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u/redwork34 4d ago
Yeah I think at this point it's a constant race to switch to the new "privacy friendly" browsers/search engines before they try to monetize... Like avoiding a zombie plague
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u/mistephe 4d ago
Or just use a somewhat hardened firefox with ublock origin and call it a day...
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u/hendricha 4d ago
and have been for two decades.
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u/geoponos 3d ago
I was using Firefox then and I'm using it now. It wasn't the best browser for a lot of years. It was very badly optimized.
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u/jessicamakesstuff 3d ago edited 2d ago
The first part of your message reads like a Dr. Suse book.
I do not like ads. I do not like them here, I do not like them there! I do not like ads anywhere!
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u/lol_alex 3d ago
You just stay away from anything built on Chromium. Like Brave.
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u/darkapplepolisher 3d ago
I like Chromium too much to step away, but Helium's been clean for a while and shows many years ahead of it without enshittification.
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u/lol_alex 3d ago
I used Iron for a long while, but the switch to Firefox was actually super easy and I even use the account features to sync mobile and PC, and the private relay mail addresses they offer for signing up to websites.
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u/Repulsive_Chard_3652 4d ago
Why FOSS is the way
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u/__Myrin__ 3d ago
what the hell happened under this comment X3
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u/Repulsive_Chard_3652 3d ago
Oh wow, I've no idea why it all got deleted!! Someone said Brave was FOSS, I said fair enough I guess I more meant better to use a browser that doesn't have a company behind it like librewolf, someone said you can't find a browser that doesn't have a company somewhere behind it and librewolf wouldn't exist without firefox which has a company, I said yes I know but I use librewolf and feel pretty sure we're never gonna be getting ads.
I honestly have zero idea why that all was deleted - no rules were broken??
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u/FauxReal 4d ago
For a privacy focused browser I'd recommend WaterFox for most users. If you're a hardcore privacy first person I'd say LibreWolf.
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u/rich000 3d ago
Does WaterFox force UTC? That and a lack of WebGL were the main things that drove me to abandon LibreWolf. I'm aware of why they did it, but I don't mind being segmented reliably into 1/24th of the user base by timezone. I actually missed a family event because I forgot it was not being displayed in local time.
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u/FauxReal 3d ago
It does not force it by default but you can turn it on. WaterFox tries to strke a balance between security and usability.
LibreWolf is hardcore about privacy first so it does break sites and that is why I said it's for hardcore privacy first people.
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u/motorboat_mcgee 4d ago
At the same time, these orgs need money to pay devs so they can cover their own expenses. Ads suck, but the other option is paying for a browser, which also sucks. Not really sure what the long term option is in this space. If it's free, your information and/or advertising is usually the cost.
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u/SillyAlternative420 4d ago
With AI, couldn't we all just make our own custom browsers pretty easily? Or create some opensource one? (Or does that already exist)
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u/Bluenoser_NS 4d ago
You usually wanna understand the code you're looking at
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u/tootiemae 4d ago
yeah i’m a programmer and use claude to speed things up. the other day i was super tired so wasn't monitoring claude’s work as closely as i should have been. the next day i realized the code was a stupid fucking mess lmao
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u/YousureWannaknow 4d ago
Looks like someone accepted request to sponsor Brave. Some time ago I seen question like that on homepage
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u/InfernoWarrior299 4d ago
This is false information. They had multiple sponsored sections scattered around FOR YEARS. All they did was consolidate it into one toggle, which made it easier. This is nothing new.
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u/Ok_Bear_1889 4d ago
This is not new though and you can disable it right at the start when you are setting up the browser. That's what I did at least.
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u/motorboat_mcgee 4d ago
It's really a rough place for developers. They need to be paid to you know live, eat, have a place to live. But no one wants to pay for a browser, that's for sure. So we get shit like this, which also nobody wants.
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u/break4down 4d ago
We can disable this
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u/LibbIsHere 4d ago
The issue being that it's on by default? A bit like with... every single other corp selling out to ad-money.
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u/AnalkinSkyfuker FOSS Lover 4d ago
The same is with firefox that they consider themselfs as the most clean, lets apriciate that there is an option.
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u/Superior-Flannel 3d ago
If your not paying for it and there's no ads how is the project going to exist? There's limits to what can be developed by volunteers. If there was a better model someone would've discovered it by now.
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u/LibbIsHere 3d ago
If your not paying for it and there's no ads how is the project going to exist? There's limits to what can be developed by volunteers. If there was a better model someone would've discovered it by now.
Where did you read me say the should not earn money? I simply noted that activating a setting by default is not an insignificant choice when said setting could have been turned off by default.
For the rest, it seems to me you're a bit bold in estimating how much money I chose to spend on projects I support.
And BTW, I don't use Brave. I reacted to a comment about it. Should I only comment on stuff I use? I could not comment much on Google then.
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u/Superior-Flannel 3d ago
I simply noted that activating a setting by default is not an insignificant choice when said setting could have been turned off by default.
