“Fake news” is the bat signal for “we’re actually doing this”
Brave owns an ad company. They are absolutely tracking users.
These systems still only operate once you’ve opted into them, meaning if you just never enable brave ads or disable it, these systems won’t reach you or have any of these possible problems. Personally I don’t use these browsers without disabling everything (ads, daily usage ping, ads on new tab page, etc) and once you’ve done that it is still a pretty great option for a privacy browser especially when considering its better web compatibility compared to Firefox which still lags behind.
**I am not saying Firefox or brave is definitely better than one or the other, I do not want to strike the hornets nest. **
IMO, if you disable all the aforementioned features, it is still good as a privacy focused browser. And especially if you disable things like ads and daily usage ping, you won’t be contributing anything to brave devs at all and can use it just as a browser without supporting or enabling the words of their founder.
“Fake news”. A term coined to describe deceptive media. In particular fox news. Now used by liars worldwide to dismiss the truth.
Every accusation is a confession. Facebook’s cambridge analytica, and other bs was weaponized along with micro targeting, and it worked relatively well, and when that limey journalist lady bravely broke the story, it got some press, but that was it, the bad guys won, didn’t investigate, and the democrats wouldn’t have done shit either outside the fine.
Not quite it, the lady that broke the story got sued by Bannon. So she is the only one that got punished. She has a new book or something it’s supposed to be good she’s a real investigative journalist.
don’t sound like him if you want people to think you’re not sketchy
If someone doesn’t like Mozilla, use a Firefox fork rather than a chromium one. Brave and other chromium forks to get away from Google surveillance and dominance of web standards makes no sense to me
It is wild to me that Brave still maintains such a highly regarded position amongst privacy “enthusiasts” and websites. The godawful news about the browser, its company, and the CEO has been constant since the day it was first announced and it’s clear as water that the browser is not private nor even remotely ethical. Far as I am concerned, it should have faded from the public conscious back when they were injecting their crypto referrals to skim money without you knowing. Or all the times the CEO opened his mouth and revealed that he is a supreme piece of shit.
And even if it was private, just the fact that it’s yet another Chromium browser is a total non-starter for me. I am so sick and tired of the ocean of alternative browsers that directly or indirectly support Google’s browser monopoly, often while proclaiming they are a great Chrome alternative.
A significant chunk of privacy enthusiasts are libertarians like Brave’s CEO. I think there’s some level of “same team” trust going on there.
I remember that any little firefox controversy thread in reddit would have a “just use brave” thread going, even when it’s controversial or had negative karma.
But since online troll farms are cheap, shoe horning names like this work for brand recognition by sheer amount of times you hear about it. And soon people start believing them.
Don’t trust anyone who unironically uses the term ‘fake news’.
Idk, I use fake news to describe like, AI made “medical” videos talking about how MRI is actually bad for you and people older than 50 shouldn’t do it. Maybe misinformation is a better term?
Was about to say, where did I hear that before… 🤔
I’m sure Brendan Eich has a normal vocabulary when he isn’t talking about “glowies” or “h8ers”… Or when he’s talking like Sephiroth
Stop using brave. CEO is a trump fucker maggot and this 100% confirms it now
alternative with free sync and password manager?
Don’t they basically all do that?
any names?
Pretty much any web client I’d say.
I would be interested as well. Been using Brave for a long time now, but I want to switch, just don’t know what to.
Librewolf is the equivalent to brave just based on Firefox. (On android: Ironfox)
I never understood why so many “privacy focused” lists mark them as the top browser choice. Their company track record seems spotty at best.
Because those lists are usually just ads themselves.
It’s all about the marketing and nothing about the technology or company.
I opened google for the first time in months (years?) to check out the results for “best private browser”. Predictably, the AI overview confidently responds as follows:
The best private browsers in 2026 for enhancing online anonymity and blocking trackers are Tor Browser, Brave, and Mullvad Browser. For maximum privacy with high security, Tor is top, while Brave is best for daily, fast browsing. Mullvad is ideal for anti-fingerprinting, and LibreWolf offers excellent privacy for Firefox users.
