true?
I think so, but it's spread among different menus and flags. Plus if even if you disable it, it's still there, one of the origin options sounds like it has it fully removed from the code.
I don't use Brave, and don't recommend it to people, but it seems like the $60 is intended as a donation/"vote-with-your-wallet on how we monetize" type product rather than something that is actually worth that much.
It doesn't change all of the OTHER problems with Brave, but it might be a step in the right direction when it comes to monetization? Pay once vs. LLM/crypto/injected ads
https://account.brave.com/?intent=checkout&product=origin
Brave Origin is a paid version of the browser for users who don't need all the features that support Brave as a business, but still want the privacy that only Brave offers. Origin users will continue to benefit from our industry-leading privacy, adblock, and speed (via Shields), as well as regular software updates, Chromium patches, and security and privacy improvements. Origin is available on desktop and mobile versions 1.91.x and above.
- Support our mission & open-source work
- Minimalist browser UI centered on Brave Shields
- Maintain core adblock, privacy, & speed
- One-time purchase can be activated multiple times across all your devices
I don’t use brave but for someone ootl, why all the hate?
Brave Browser has faced controversy primarily due to its auto-completion of URLs with affiliate links that earned the company commissions without user consent, which raised concerns about transparency and user privacy. Additionally, its integration of cryptocurrency features has sparked debate over whether these add unnecessary complexity and potential privacy risks.
https://blog.alexseifert.com/2025/04/06/why-i-recommend-against-brave/
it's just general enshittification
I just switched to Brave because I was tired of Chrome stealing all my data and it seemed like a better browser from a privacy standpoint. I like it so far. Now I'm seeing all this hate about brave lol. I'm convinced Lemmy will hate everything I'm doing, no matter what that thing is
Try Librewolf
Zen is also really nice (based on Firefox like Librewolf).
Love it. The out of your way design philosophy is IMO a tangible improvement on every other browser I've tried, which is most. No AI commitment is also a win.
I used Brave for a bit after it came out. All the built-in crypto bullshit wasn't anything I ever touched. I can't remember if I quit some time before Chrome announced the manifest-v3, or if that made me swear off all Chromium browsers for good.
Anyway, also apparently the creators are huge assholes, so there is that, but as I never had any intent to support them financially I just thought I'd use a privacy-focused browser. Meh. Firefox has all the plugins a person could ever want.
I mean, use whatever browser you like. Lemmy is cool and basically right about a lot of things, but fuck the zeitgeist and make up your own mind about shit. I went a different way, but forge your own path.
Sorry, can't hear ya over the sounds of Henry from Techlore taking Brave down the gullet.