Brave

What hackers pick instead

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• SafariApple's browser is praised for privacy protections, battery efficiency and Apple device integration, though critics cite aggressive tab reloading, sites that only work in Chrome, and iOS engine lock-in.307recommend
• Orion Browser by KagiA WebKit browser recommended for running Chrome and Firefox extensions like uBlock Origin on iPhone and Mac, with no telemetry, but critics cite bugs and its closed source.206recommend
• LibreWolfA Firefox fork with privacy-respecting defaults, uBlock Origin built in, and Mozilla's AI and telemetry stripped out; strict anti-fingerprinting can break some sites.113recommend
• WaterfoxFirefox-based browser people switch to for removing Mozilla extras, privacy-minded defaults and no AI features. Critics note it lags Firefox on security fixes.75recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 913 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Brave is a very good YouTube app. You can download videos for offline viewing, build a local playlist of said videos, and bypass ads all in one go.

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Smartphone Mkt to Decline 13% in '26, Largest Drop Ever Due to Memory Shortage”

2. If anything, Brave has done more to harden Chromium than Mozilla has with Firefox, even though it comes with its own set of problems

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Owners, not renters: Mozilla's open source AI strategy”

3. This, the "Brave was putting ads of their own on other pages" and "adding the referrer code for Binance" stories get thrown around

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Lobsters Interview”

4. It does nothing to protect against the future when Google decides they are sick of people trying to get around their Ad Block ban

   Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo”

5. I've been using Brave for years, and after spending like 20 seconds to turn off the 'show on new tab' things, I get a blank page

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO”

6. I use brave on my phone and I can't really tell the difference from desktop browser+UO, so I guess it works well enough.

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Edge, Opera to follow”

7. The browser works properly, it has ad-blocking built in and it is trivial to turn off the other nonsense in the browser.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled”

8. hopefully, they will do just what Brave did - embed an ad blocker compatible with uBlock lists right into the browser

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Vivaldi for Android now supports some Chrome extensions”

9. Brave is still faster on Android. It probably helps that it has adblocking built-in, instead of a separate extension.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Orion 1.0”

10. gives you on desktop and especially on mobile the best out of the box experience in blocking all these intrusive ads

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Web Browsers have stopped blocking pop-ups”

11. With Brave you can have ad blocking built into the browser itself and not have to depend on a third party developer.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements”

12. if you want to maximally protect yourself, use Vanadium or Brave Browser and GrapheneOS and no privacy invasive apps

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “AdFection: Targeted ads turned into a pipeline for zero-click mercenary spyware”

13. Their browser's security is better than Google Chrome thanks to them disabling a lot of the stuff that Google ships

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore”

14. I use brave and it seems to work just fine against ads. Brave also has lower memory consumption than google chrome.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers”

15. I switched to Brave. Even with its cryptocurrency stuff bundled, it's easily disabled and not in your face at all.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo”

16. I have heard from some power users that Brave is one of the best browsers with regard to ad-blocking and privacy.

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Fingerprints are the new cookies”

17. the built-in ad blocking and Google-free aspects of it made me switch instantly and haven't look back after years

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers”

18. I think there are five or six things that I need to disable in a fresh Brave installation and then it's perfect.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo”

19. a fully integrated ad blocking engine that is superior to every browser add-on/extension solution ever created

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO”

20. That's where I decided to make the jump to Brave. All the same Chrome extensions without the Google nonsense

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “New Safari developer tools provide insight into CSS Grid Lanes”

21. Brave has adblocking built into blink itself, so you no longer need to trust a 3rd party browser extention.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “The Mozilla Cycle, Part III: Mozilla Dies in Ignominy”

22. I use the brave browser on my phone which both blocks adds and allows me to listen with the phone locked.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “The Pirate Bay Remains Resilient, 20 Years After the Raid”

23. Sure, Brave is great, but it's still chromium, making Google have outsized say over how the web behaves.

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Firefox Enterprise”

24. Brave's an easy slot-in - fiddle with settings or buy Brave Origin, and you get what's basically Chrome

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Firefox Has Integrated Brave's Adblock Engine”

25. Brave has native ad-block and anti finger-printing, enabled by default, and the web works excellently

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin”

26. Brave strips out the ads that the creators put on their site, puts their own ads there, then gives the creators some of that money if and only if the creator realizes they have to sign up for Brave's cryptoshit.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting”

27. If Brave put my name and picture on an advertisement shown to Brave users, said that I was soliciting donations and would receive the money, and then took the money

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Lobsters Interview”

28. I don't think the past controversies were just unfortunate, "mistakes" or conspiracy theories, but products of their business model + opportunistic execution.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo”

29. The back and forth with Eich on Twitter and him defending it as ethical when it was first reported on painted a different picture at the time for me

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent”

30. Don't forget when they took donations on behalf of other websites and kept the money unless the operator went to the "escrow account" to collect it

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%”

31. not only is it a wrapper around Chromium, but their crypto stuff and some dodgy affiliate injection in the past paints them as untrustworthy.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin”

32. Isn't Brave backed by Peter Thiel? That alone would make me not trust it but they also have baked in crypto and other weird stuff.

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer”

33. I would not recommend Brave to less-technical friends and family knowing that they would surely be duped by some dark patterns

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%”

34. a browser (a set of Chromium patches, rather) with cryptocurrencies, NFTs, LLM integrations, and all other trend-chasing junk

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Mozilla's latest quagmire”

35. Do they still mitm sites to put their brave crypto donation buttons on, so you think a content creator is getting the money?

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update”

36. some forks like Brave will try to circumvent such changes, it will eventually become too costly or incompatible to maintain

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Hang on to Your Firefox”

37. Brave: Crypto nonsense, all kinds of advertising for their crap everywhere unless you go through many hoops to turn it off.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “I switched to Brave”

38. Brave has perverse incentives to discontinue it because of their BAT crypto business model that rewards looking at ads.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “/e/OS is a complete "deGoogled", mobile ecosystem”

39. using yet another Chromium based browser doesn't really improve the current situation with Google's browser monopoly

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “I switched to Brave”

40. try to find any detail about the specific information collected by the brave browser and how it is used to serve ads

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “I switched to Brave”