New Update Brave browser adds native support for uBlock and Fanboy Annoyances and Social lists

Gandalf_The_Grey

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Brave browser's built-in ad-blocker has been boosted by some additional options. The Chromium fork's Brave Shield now supports three popular privacy-friendly filter lists, namely uBlock Annoyances List, Fanboy Annoyances List and Fanboy Social List.

What are these filters anyway? Do I need them? As you may know, ad-blocking extensions and Brave Shield disable advertisements, banners, and other forms of ads. But most websites have additional elements on their website such as social sharing buttons such as Facebook, Twitter, or other elements that users may find annoying.

The new filter lists block the tracking functionality of these elements (they're visually removed too), and also removes pop-up stuff like subscribe or welcome banners.. Yes, those social share buttons actually track your visits, even if you never use them. If the buttons are available on the page, it acts as a tracker and sends the information to their parent site, that's how Facebook Pixel works.

Tired of those "we use these cookies" notices? Some sites employ anti-adblock features, these annoyance lists ensures that these get blocked as well.

Since Chromium-based browsers lack the power of Firefox containers, which in my opinion offers better privacy, these annoyance lists are welcome additions for Brave browser users who want to prevent social-networks from tracking you.

That's great, but these new options are not enabled in the Brave Shield by default. That's probably because not everyone may want to use them.
 

Jonny Quest

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I apologize for resurrecting this thread, but I didn't want to start a new one if there was already one I could post in.

I installed Brave on all my PCs over last weekend, and am liking it. I'm going back and forth with the Brave and Startpage browsers. My question is, do I need to have uBlock installed, or just use what is within its settings, and which ones should I use? With uBlock installed, it has a left-side menu that I don't get with Chrome. What's that about? And is just using the Brave version good enough? Mods, if you want me to start a new thread, just let me know, and delete this post. TIA :)

ublock filters.jpg

ublock filterss.jpg
 
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brambedkar59

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I apologize for resurrecting this thread, but I didn't want to start a new one if there was already one I could post in.

I installed Brave on all my PCs over last weekend, and am liking it. I'm going back and forth with the Brave and Startpage browsers. My question is, do I need to have uBlock installed, or just use what is within its settings, and which ones should I use? With uBlock installed, it has a left-side menu that I don't get with Chrome. What's that about? And is just using the Braves version good enough? Mods, if you want me to start a new thread, just let me know, and delete this post. TIA :)

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Just pick one either Brave in-built adblocker or uBO. I don't know which one is better, haven't used brave on desktop for a while.
You can click on "Less" on bottom left to hide the extra menu, you might have accidentally clicked on "More".
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Jonny Quest

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Just pick one either Brave in-built adblocker or uBO. I don't know which one is better, haven't used brave on desktop for a while.
You can click on "Less" button on bottom left to hide the extra menu, you might have accidentally clicked on "More" button.

Thank you, @brambedkar59 :) lol..of course, so simple, Less. I'll disable the browser extension, and just play around with the Brave Filter lists and see how it goes. I thought there may be redundancies that I didn't need, in running both versions :)
 

oldschool

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You're welcome. Please let us know how you find it after test driving some more. Brave is still the most private, fully functional Chromium variant, except for the useless crypto/wallet bloat. If you search old MT threads, I used to be a Brave fanboy and I still like staying up on the latest developments.
 

Jonny Quest

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@Jonny Quest @Max90 I just installed Brave again and notice a nice change to brave://flags. Default flags are noted as either enabled or disabled. Only change I made was to disable Brave VPN. I show its service as stopped. I'd say @Ink is correct and no need to mess with flags at all except maybe this one.

Thanks for that update, I just disabled the VPN as well. I've been researching Brave protection and protection settings. It is excellent for privacy, but I was concerned about protection. Kaspersky on this laptop and Brave search (browser warnings) passed all these tests, but F-Secure and Brave on another laptop missed the last group, Desktop DLP, there were no warnings.

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Jonny Quest

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You're welcome. Please let us know how you find it after test driving some more. Brave is still the most private, fully functional Chromium variant, except for the useless crypto/wallet bloat. If you search old MT threads, I used to be a Brave fanboy and I still like staying up on the latest developments.

Yep, Brave crypto/wallet, was one of the first things I disabled and the last thing I wanted it for :) It's been syncing very nicely between my PC's. I'm impressed with that so far.
 
F

ForgottenSeer 97327

@Jonny Quest @Max90 I just installed Brave again and notice a nice change to brave://flags. Default flags are noted as either enabled or disabled.
That is transparant, maybe Chromium will follow that example (y)

I tried Brave on Linux (also running in Flatpak container), but I had forgotten how to get rid of the Brave colors and get a blank new tab page, so I opted for Chromium with JShelter in warn mode (strict warning for fingerprinting, but Javascript shield switched off)
 
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SeriousHoax

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My question is, do I need to have uBlock installed, or just use what is within its settings, and which ones should I use?
Brave shield in aggressive mode already use all off uBO's default filter lists. So, installing uBO and keeping it on default would be useless. So, you should add other filters that you may need on uBO to make it useful. Not using Brave at the moment of writing but in Brave my choice of extension is Adguard instead of uBO because as I said, Brave already has uBO default and Adguard's filters works the best with Adguard extension. Adguard's filters are also superior to EasyList in cosmetic filtering including Annoyance related filters. So I enable all the recommended Adguard filters, and it works great. Anything not blocked by Brave are going to be blocked by Adguard.
YouTube is probably a site where it's a good idea to keep your browser extension turned off and let Brave do the filtering, especially if using Adguard. From what I have learned from filter maintainer's Yuki's tweet is that uBO & Adguard have slightly different method of tackling the new YouTube popups. So, you should use only one for YouTube.
Does Brave fully supports adguard and ublock syntax because on android it will be really useful to add AdGuard and uBlock filterlists.
Brave doesn't support all syntaxes but most rules work. I added ADG Annoyances Optimized on Brave Android, and it does a great job on almost all sites.
 

Ink

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Brave doesn't support all syntaxes but most rules work.
Yes, you can add custom filterlists and syntaxes at brave://adblock on Android.

Edit:
Brave recommends uBlock Origin syntaxes for Desktop, and Adblock Plus syntaxes for Android.
Brave is broadly compatible with uBlock Origin's filter rule syntax. We encourage you to refer to the uBlock Origin Static filter syntax page.
Source: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/6449369961741
 

uninfected1

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FWIW I have fanboys and uBlock annoyances checked (they're not duplicates and complement each other), and I have bypass paywall filter checked which I've found pretty effective. Fanboys annoyances also includes cookie consent filters so no need to have Easylist Cookie checked.

Off topic but Brave isn't that good 'out the box' but is excellent once you've changed a load of settings. I haven't found a good all in one 'go to' thread with suggested settings so I might do one myself when I've got time.
 
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