Continuing the discussion from Mullvad Browser:
To me, it doesn’t. May I ask why exactly Firefox is above Brave in desktop browser recommendations?
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Reordering Firefox and Brave was never up for discussion in that thread at all, so we simply did not consider it, but we can certainly discuss it here.
I don’t think it has been demonstrated how Brave is better than Firefox in any meaningful privacy-related way. From our perspective they provide about the same privacy protection, some clarification about this will eventually be added when we publish our browser fingerprinting overview.
Given that we consider them to be roughly the same technically speaking, the order is more arbitrary and basically comes down to a slight preference against Chromium on desktop, because browser engine competition does help prevent anti-privacy features from being steamrolled through to every browser. But they are both good browsers, one just had to be first. We made that decision a while ago, and I don’t see any need to change it without a clear privacy-related reason to.
Edit: This is an excellent resource as well:
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This may be subjective, or even technically incorrect, but as far as default settings are concerned, Brave feels like it has better defaults. I guess it’s mainly because of the default search engine being Brave instead of Firefox’s Google. Also, the Mozilla “studies” telemetry seems more invasive than any of Brave’s default telemetry.
So if we were ordering based on defaults or easiness to use/config, I think it would make sense to sort Brave above Firefox. Though we could include Librewolf which I think would place above Brave by those metrics.
So if we were ordering based on defaults or easiness to use/config
I don’t think it makes sense to order it like that.
I do believe that Brave has better defaults, is easier to configure, and has a better user experience overall, but that doesn’t mean that the privacy it provides is better than Firefox. It only means that its ability to provide privacy at the start is better.
I’m not technically inclined on browsers, but if Firefox does indeed provide better privacy than Brave does, then it clearly should be placed above Brave. It shouldn’t matter that XYZ has better defaults or is easier to use/configure. That’s up to the person making the decision. It isn’t like we’re removing Brave, it’s still there.
^ Edit: Upon further thinking, I realize the importance of user-friendliness in the privacysphere. But again, it’s not like we’re removing Brave from the list. If someone has an issue with configuring or using a suggested app, they are free to come back to the list and try the others out. I don’t think the website should serve help vampires. If they want a better app, they should look at our other suggestions without our prompting.
Though we could include Librewolf which I think would place above Brave by those metrics.
Librewolf was previously declined as a suggestion already (though I still use it).
The thing is Firefox+Arkenfox is the gold standard (short of Tor Browser and perhaps Mullvad Browser), but Arkenfox is not easy for an unskilled person to set up.
It seems to me that Firefox has a higher ceiling for potential privacy hardening, but out of the box it has worse defaults than Brave. Remember, the default search engine of Firefox is Google.
2 posts were split to a new topic: Is Brave better for fingerprinting because you blend in with Chrome users?