Brave is currently shitting the bed on me in what I fear is not an April Fool's joke, so I'm soliciting opinions. What browsers are you all using? What do you trust to not spy on you? Which browsers aren't thoroughly infected with ideological rot?
Obviously Google Chrome is a poisoned well, but are there any out there that pass muster?
I’ve always used Brave myself, but I’ve heard good things about LibreWolf.
On Windows, Librewolf doesn't auto-update, which is unacceptable for core internet facing software. Linux with package management is different, however I'm using Brave so I'm uninformed about librewolf versus Firefox.
What?
How on earth do they offer a browser without that? I could understand if it was opt-in for excessively paranoid security-minded people but straight up manual updates only?
Just gone to do a update to Librewolf myself, in the installer there is an opt in WinUpdater now. Edit: Not sure if this is an auto updater or just a simpler way then going to the site to check for updates.
How is Brave screwing you over? I'm using it right now, and I have seen no issues.
Popped it open today and it closes after a few seconds. They changed something and it has made the browser 100% unusable. I tried uninstalling and when I went to reinstall I'm met with a message of "no update found", so now I'm just hard locked out of even having the thing installed on my machine. When I went searching I found I'm not alone in encountering this issue today, but I've yet to find any solutions, hence shopping for a new browser.
i'm 99% certain the problem is youtube.
open brave but don't restore your tabs
turn off the shields entirely in settings
restore your tabs, close all the youtube ones
then turn shields back on in settings and restart brave
it's been working for me since i did this
It's too late, I uninstalled and am now unable to get an installer to actually install the software. It may indeed have been saved Youtube tabs fucking me over, but at this point I find it more concerning that the installer is dead on arrival. Something fishy is going on. I even dug out my old installer which I used four or five years ago when I first switched...no luck. Everything's dead.
I agree with u/FuckGenderPolitics. The only explanation I can find with that is that you have leftover parts of the install on your machine. Even if you don't plan on reinstalling Brave, you should still check out the control panel to make sure that it had been fully uninstalled, and then check your "/program files" folder (or wherever else you installed it) to make sure that the folder is completely erased. Keep your computer as clean as possible from unused files; it's just good practice. Also, clean all your cookies.
Assuming you don't intend on reformatting your computer entirely in the near future, of course.
I think there's still some junk left over in %LocalAppData%, so maybe I'll try clearing that out later this week and see if I can't salvage this. I really did not need this headache right at the start of my week.
That's really odd. I wonder if there's bits and pieces left over from an incomplete uninstall. If you ever feel like giving it a go again you should make sure it's completely wiped from your system down to the registry before attempting a reinstall.
f
yeah i got nothing for that
Netscape.
Oh jeeze, way to make me feel old. A simpler browser for a simpler time.
Mosaic.
That Blockbuster Navigator was pretty good back in the day, much better than the AT&T Explorer.
Some resources for your consideration:
https://reclaimthenet.org/private-web-browsers
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/
I also highly recommend this book:
https://inteltechniques.com/book7.html
The only browser on the first list that I'd quibble with is DuckDuckGo. They fuck with their search results so they're pozzed. The other thing is I didn't know that Mullvad has their own browser. I like their VPN so I'll have to check that out.
I think some people associated with DDG have come out as very woke, if that matters to you.
Mullvad VPN and browser + Yandex ftw
DDG also exclusively doesn't hire white people.
There was an anon here who submitted a resume as himself, a highly qualified white man, and as a shaniqua with numerous spelling mistakes and shaniqua got hired.
I agree regarding DDG but it's up to OP to do his research. The Mullvad browser is brand new, launched just a few months ago.
I use Vivaldi.
Sure, it's chromium, but 'eh.
I'm still using cucked firefox just out of habit. I also have an old install of brave I have to use once in a while when websites don't tolerate firefox.
I'm really not tech savvy or "interested" enough to source, validate, and configure something more obscure.
I would suggest using waterfox instead. It's basically just firefox without supporting mozilla.
Yep. Basically the same, but slightly better. Waterfox has a little less telemetry, but the big draw is that it doesn't have Mozilla fagging up the browser either. Firefox has removed a lot of about:config features because users might choose the wrong settings, but Waterfox still lets you change them.
Waterfox is great. Similar UI to Firefox so that you can easily make the switch without too much hassle.
Does Waterfox allow you to close all tabs to the left/right or all other without going through a sub menu? Pedozilla put those options under a sub menu in Firefox just to fuck with their power users.