I would be very surprised if Brave did not at least at some point sponsor content to position itself as privacy oriented. This hidden advertisement then bleeds into both AI and human armchair experts with no deeper understanding of the tech they’re commenting on. And so the myth that Brave has good privacy becomes self-enforcing.
Unrelated edit: Answering “why is firefox bad for privacy”, Google AI becomes oddly self-hating:
Firefox is often considered “bad” for privacy by privacy-conscious users because, despite its pro-privacy marketing,
it collects significant user data by default via telemetry, relies on Google as its default search engine, and has updated its privacy policy to allow broader use of user data. While superior to Chrome, its default settings are not “privacy-maximalist,” necessitating manual configuration.I would be very surprised if Brave did not at least at some point sponsor content to position itself as privacy oriented.
Yeah, this is standard SEO that all companies have been doing since people figured out how to game Google’s PageRank algorithm.
The only thing new is the AI who’s search strategy is ‘summarize the top n results’
privacytests.org is run by a chief Brave engineer.
Good luck figuring that out based on their website.
(Edit: the website home was last edited in August 2025, and Edelstein seems to have left Brave by October 2025. So during the time I was aware of its existence, the same person was putting Brave Browser at the top of privacy lists and working at Brave Browser HQ.)
Oh don’t read this as me defending Brave, I don’t think that’s a good browser to use.
I just mean that using deceptive means to promote a product (including botted comments and other shady tactics) is standard practice by now for any company trying to sell a product.
I can’t speak to any of Brave’s qualities because I don’t use it and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. The fact that they’re using marketing tactics like this kind of goes against the good guy persona that they’re trying to present and that’s enough to turn me off of their products.
Because it has ad blockers built in, has Tor built in, blocks trackers by default, and is very upfront and open about how they use your data if you choose to let them. A big part of what this article misses is that the feature is opt-in. It is turned off by default. Some people are weird and want personalized ads, in which case this feature is a hell of a lot more secure than other browsers who have to opt-out of tracking and don’t give a shit about your PII.
Oh wait, I forgot where I was. Umm, I mean… Brave bad! Bad browser!
The company that injected crypto referral codes into your links, if someone needs more convincing.
and blamed users for not knowing since it’s open source and anyone concerned should have read the source.
I used to work for cliqz- Burda media / Firefox startup. I was working there on a search engine which was later acquired by brave and now is labeled as brave search. This thing tracks you a every god dammed step, this is one of th core signals for ranking , irrespective of what you click
What a surprise… the web browser made by a racist bigoted guy who is a huge fan of mass surveillance and Trump is not private color me surprised /s
careful you don’t smack youself in the face with that knee jerk
Brave does not collect user data at all by default, and any opt-in system, such as Brave Rewards or premium VPN, blinds us to user id, no record linkability either
is that THE cambridge analytica? i assume .org is something using the name in irony
Cambridge Analytica accusing Brave? Who is the bad guy in this story? I am confused.
they’re the same picture ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Considering Mozilla basically did the same thing in Firefox, but turned it on by default instead of off (which is worse), it’s strange that they praise Firefox in the same article.
There are plenty of good reasons to hate Brave, but I think this whole article can be trashed, and the website itself put behind a blocklist
All chromium browsers are no-go for me.
Yeah, this is what so many people miss: privacy in the moment of browsing is only one of several problems. There’s also the much longer term problem of web standards developing in such a way as to facilitate the stripping of privacy, and using a browser that facilitates Google’s hegemony over those standards enables that.
I wish vanadium was available independently of Graphene
Even Vanadium supports Google’s hegemony over web standards and is therefore evil (I say as someone who otherwise likes and uses GrapheneOS).
It is a bad mistake that the GrapheneOS people haven’t developed a hardened Firefox-based browser instead.
Limitations of gecko. They’ve covered their reasons before https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
Edit to add. I think the browser of choice debate differs significantly depending on the OS in use.
Annoying as this is, it makes sense. Of course Chrome is the most secure browser in Google’s OS. Google controls the stack of software, and they have far more resources than Mozilla or Graphine combined could ever provide.
