Tired of alternative desktop browsers, thinking of switching to Google Chrome - need advice

[yes]

Yes, but the UI remains bloated.

[Hiddn]

@anonymous261

I’d say it skews a bit more towards privacy-unhostile. The topic I’m linking below shows how Vivaldi doesn’t do anything super special to protect privacy. Still, the privacytests.org comparison website may have been made by a former Brave employee, so there is probably some bias.

Yes, I must admit. I realise now that calling it “privacy focused” was not that suitable. What I actually meant was that it has a good privacy policy and it lets you improve your privacy online by adding blocking lists and removing/disabling the ones you don’t want.
It is also largely FOSS (around 95%). After all, its UI is the most important. This is what makes it unique.

@anonymous261

Vivaldi doesn’t do anything super special to protect privacy

Yes, especially compared to Brave. But it has an excellent balance between privacy and functionality. You saw that @SimplyAnotherAnon said he was tired of Brave’s GUI. But with Vivaldi, you can change it in any way. Even make it like Chrome, Arc, FF…

[Hiddn]

As I said, this is not with Vivaldi. Its GUI and functionality can be customised and even completely changed with CSS Mods.

[Blackbird]

You can remove most of those in brave://flags. I don’t think I see anything except in the settings where you don’t need to go after getting the adjustments in place.

[asanyan]

But it’s also proprietary and afaik not very good for user privacy.

@Blackbird

You can remove most of those through brave://flags. Personally, I don’t see anything else in the settings that needs to be adjusted once you’ve got everything configured.

Except that you cant change the shields icon, which is very distracting as it’s bright orange.

[Blackbird]

That’s also true.

[Hiddn]

@asanyan

But it’s also proprietary

Yes, that’s true.

@asanyan

and afaik not very good for user privacy.

No, this isn’t true if you look at their PP and business model.

[Tech-Trooper]

I completely agree and does not understand the hate against Brave. Though I mostly use Firefox and Vivaldi, Brave is completely usable. Plus, they have excellent adblocking against Youtube.

[Hiddn]

@Tech-Trooper

and does not understand the hate against Brave.

I think it’s because people wanna something that’s perfect from the start.
Thus, they don’t like anything.

[Lukas (Lukas Dutovas)]

@Tech-Trooper

I completely agree and does not understand the hate against Brave.

All of the hate is based on biases and ideologies. From an objective point of view, Brave is a very good option on both mobile and desktop.

I have seen plenty of people hate something just because of crypto or AI, which is just mind-blowing to me. We have amazing cryptocurrencies like Monero and good use cases for LLMs and AI, but some people somehow can only envision the worst from both of these technologies.

[anonymous261]

@Lukas

All of the hate is based on biases and ideologies

The hatred of anything at all inherently and inevitably stems from bias and ideologies, but here are a couple of points against Brave that I would consider more “objective”:

Brave vs Trivalent Security

Re-enabling anarchic extension permissions, aka MV2 . If Android allowed all apps all permissions, with no mechanism to set granular permissions on a per-app basis, no one in privacy spaces would be using Android. Yet for some reason, browsers get a pass when it comes to doing the same for extensions. Shipping an official flatpak, which they accomplish using zypak, which is both no longer maintained and a hack that replaces the layer 1 component of the otherwise robust chromium sa…

@Lukas

hate something just because of crypto

Brave defaults to cryptocurrency that is significantly less private than would be expected for a privacy browser, so I believe that would be objectively bad to have for a privacy browser.

(Also, in my experience, Brave crashes a lot on mobile)

[Lukas (Lukas Dutovas)]

@anonymous261

Brave defaults to cryptocurrency that is significantly less private than would be expected for a privacy browser, so I believe that would be objectively bad to have for a privacy browser.

So does Signal with their MobileCoin shitcoin, but barely anyone complains about it when compared to people complaining about Brave’s BAT.

[anonymous261]

@Lukas

barely anyone complains about it

“Signal’s Terrible MobileCoin betrayal”

“Forks of Signal Messenger (In Case It Gets Compromised, Or Just Because)”

“We Tried Signal’s MobileCoin So You Never Have To”

“Signal’s Crypto Payments Are A Big Mistake”

Recent commits suggest Signal is preparing a paid subscription for backups

Stuff like this and MobileCoin is throwing me off a bit about Signal, I know the court orders show they don’t collect much data (just Unix timestamps I believe), and that encryption happens locally, but some parts of the server being closed-source and some questionable aforementioned decisions don’t sit right with me. I have no reasonable suspicion though, and all evidence points to Signal still being a very secure and private service, so it has remained my personal choice for private messaging…

Threema (Instant Messenger)

It looks like the phone doesn’t require a subscription, but the company that sells them (Apostrophy) offers privacy-focused cloud services that are subscription-based. I don’t really see the issue with this. Have we all forgotten about MobileCoin? That’s still in Signal to this day.

Telegram Says It Will Provide User Data to Authorities

Question, knowing all this, the way Signal’s servers are configured, non-reproducible etc and Signal refusing to implement Molly’s features, can we ask ourselves whether Signal is a honeypot? I see quite a few people on the internet voicing doubts and criticisms about Signal, its funding (US government), MobileCoin, non-reproducible servers and refusal to secure the application like Molly, but in the end it’s the critics who are right, isn’t it?

Recommend Molly alongside Signal

Features that Molly has but Signal lacks: Uses OpenStreetMap for maps and not Google maps unlike Signal. Supports UnifiedPush for Push notifications. If you got no Play services on your phone, Molly falls back to WebSocket which is more efficient than Signal and drains less battery power. (Fully FOSS) Contains no proprietary blobs, unlike Signal (Molly-FOSS version). (Local encryption) Protects database with passphrase encryption. (Automatic locking) Locks down the app automatical…

[Neo]

@FlipSid

Added uBlock light, since the other (fork) isn’t recommended and insecure.

What do you mean? uBlock Origin is available and now supported by Raymond Hill itself uBlock Origin - Microsoft Edge Addons

[FlipSid]

You are right, I just checked.
No idea what happened between the time I noticed, and switched, but back then (2 - 3 months) there was a different name behind the name as dev listed.

See also:

For example, it includes the highly problematic Eyeo filtering engine from the company behind Acceptable Ads, Adblock Plus, etc. which took over the forked uBlock extension misleading people with the name pretending to be the uBlock Origin project among other extensions.

From:

Browser - Mulch vs Cromite? - GrapheneOS Discussion Forum

[Cyber-Typhoon (Always leveling up)]

@SimplyAnotherAnon

switched to Cromite (Desktop) and that’s what I’ve been on for the better part of a year now. However, I am still having issues with some websites or extensions not working - the developers are aware of this and nothing’s been done about it for a year.

Do we have examples of websites or extensions that works in Chrome and doesn’t work in Chromite or Brave?

[meldot]

I’m loving Zen Browser, I have no reason to move off of it.
But depending on your threatmodel (mainly if you focus on security rather than privacy) Chrome might be the best option.