I really do have a lot of respect for Brave and what they're trying to do, don't get me wrong. I think they are trying to address a meaningful problem and I do not think their solution is ill-conceived. I want to be clear about that.
But I do think it is a far bigger problem that we let a single actor have so much control over the fundamental structure of the internet. The problem isn't Brave so much as it is Chromium. But criticizing Brave (and Opera, Edge, etc) is a consequence of this.
You must ask yourself which is the bigger concern?
- If you believe the major concern is an ad based ecosystem on the internet, then choose Brave. Especially if you believe it is unlikely that data leakage "features" implemented by Google are not likely to be captured by downstream projects.
- If you believe the major concern is the number one ad based company who's entire market is based on the erosion of data privacy, then choose *literally anything* that is not Chromium based.
I think the latter is far more damning and honestly is an upstream issue to the concern Brave is trying to address. That's why I say I would encourage Brave to move away from Chromium. I actually would encourage them to develop their own engine since I think 3 choices is far from sufficient, but I'll take a Gecko or WebKit version as a major victory.But this is my opinion. There is no right answer here. It has to come down to you.
If you agree with me then I'd encourage you to look at Firefox. It is good by default and with a few easy to find options you can have strong privacy and installing uBlock is a trivial task. If you are more privacy conscious, I encourage you to look at the Mullvad Browser, which is a Firefox fork with strong privacy defaults (maintained by the Tor and Mullvad teams). If you want a WebKit then check out Orion. I use this on both my iPhone and iPad (my Macbook and linux desktop are still Firefox), as Orion allows add-ons, so you can get ad blocking on your phone (when I was on Android I just used Firefox mobile which supports extensions). If you really want to encourage a 4th player I believe LadyBird is the popular kid on the block, but I honestly don't know too much and last I knew it was not quite to a stable state.
You don't have to agree with me, but I just want to make people aware that they do have a say in the future. There's no solution that doesn't have drawbacks, but I think on a techie form we should be able to have a more complex discussion and recognize that there are consequences to our choices. I think it is also important to recognize our choices multiply as we tend to be the ones who inform our non-techie peers. If you've ever installed software for a friend or family member, then realize how our choices multiply.
I'd also encourage you to promote more conversations among techie groups so we can hear the diverse set of opinions and concerns. It's a complex world and it is easy to miss something critical.
