New Update Brave planning to introduce subscription for customizing the browser?

Divine_Barakah said:
I'm sorry but anyone using Brave for "privacy" needs to reconsider many things. It is bloated and it has crypto built-in, and ad programme and it was caught in manu controversies before. Most people I know are using Brave because it blocks ads and it provides fake sense of security and privacy.

In Chromium world, I tend to trust Vivaldi. I do also trust Waterfox.
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Once again, although Brave is not perfect, I think its issues can easily be overstated for a highly usable Chromium fork.

Notable controversies took place pre-2021 and were not so many: affiliate link insertion (2020), early ad replacement plans (2016-2018), and Tor DNS leaks.

Brave Rewards and the crypto wallet can be disabled. The client-side implementation is completely open source. I don't have an issue with Rewards continuing to run in the background after disabling it.

Additionally, in a show of transparency, Brave Search is independently (and annually) verified for strict security and privacy controls by a third-party auditor.

Once unnecessary features are out of the way, many agree that it runs quite efficiently. There are certainly worse browsers for privacy and performance.
 
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Miravi said:
Once again, although Brave is not perfect, I think its issues can easily be overstated for a highly usable Chromium fork.

Notable controversies took place pre-2021 and were not so many: affiliate link insertion (2020), early ad replacement plans (2016-2018), and Tor DNS leaks.

Brave Rewards and the crypto wallet can be disabled. The client-side implementation is completely open source. I don't have an issue with Rewards continuing to run in the background after disabling it.

Additionally, in a show of transparency, Brave Search is independently (and annually) verified for strict security and privacy controls by a third-party auditor.

Once unnecessary features are out of the way, many agree that it runs quite efficiently. There are certainly worse browsers for privacy and performance.
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See how they define privacy
Screenshot_20260105-072407.png

Brave is anything but a private browser. And personally i do not regard it as a "lesser evil".
 
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Parkinsond said:
Self-hosted infostealer 🙃

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Divine_Barakah said:

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The website is blocked by hagezi tif and flagged by few vendors on VT

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Marko :) said:
Well, if the web browser starts doing things like this, it's getting immediately uninstalled from my PC. Some will say "they are a company and they have to pay their employees"... and I agree. But I don't think it's right to lure users and then force them to pay a subscription on a product that is 100% built on top of someone else's work.

We shall also not forget that Brave had a fair amount of controversies surrounding them which included replacing website ads with their own (to earn money), collecting donations in the name of YouTubers without their permission, injecting their own referral URLs when browsing various websites and the worst offender for me... installing a VPN client without user knowledge and ability to uninstall it.

I think that company like this doesn't deserve anyone's money. Especially when they already have bunch of other ways through with they finance "development" of the browser.
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Easier said than done.

The truth is, a lot of free projects eventually stall out because they simply don’t bring in enough money to keep development going. Passion can carry things only so far, but without some kind of revenue stream, even the best ideas risk fading away.

I’m not a fan of some of the decisions Brave has made, and I get why people are frustrated. At the same time, I can see why they felt the need to explore different ways of funding the browser. Keeping a project like this alive isn’t cheap, and I’d imagine they tried other approaches before landing on this one.

It doesn’t excuse the missteps, but it does show how tricky the balance is between keeping software free and making sure it survives in the long run.
 
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Divine_Barakah said:
See how they define privacy
View attachment 294335

Brave is anything but a private browser. And personally i do not regard it as a "lesser evil".
Click to expand...
This is vastly oversimplifying Brave's approach to promoting "privacy." Brave didn't make 5.7+ million lines of custom code deviations from upstream Chromium, including extensive surgical changes, to little effect. The company employs multiple privacy researchers and engineers, and they're not simply wringing their hands on the job.

It probably isn't considered a private browser by hardcore privacy enthusiasts, and that's fine. Brave is intended for a broad public.
 
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I feel we are running out of alternative options, I'm not going back to Google Chrome, I still find Brave is for me a good alternative to Firefox/Wolf etc & FF is till my favorite browser - I still really dislike Edge & haven't used it in 6/7 months, I don't like the idea of paying either & I may not have too but as with most things Office 365/Netflix/Paramount/ you name it that's how it is these days, I'm not going to pay for everything but its worth considering??
 
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Divine_Barakah said:
I'm sorry but anyone using Brave for "privacy" needs to reconsider many things. It is bloated and it has crypto built-in, and ad programme and it was caught in manu controversies before. Most people I know are using Brave because it blocks ads and it provides fake sense of security and privacy.

In Chromium world, I tend to trust Vivaldi. I do also trust Waterfox.
Click to expand...
Haha daaamn. I don't use it and haven't used it because it just felt too good to be true for a popular "newcomer".
 
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Just a quick look up and I'm not impressed.

