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Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

(twitter.com)
323 points plusCubed | 33 comments | 21 Dec 18 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 2.984s | source | bottom
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aphextron ◴[21 Dec 18 19:26 UTC] No.18735814[source]▶
I'd been really loving Brave and using it as my daily driver for a few months now, until that I noticed that little "Brave Ads" icon at the end of the address bar. That's when I realized their entire business model is just in the usurpation of existing Google ad revenue, dressed up with "privacy concerns" for the good PR. This sent me on a journey to find a really solid, free, Chromium based browser that is totally de-Googled, which seems absolutely impossible. I've tacitly settled on Vivaldi, but it's just impossible to really know if they are trustworthy as a company in the long run. Ultimately I feel like I can only trust a browser who's entire build process is open source at this point.
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1. rthomas6 ◴[21 Dec 18 19:28 UTC] No.18735832[source]▶
Honest question. Why not Firefox? What are your concerns with it?
replies(3): >>18735870 #>>18735923 #>>18736818 #
2. aphextron ◴[21 Dec 18 19:33 UTC] No.18735870[source]▶
I've tried over and over for decades to like Firefox, but I just don't. I can't say it's a rational decision entirely. But beyond that, I just think that Mozilla's motives can't really be trusted at face value with the amount of revenue they have these days, and their whole profile sync service. It just comes down to incentives, and any company which collects any kind of data has the incentive to profit at our expense regardless of ideology. Especially where people's salaries could depend on it.
replies(6): >>18735897 #>>18735899 #>>18735920 #>>18735951 #>>18736086 #>>18736534 #
3. ceejayoz ◴[21 Dec 18 19:37 UTC] No.18735897[source]▶
What about the profile sync service can't be trusted?

It's end-to-end encrypted. Mozilla doesn't have the keys.

replies(1): >>18735952 #
4. asadotzler ◴[21 Dec 18 19:37 UTC] No.18735899[source]▶
What about the whole profile sync service? It's designed to be privacy preserving by encrypting everything locally with a key only you have. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/
5. gaadd33 ◴[21 Dec 18 19:40 UTC] No.18735920[source]▶
Is Mozilla run that lean even with >$500M in revenue?
replies(2): >>18736018 #>>18736067 #
6. woolvalley ◴[21 Dec 18 19:40 UTC] No.18735923[source]▶
Firefox runs worse than chrome still, and it doesn't work well at all on my 2 core 2015 macbook pro. It works fine on my 6 core & 4 core machines although.

I would also like something like the easy user switching that chrome has, since once user would have one set of session tab logins (twitter, fb, google, etc), and another user would have another. firefox -no-remote isn't that smooth of an experience compared to chrome's user switcher.

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7. reidrac ◴[21 Dec 18 19:44 UTC] No.18735951[source]▶
Sorry if I misunderstood you, but you said you were using Brave. Perhaps you should review how you evaluate the products you use because your record isn't great.

If you were wrong about Brave, your concerns about Firefox and Mozilla could be wrong as well.

8. aphextron ◴[21 Dec 18 19:44 UTC] No.18735952{3}[source]▶
It's just an attack vector I wish didn't exist at all. There's also metadata. Sure Mozilla doesn't have your passwords, but they know who you have passwords with. That creeps me out.

There's nothing wrong with the all-purpose heavily featured approach of stuff like Chrome and Firefox, and I get that other people like Sync, I just really wish there was a totally stripped down basic internet browser I could trust.

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9. notyourwork ◴[21 Dec 18 19:51 UTC] No.18736018{3}[source]▶
If we didn't do business with any company that was run inefficiently we would not do business with a lot of places. I'm not sure how the efficiency of the business is entirely coupled to whether or not the product is usable and meets user needs in ways that other competing products cannot.
10. beering ◴[21 Dec 18 19:51 UTC] No.18736023[source]▶
The Containers add-on[0] for Firefox that Mozilla makes has satisfied my need for partitioning. It's on a per-tab basis and also lets you define certain domains to automatically open in a specific container (e.g. Jira always opens in my Work container).

I can't really speak to Firefox's performance issues though. I feel like they're just as good on rendering and JS speed, but the overall UI doesn't have the same "fast" feel that Chrome does. Chrome has also seemingly gotten slower for me too.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

replies(2): >>18736295 #>>18737446 #
11. danso ◴[21 Dec 18 19:55 UTC] No.18736067{3}[source]▶
The majority of that funding seems to come from royalties ($504M of $520M) [0]. What would be the leaner way of collecting those royalties?

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/

12. danso ◴[21 Dec 18 19:56 UTC] No.18736078{4}[source]▶
Isn't profile sync opt-in?
13. jlg23 ◴[21 Dec 18 19:58 UTC] No.18736086[source]▶
"Face value"? Try "source value".

What exactly is your problem with an opt-in service?

14. jlg23 ◴[21 Dec 18 20:05 UTC] No.18736138{4}[source]▶
>Sure Mozilla doesn't have your passwords, but they know who you have passwords with.

Do they? I just skimmed the source and could not find anything that hints at that (and implementing it the way you said it is makes for much more complex code..)

15. geofft ◴[21 Dec 18 20:10 UTC] No.18736180{4}[source]▶
I just don't enable it. It's not on by default.

For the average user—think your uncle who's about to ask you tech support questions this weekend—using Firefox Sync is way better for their privacy and security than reusing the same password everywhere. And for those of us who have and use password managers, Firefox Sync is not on by default—unlike Brave's attention-tracking or Chrome's Google logins.

