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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 26th, 2024

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  • Well, you have to remember that we are in an echo chamber here in the Fediverse.

    I think the easiest way to explain this is with an example that might put you in their shoes for a bit. Ask yourself this, what would it take for someone to convince you to switch from using Lemmy to using something else like Mbin/PieFed? Where is the line you draw on what the developers say or do that would cause you to make that change? (Rhetorical questions).

    Everyone has different values and different lines that can be crossed. For some, if the developers even hinted at support for a particular belief, they would immediately drop the software and find something else. For others, they might disagree with the developer’s opinions/actions but since they’re using Lemmy.World, they’re not directly supporting the developers anyway, so they’ll continue using Lemmy as long as it’s not under the dev’s instance. And then there are others who will somewhat or even strongly agree with the dev’s opinions/actions.

    I would argue that only a small minority of users would fall under the category that would completely drop using Lemmy. At that point, the only factor that most others really care about (for switching) might be for better features or ease of use. So, unless the devs did or said something far worse to the point that it crosses the line for most users, bringing up the same points isn’t going to change the mind of most users.

    Now apply this to browsers. The vast majority of people will prefer features/convenience/familiarity over the opinions/actions of one developer vs another developer as long as certain lines aren’t crossed (again, what that line is will be different for everyone).

    Some users will be in the camp that, if any software even touches LLMs, Crypto, etc. then they won’t use the software. They hold those values as high as they do privacy/security which is why they would use something like LibreWolf instead of Brave.

    Most users would probably not have strong enough opinions one way or another on Crypto, LLMs, etc. (the other concerns you raised) to let that factor too much into their final decision.

    Even for the ones who disagree with it, as long as those options are disabled by default, easy to disable, or as long as they aren’t directly supporting them, then this would still factor lower on their final decision for which software to use.

    Marketing definitely plays a big part. Doing a quick search for “compare privacy related browsers” leads to a bunch of articles that usually rank Brave very high. Additionally, the vast majority of users are going to stick with something that’s familiar to them and already has the features they’re used to.

    Privacy reasons aside, most people are going to stick with what’s familiar to them, and the vast majority of users are already using some sort of Chromium browser.


    My apologies for the wall of text, I found your comment interesting. Most of this I’m sure you already know. I just wanted to explore the subject a bit more, so I got my thoughts out.


  • It’s not that interesting, I just pointed out that they don’t have much to do with what the other user was asking for. They can respond to those other points if they want to.

    For a recap, you mentioned:

    Brave browser, who has a history of deceiving users with claims of privacy, literally trying to mine shitcoins on your device, and promoting add for certain affiliates without telling anuone?

    The other user asked you to:

    List which privacy promises Brave has failed to keep.

    You responded with a list of 11 items. Only 3 were initially privacy related. 2 of those 3 you changed the headline to make a false claim. 1 of those turned out to not even be a privacy issue (after actually reading the source).

    If you want to convince Brave users to not use Brave, you’ll want to make sure that your arguments are valid and that you’ve actually read and understood the sources you’re pointing to.

    I even provided you with a current/active DNS leak issue that you can use.


  • I’m assuming this is a list you copied from somewhere else, most of these are not privacy issues.

    1. Is a privacy issue and definitely concerning. It was fixed a little over a month after the issue report:
      https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/13527

    There is a more recent issue where DNS is leaking if your Shield settings are set to “Aggressive” for trackers & ads blocking:
    https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/48947

    1,2,3,4,6,7,8,10,11 are not privacy related issues.

    1. I don’t think you read, or understood the article, because your summary is not what’s happening there. In that article a website owner is complaining that Brave is scraping their website and using the content to feed some database for LLM training.

    2. I was confused about because your summary is incorrect (again). Brave does still block fingerprinting, but according to that article they removed the “strict” level blocking because too many sites broke.



  • There are ongoing discussions regarding this on their github.

    Some parts of the world have traffic data freely available, in other parts you may need to pay for it. For example, see the list compiled by GraphHopper here: https://github.com/graphhopper/open-traffic-collection?tab=readme-ov-file

    On the CoMaps github there are privacy concerns being brought up with live traffic data collection. Some want extra privacy where no telemetry is ever collected. Some want to be able to provide an API key for traffic data. Some want an opt-in feature with a focus on privacy protections. For example, geofencing to protect home locations, stripping out data near the starting location and end destination of any trip, stripping out IP information, only counting average speeds on certain tiles of the map, etc.

    In the end I’m hoping for CoMaps to pull through with a live traffic option that also has strong privacy protections in place.


  • OsmAnd does, but only for Android users, and only if you set up online routing to work with a particular service (you’ll need an API key for something like GraphHopper).

    To enable this, on Android:

    • Go to the menu -> Settings
    • Click on your “Driving” Profile -> “Navigation Settings” -> “Navigation Type”
    • Select “Online”
    • Select “+ Add Online Routing Engine”
    • Choose your routing provider that handles traffic data and enter an API Key

    Even then, I find OsmAnd to be lacking because it doesn’t show me multiple options for routes, but at least I can get the best recommended route based on live traffic data.