Sub menu, sorry.
I use Vivaldi and Firefox.
I'd also recommend a private search engine. I pay for kagi.com but used https://github.com/searxng/searxng for a while. Can find public instances here https://searx.space
I use three depending on what I'm doing. Brave is my casual everyday driver and Iridium with lots of modification is my identity-aware choice. I also use Tor when the situation calls for it.
I keep going back to Brave unfortunately. Librewolf has been good a lot of the time though. It just seems every time I use a non-Chrome/webkit based browser there's always a site that doesn't work. So, I guess I'd go back to Librewolf if I woke up tomorrow and Brave was gone.
I use Waterfox, but I couldn't say if there's garbage lurking in it somewhere.
I'll be honest with you. There is no web browser that is outside of the system. You're just picking through the trash trying to find whatever is least dirty. If you're that concerned about privacy/anonymity, you'd build your own. If you're concerned about privacy/anonymity but not that concerned, just use whatever works best for you.
Librewolf is your best browser available but I found some of its standard features annoying so I use Brave.
https://librewolf.net/
Bromite is also worth considering.
https://www.bromite.org/
I used to use Brave, now I use Librewulf.
I wish I could be more helpful and tell you why I switched. I remember it was nothing major, just some quibble I had with Brave (and I still primarily try to use search.brave.com over any other search engine), so I don't think you can go wrong with either. But I can't remember the exact reason I had for moving over.
Brave is pretty good for a Chromium, but some things that annoy me:
URL only completes like the top 100 matches from history or something like that, so I'll often try to revisit a page that I was at a day ago and I have to use ctrl-h and history search. I'm sure this is Google "it has to complete in 0.1s" bullshit but it's annoying and dumb. Firefoxes complete any page from your history even if it was like 6 months ago.
When I drop a link onto a page it opens a new tab. In FF I have a main window open and a preview one beside it and drag links in to see what they are. In Chromiums I get dozens of tabs open this way and the only way not to is to drag links into the center of the tab button. It's dumb.
Basically there's just no options to make any Chromium work like you want it to because Google knows best.
In fact Chromium browsers don't even keep complete history. I don't remember the cutoff but it's after a few months. I don't understand that at all - it should save all my history until I tell it to clear history.
Librewolf is good firefox derivative, you want chorme then brave is the choice to go. You want to get out of firefox/chrome completely you got the Pale moon and Basilisk independent forks of firefox (long ago)
Waterfox, yandex which I think it just chromium, brave, edge. Chrome when I'm dealing with google and maintaining my normie cover identity.
I finally switched to Waterfox last month after numerous problems with Brave. Performance is great! Not a single problem with Waterfox so far.
This post from the Brave forum MAY explain some of it. Dude there says it's Google, trying to get people to turn their adblockers off. Well, joke's on them. I already uninstalled uBlock. Still get the crashes.
If I go to YouTube with Brave's shields and protections turned off globally, as soon as I click on 'Aggressively block trackers & ads' it crashes without a murmur. Same as if I open a thread on this forum that has an embedded YouTube video.
Are you also on Windows 7/8? I'm trying to finish a huge, old project before I yank the old disk from the laptop and replace it witn a new one on which I'm gonna run Linux. Since these operating systems are no longer supported I that means that Google's newest bug/feature will never get patched out of our versions of Brave.
Yeah, I'm still clinging on to 7 until something forces me off of it. When Steam kept working it kind of killed the urgency of building a new rig so that project has returned to the backburner.
i use pale moon for browsing, but i also use brave
Just mod the fuck out of Chromium browser and it should be working properly
ublock origin, tampermonkey, screen capture widgets, video grabber, jewtube downvote restoration and so many other basic quality of life add-ons
I like Opera GX - but I won't go as far as to endorse it though
I use opera gx. Definitly won't touch brave or Mozilla.
How is Waterfox on the adblocking front? You mention that you switched right as YouTube started making that harder, so I'm curious to know if there's any appreciable difference in adblock on that vs Brave's built in adblock.
Are you using uBlock Origin? I haven't had any issues with YouTube since the early days of their war against ad blockers with that extension enabled.
I stopped using ABP when I realized it wasn't blocking things that UBO was out of the box. I also distrust their willingness to work with Google since the ads are only the most visible part of the problem. I'd recommend using UBO if can get it on your browser. It runs lighter and it's made YouTube's war on ad blockers a thing of the past for me. I didn't realize it was still going on if I'm being honest.