16. subway ◴[21 Dec 18 20:23 UTC] No.18736295{3}[source]▶
Every time the containers add-on gets updated, it forgets all your preferences.
replies(2): >>18736464 #>>18736611 #
17. sftwds ◴[21 Dec 18 20:42 UTC] No.18736464{4}[source]▶
Really? Is that a known issue? I haven’t experienced that and I’ve been using containers on Firefox since they were introduced.
18. ◴[21 Dec 18 20:51 UTC] No.18736534[source]▶
19. bichiliad ◴[21 Dec 18 21:01 UTC] No.18736611{4}[source]▶
I've been using containers for some time now (probably since not long after it was announced) to keep my twitter accounts separate, and I've never had to reset or update my preferences.
replies(1): >>18736921 #
20. jonahhorowitz ◴[21 Dec 18 21:17 UTC] No.18736728[source]▶
I've been running Firefox Nightly, and it's way faster.
21. rchaud ◴[21 Dec 18 21:29 UTC] No.18736818[source]▶
Firefox absolutely sucks on Android. It's fine on Mac OS, but it is so much slower than Brave (Chromium based) and Chrome itself, that it becomes irritating to use. That being said, it does support extensions like Ublock Origin and Ghostery.

Mobile Chrome means zero extensions and ad hell, so Brave it is. Same Chrome engine and UI (swipeable tabs is something I miss in Firefox Android) and adblocking.

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22. subway ◴[21 Dec 18 21:41 UTC] No.18736921{5}[source]▶
On at least 3 separate occasions now I've gone to open a container tab, and found that I was back to the default set of (Work, Personal, Shopping, I think). Even better is when this happens, it also resets the count on how many container tabs you've opened, so near the end of the day I'll go to shift containers and get blocked by a "Congrats! You've opened 100 container tabs!" that needs to be dismissed.
replies(1): >>18737068 #
23. logic ◴[21 Dec 18 21:59 UTC] No.18737068{6}[source]▶
This has happened to me several times as well. I use them with the temporary container tabs add-on (so, short-lived containers by default, plus a selection of specific sites that I retain information for, with strict cross-domain isolation), and let me tell you, losing that configuration is painful after setting it up.

The fact that you can't sync container configuration between devices is also a huge pain point, when you have a nontrivial setup.

I still use them, but I accept that I'm going to endure some pain now and then; I can't recommend Firefox containers to people who just want to get work done right now.

24. zamalek ◴[21 Dec 18 22:23 UTC] No.18737233[source]▶
> Firefox absolutely sucks on Android.

Have you tried it lately? I agree that it used to, but it has improved vastly. It's my daily driver now.

replies(1): >>18737811 #
25. woolvalley ◴[21 Dec 18 22:56 UTC] No.18737446{3}[source]▶
I use the containers add on, and it's pretty much the only real advantage FF has over chrome.

Still need user switching although, because sometimes I want to separate multiple google/twitter/etc accounts for example and still want the automatic url-based container activation.

If brave implemented containers although, I would probably use it because chrome works better than FF.

replies(1): >>18738014 #
26. monochromatic ◴[21 Dec 18 23:09 UTC] No.18737544[source]▶
Strange. Firefox seems to run just as well as Chrome for me nowadays (on Windows though).
27. jammygit ◴[21 Dec 18 23:45 UTC] No.18737755[source]▶
I'm using Firefox right now om android and its a nice experience. Chrome variants are smoother scrolling I guess but the sync is sure nice in Firefox.
28. pedrocx486 ◴[21 Dec 18 23:52 UTC] No.18737811{3}[source]▶
I did, tried it for a week, honestly the scrolling still feels horrible when compared to Chrome.
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29. driverdan ◴[22 Dec 18 00:26 UTC] No.18737997[source]▶
Do you have old hardware? I use Firefox on my Pixel 2 and it's great, especially with ad blocking.
30. jeroenhd ◴[22 Dec 18 00:29 UTC] No.18738014{4}[source]▶
If you run Firefox with the -P command line argument, a profile selection screen comes up in which you can create multiple profiles. These are completely separated (down to the HSTS state!) "accounts".

I don't know how MacOS works, but if you set your Firefox shortcut to firefox -P you can switch profiles by restarting Firefox. Granted, it's not as nice as Chrome, but it might still be of worth to you in some way.

replies(1): >>18738022 #
31. woolvalley ◴[22 Dec 18 00:31 UTC] No.18738022{5}[source]▶
I know about the -P command, that is why I was referencing the -no-remote option ;) Firefox has multi-user, it's just janky.

You have to double click on your special shortcut with the command line option, and if some other program tries to open a url with firefox as the default browser with the -no-remote / -P command, then it will just not work if you have all users open.

While with chrome it's 2 clicks away and no edge cases making other apps opening urls not work.

32. zamalek ◴[22 Dec 18 03:04 UTC] No.18738668{4}[source]▶
I absolutely agree with that, scrolling feels really janky but I did get used to it.
33. sombremesa ◴[22 Dec 18 08:57 UTC] No.18739722{4}[source]▶
Agreed that scrolling is still janky, but the syncing of prefs (especially add-ons) is well worth it, imo.

Heck, even just the one add-on that lets you sleep your phone while a YouTube video continues playing is well worth using Firefox. Such a basic functionality isn't enough reason to get YouTube Red.

And then, you have add-ons like ublock origin that give you the Brave-like functionality without all this brouhaha.