Corbin Davenport, der schon einen sehr kritischen Artikel über den Brave-Browser geschrieben hat, startet seinen neuen Beitrag über den Opera-Browser mit dem Appell: „You should not, under any circumstances, use Opera Browser or any of its derivatives.“ Ab da geht’s heftig bergab.
Und besonders auf Brave bezogen, hat Corbin Davenport, einen weiteren Artikel verfasst, der in die Details, warum man gegen Brave sein sollte, geht.
Grund Nr. 1: Die Person Brendan Eich.
Brave Software, the company behind the browser of the same name, was founded by Brendan Eich. He’s best known as the creator of JavaScript from his days at Netscape Communications, and he was later the co-founder of Mozilla. […] In 2014, he was appointed as CEO of Mozilla Corporation, which immediately caused backlash from at least a few people inside Mozilla and many people outside the organization. […] He donated $1,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, which was a proposed amendment to California’s state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Corbin Davenport
Grund Nr. 2: So ganz Anti-Werbung und Anti-Tracking dürfte Brave auch nicht sein.
The initial version of Brave allowed some advertisements hosted by the site itself (e.g. pre-roll ads on YouTube), and had a long-term goal of building its own advertising network. […] Brave’s plan was to remove most of the third-party advertisements in a page, create its own ad units based on data collected by the web browser itself, and then split the revenue with publishers.
Corbin Davenport
Grund Nr. 3: Brave hat Verbindungen zu Cryptowährungen, somit auch eine Interessenstangente.
Brave’s BAT was built around the cryptocurrency ecosystem (it’s an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain), which helped it attract users from the crowd of crypto enthusiasts. Brave Software continued to bake in more crypto-adjacent functionality over time, billing itself as the ultimate browser for crypto and web 3.0.
Corbin Davenport
Grund Nr. 4: Brave nimmt es mit dem Datenschutz nicht ganz so ernst.
Brave was also caught up in a privacy scandal in 2020, when it was revealed that the browser was adding affiliate codes to some URLs typed into the address bar. For example, typing in “binance.us” would add Brave’s affiliate link to the end, allowing Brave Software to collect revenue from signups or purchases. […] That should have been enough to swear off Brave as a privacy-centric browser forever, considering the entire point of affiliate links is to collect data about the user and traffic source.
Corbin Davenport
Und zusammenfassend:
Ultimately, Brave Browser is the apparatus of an advertising company, a bloated and complicated experience for the average user, and the pet project of the person kicked out of Mozilla for continuing to defend harmful political donations. […] Brave Browser is irredeemable, and you should not use it under any circumstances.
Corbin Davenport