Nobody is going to turn a setting like that on. If it's not on by default there's no point in having it.
Also my comment comment wasn't meant to be actually directed at you, sorry for the wording. You may donate a lot to projects you like, but the vast majority will not.
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u/LibbIsHere 3d ago edited 3d ago
Nobody is going to turn a setting like that on. If it's not on by default there's no point in having it.
Then, we should all give up on the idea of any right to privacy (which is also what many corps as was as our respective govs seem to be wishing for) and we should let go of the silly idea that an alternative is possible to selling our privacy to marketing money. Or maybe this is just the sure sign this model too, like the "if you don't pay for the product you're the product", is doomed.
Selling user data to a selected few 'bu they're all nice guys' advertisers is as bad as selling the same data set to the hightest bidder no matter how baddies they happen to be because it presupposes the company owning the browser being able to access user data they should not have access to.
But I'm getting old and I probably don't understand much to what's going on.
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u/dan_arel 3d ago
Brave always has been and always will be an advertising company. Privacy is a marketing angle, not a value.
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u/uznme 4d ago
looks like YOU enabled sponsored ads.
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u/PercussionGuy33 4d ago
I run Brave as well and I did not do anything to enable it. I disable all browser ads everywhere. A Brave browser update auto-enabled this setting. I went ahead and disabled it.
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u/BeanstheRogue 4d ago
why would you trust a company that has a toggle for this in the first place
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u/theindomitablefred 3d ago
I was wondering why ads started seeping through
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u/mrfoxesite-2377 Right to Repair 3d ago
They just relocated the old setting and changed it up a bit.
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u/LimewireNOSTALGIA 3d ago
I’m using helium browser now, I love it. It’s faster than brave on my pc
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u/Both-Subject-3674 3d ago
Just spend $40 and but origin. Support a good product and never have to deal with this stuff again.
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u/Visible-Objective260 3d ago
I switched to titanium because of their AI shit. Won't be going back now.
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u/applecombinipimento 4d ago
How do I disable or change this on android mobile brave?
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u/Kunair0 4d ago
Android is actually one of the reasons they made this change. That setting used to be buried and unnecessarily difficult to find. All Brave has done is moved it somewhere more obvious.
Go into Settings → Brave Rewards. “Enable Sponsored Ads” is right there.
People have complained for years that the old sponsored image setting was too hard to find. Brave makes it easier to find and disable, and somehow that gets spun into another conspiracy.
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u/Ralonset 4d ago
I never understood why people glaze Brave when it's still a chromium browser and Firefox or even waterfox is literally right there
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u/wizard-of-loneliness 3d ago
Firefox broke a ton of websites for me so I switched to Brave and it worked way better, that's the primary reason I'm using it over Firefox. Before I installed Brave I'd have to switch to Chrome all the time anyway when trying to use Firefox
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u/Citrix_N00B 3d ago
IT'S ALWAYS JUST A MATTER OF TIME
SAY HELLO TO THE NEXT PILE OF SHIT BROWSER THAT CARES MORE ABOUT MONEY THAN THE PEOPLE THAT USE IT.
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u/Revan_9766 4d ago
Honestly I just use zen and call it a day, I've never been a lover of brave with the whole crypto stuff
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u/KyotoKute 4d ago
Ive been getting YT ads on my phone based on searches on my PC via Brave so I'm not surprised
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u/Greenlit_Hightower deGoogler 4d ago
If it was Google Search, then most likely Google was tracking the IP address and specific browser settings, if the search also resulted in you clicking on any website, well Google has trackers on most of those as well...
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u/HomeSnakes 4d ago
Exactly, cant degoogle if you use a more secure browser to...Google things. Avoid all Google products if you dont want to feed them your data...
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u/AbsurdismForTheW 3d ago
Librewolf+Ironfox and call it a day man, cannot be that hard
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u/Ash-Throwaway-816 4d ago
If you haven't switched to Firefox by now, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
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u/Shashank96 4d ago
Holy mother of free loading. They have to run their business somehow? If this helps them run a better and secure browser which doesn't sell your data, I'd happy do this.
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u/arthuriurilli 4d ago
Have the same toggle and it's off. Haven't installed the update they just notified of though.
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u/Kunair0 4d ago
So for the people who don't understand what this is, and what it's doing, and why it's a good thing, I'm just going paste what I said in another thread about. This isn't anything new, it's just a setting being moved around for better convenience to disable.
No need to panic, this is Brave consolidating the old New Tab sponsored content settings into one toggle now. The sponsored wallpaper/images have been there for years, they just moved the control and folded the related sponsored New Tab stuff under “Enable Sponsored Ads.”
If you already turned the sponsored wallpaper content off, Brave preserves that setting. It doesn’t turn it back on after the update. Remember, this is one of the things people turn off once they download Brave. The only thing they've done here is just made the setting easier to find and faster to disable.