I think we need all support we can get to fight Google on this, so I welcome Brave here actually.

Use this link to avoid going to Twitter:

https://nitter.kavin.rocks/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304

6 points
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Isn’t Brave doing this because they have their own way that they sell ads for coins?

I don’t entirely approve, I think. But if it helps fight Google’s domination of the market, fine.

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13 points

I use it… I don’t agree to ads so I don’t get coins. which is great because I don’t want coins, I just want no ads.

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-3 points
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If you use brave or any chromium browser you’re both an idiot and part of the problem.

Anytime someone proudly says they use brave, I know they’re an idiot and not credible on anything tech related

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10 points

Why?

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2 points
*

75% just being a gatekeeper of browsers

25% because monopolies are bad

thats my best guess at least. It is a legitimate point; it is horrible, cocky phrasing.

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1 point

50% monopolies are bad, by using any chrome based browser you’re contributing to googles ability to monopolize the web. 50% because it’s for cringe cypto-edgelords and that nonsense, all from a Tech Bro ousted at mozilla for being homophobic.

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5 points
*

Brave users remind me of Joe Rogan bros. I wonder what that Venn diagram looks like.

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1 point

Idk Brave is not a browser, but some crypto processig application. It tries to be more than browser, but I only need browser, so I am not going to use it.

Firefox seem to do the job just fine. <3

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7 points

Have you used it? If you don’t want you won’t really notice anything crypto outside of the “new tab” screen. Not pushing anything onto the user while browsing. I’m not sure what people are talking about. Yes, you can have wallet there and make an insignificant amount of money by allowing their ads.

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5 points

Have you used it?

Yes, I used it and switched to Firefox. Brave had just too much of a “HEY IT’S CRYPTO HERE” sort of UI elements to the point that this whole browser seemed like trash to me.

So I just switched to Firefox and been using it for the past ~1 year or so. Also their fiasco with overwritten URLs so they can make money really helped to push me away.

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2 points

I’m not sure what people are talking about.

To me it’s just the principle of the thing. A browser replacing ads with it’s own is just… weird. The idea of being paid to be advertised to just makes me feel yuck.

The thing that comes up over and over is that all the weird stuff is opt-in. “It’s just like firefox, but it has an opt-in homeless person puncher, just in case you ever want that.”

Ordinarily I try to be as “you do you” as I can, but the thing that kinda rubs me the wrong way about Brave is that there’s so many people so loyal to what seems to me to be a bit weird.

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1 point

Why not be loyal if they dont force anything upon you? The homeless person puncher is very far from accurate comparison. I see 0 ads and pay no money for it

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4 points

You can just turn the crypto stuff off, and the nice thing is when you turn it off it actually respects your decision and actually turns off

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20 points

I don’t understand.

There’s loads of people for whom 3 or 4 sites make up 99% of “the web”, and those sites will just stop working for people using browsers without WEI support.

I just don’t really see how a browser could be viable in the future without WEI support.

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2 points

How about having the WEI configurable just for particular sites, bit like FoxyProxy.

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9 points
*

This is my take too - Google Search and YouTube especially which are owned by Google.

Even if Chrome had like 5% market share, surely they could just push this anyway? While the Chromium monopoly is partially to blame for this, I’d argue the centralisation of the web is as well.

Sure, “Google Search is useless now, you can’t find what you want!”, but the vast, vast majority of people still and continue to use it, and nothing will change that most likely.

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6 points

Google search isn’t useless. It’s getting worse but still Google is the best search. For a lot of general searches, Duckduckgo and Kagi have been sufficient for me. “What year did WW2 end” “what is the population of Crimea” “north Korean famine 1990s”

But for example I had a picture of a specific motor an employee sent me that I had to find a replacement for online. It’s a niche motor we use for a large air compressor. All I had was some model / serial numbers. I tried plugging in different variations of the numbers and “motor” into both Duckduckgo and Kagi with no luck.

On Google, the first result was a PDF of a Honda motor guide that had every single niche Honda motor and I was able to find the model name of the exact motor I needed, which allowed me to find a viable replacement on Ebay.

It hurts me to say it, but the other web searches still haven’t reached total parity with Google. I use Duckduckgo as my primary and then when it doesn’t find me what I need, I go to Google.

I would use Kagi but after it couldn’t find me the engine, I stopped paying my monthly subscription. Until then I was happy with it, but if I’m paying for a service and it isn’t any better than the free options…

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4 points

You could use a SearX instance. It includes google’s results.

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1 point

You can use Startpage to do a Google search by proxy. Startpage passes your search query to Google and returns the results to you without having to use Google directly.

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5 points

That’s why you can add !g to your search query when you didn’t find anything on Brave or DDG

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2 points

For what it’s worth I’m not saying that - it’s just a common argument I’ve seen online lately in these spaces. I don’t actually know if it’s true because I don’t use Google Search.

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3 points

Yeah reall I have seen people complain about google search followed by them using google. Neeva was a paid search engine that recently shut down. In theor fairwell message they explained getting people to pay for it was easy but the hardest part was explaing how to change search engines or what the difference between search engine and a broswer

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2 points

Holy shit can i get a link to this?

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5 points

Google needs to be broken up. Honestly most tech companies do as they have consolidated way too much

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2 points

If Google wanted to push it with only 5% of their userbase wouldn’t they be saying goodbye to 95% of their users. I don’t think even Google is that insane.

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2 points

No, because what is the chance people will give up YouTube?

Not very high, I’d say!

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96 points

And that’s exactly the point. WEI makes it a world where big tech decides if they are going to support a competing browser, a competing operating system like Linux, or plugins against ads. They can also force you to have any number of plugins installed, from their choosing.

It destroys the free web completely.

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-18 points

Yes but why is eich saying this? It would be the end of brave surely.

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18 points

No it won’t. It’ll just fork the internet.

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7 points
*

Wether it is the end for brave or not we don’t know (judging by the core users of Brave and FF I highly doubt that it will just be the end of Brave or Firefox)

I’m fairly certain that it will split the web apart even more. Then we have the “totally safe and totally not monitored” adinfested buzzweb. We have the chinese walled garden web. And ofc the darkweb (e.g. tor and onion-sites). And the new addition will be the gray-web or something because “ya JusT cAn’T be SuRe” (completely disregarding that the current APIs are really just about all that’s needed. Imo someone running a website has in their own interest and in their own responsibility to secure their site and servers. WEI is a cheap stupid cop out at best for security concerns and “you WILL be looking at our fucking ads, you fucking data slave” at worst.

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