Key Controversies

Affiliate Link Injection (2020): Brave automatically added affiliate codes to URLs for crypto exchanges (like Binance, Coinbase) and search terms, allowing Brave to earn revenue from user sign-ups, a major breach of user trust. CEO Brendan Eich called it a mistake and made it opt-in, but skepticism remained.

Tor Mode DNS Leaks (2021): Researchers found DNS queries for .onion addresses were leaking outside the Tor network, bypassing privacy, though Brave patched the issue.

Forced VPN Installation (2022-2023): Brave bundled its paid VPN product into Windows installations, even for non-subscribers, leading to accusations of deceptive bundling.

Data Scraping for AI (2023): Accusations arose that Brave's web crawler scraped and resold copyrighted data for AI training without explicit consent, further damaging its privacy reputation.

Crypto & Web3 Focus: Early crypto mining efforts and ongoing promotions with questionable crypto exchanges (like FTX, Gemini) raised concerns that Brave was more of a crypto play than a pure privacy tool.

Background Ads: Silently adding sponsored images to new tab pages and pocketing the revenue drew criticism for bad first impressions and perceived revenue grabbing.
Click to expand...
 
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There have been some good insights brought up in this thread. I'm going to try FF as my main PC browser for awhile and see what I think. It doesn't mean I'm going to change from Brave, but why not try it again :) I've used it in the past (long ago) but that was when it was having memory issues and constantly crashing. It was also breaking Bitdefender's browser extension frequently with what Christian/Rootkit (Admin at the time) called "Firefox's Pulse Updates".

Any other fork of, or Edge, or Vivaldi, isn't going to happen with me, for those who love them, rock on :)

Edit: but then we have this...LOL, maybe the "stability" of Chrome is a better option for me? We'll see, but I don't mind doing the research and comparison "shopping".
lokamoka820

New Update Thread 'Mozilla’s New CEO Says Firefox Will ‘Evolve into an AI Browser’'

Anthony Enzor-DeMeo has finally taken up his role as CEO of Mozilla Corporation, publishing a blog post to celebrate in which he spells out the company’s “next chapter”.
Click to expand...
The headline news? He says Firefox will remain an “anchor” for the company, but confirms it is to “evolve into a modern AI browser” — to unlock new revenue opportunities for the company.
Click to expand...
Mozilla’s new CEO says all of the upcoming changes will give us “agency” (their new favourite word), but his phrasing is telling: Enzor-DeMeo says it’s important that AI features in Firefox will be...
Click to expand...
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Jonny Quest said:
There have been some good insights brought up in this thread. I'm going to try FF as my main PC browser for awhile and see what I think. It doesn't mean I'm going to change from Brave, but why not try it again :) I've used it in the past (long ago) but that was when it was having memory issues and constantly crashing. It was also breaking Bitdefender's browser extension frequently with what Christian/Rootkit (Admin at the time) called "Firefox's Pulse Updates".

Any other fork of, or Edge, or Vivaldi, isn't going to happen with me, for those who love them, rock on :)

Edit: but then we have this...LOL, maybe the "stability" of Chrome is a better option for me? We'll see, but I don't mind doing the research and comparison "shopping".
lokamoka820

New Update Thread 'Mozilla’s New CEO Says Firefox Will ‘Evolve into an AI Browser’'

Anthony Enzor-DeMeo has finally taken up his role as CEO of Mozilla Corporation, publishing a blog post to celebrate in which he spells out the company’s “next chapter”.
Click to expand...
The headline news? He says Firefox will remain an “anchor” for the company, but confirms it is to “evolve into a modern AI browser” — to unlock new revenue opportunities for the company.
Click to expand...
Mozilla’s new CEO says all of the upcoming changes will give us “agency” (their new favourite word), but his phrasing is telling: Enzor-DeMeo says it’s important that AI features in Firefox will be...
Click to expand...
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The thing I appreciate the most about Firefox is customizability. Something isn't working out for you; just change it man. Firefox let's you do everything you want and I think this approach is something every web browser needs to implement as well.

I was so reluctant to switch from Brave to Firefox as I had some issues with video playback, but it turned out I just needed to install the VP9 Video Extension from Microsoft Store and issue was gone. The day I fixed the issue, Firefox was my primary web browser.

Yes, might not have as exceptional rendering engine as Chromium has, and it could load some websites a millisecond slower (even though I'm not experiencing this), but I think you get more value out of Firefox as a browser than what you would with Chromium browser. Regarding stability, ever since I installed Firefox, it never crashed; not even once.

I swear Firefox isn't nearly as bad as people, even here on forum, portray it to be.

Update: if anyone you don't have it on, I recommend you to enable gfx.webrender.layer-compositor in about:config for better Firefox performance.
 
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