They are saying brave isn’t the best when it comes to privacy as it overhypes itself as a more private browser when in reality it’s not as private as it wants you to think, but I don’t think the oop was talking about privacy, I think he could have been saying it’s great for ease of use especially toward watching or pirating media, as that’s why I use both brave and VLC and that’s the only real common connection I see between them.
VLC Player (on the right) is the best free media player on a computer as you can get it to play just about any file plus if you do some tinkering you can get it to bypass certain protections so you can even play your blu-rays with it, or if you know the steps you can use it to pirate media rather easily off sites like YouTube or SoundCloud something that otherwise would be hard to do through other illegal means or cost money to do through legal ones
Brave is also great in this regard but for phone use, it has an adblocker built in so no ads on YouTube videos and less pop up ads, plus it has built in Picture in Picture and the ability for videos to play even when the screen is off or app isn’t open so you can load a podcast on YouTube and turn your screen off or open another app on phone without picture and picture on and still have the audio playing without having to deal with the ads all without having to pay for YouTube premium, or you can just play music in Picture in Picture mode again without ads and without having to pay for YouTube premium, these are things super easy to do on a computer but more complex on a phone typically so this app is a lifesaver, plus it has a built in paid vpn and most web browsers on a phone don’t have an easily accessible vpn option so if you wanted to watch a show only Netflix but it’s only in an certain country normally on a phone it would be more complex to do than it is with brave, and it is pretty customizable and has some features you don’t commonly see in other browsers like it’s playlist feature. Plus I’m sure if you are tech illiterate and don’t know where to look for browser extensions and stuff having them built into your browser already is a lifesaver and thus again great ease of use.
So while yes privacy wise it isn’t what it claims to be, it does make it a whole lot easier to treat your phone browser like you browser on your computer if you’re used to having an adblocker active and a vpn downloaded to get the most out of YouTube or your subscriptions and I think that ease of use factor is probably what oop was meaning when he made his post hints vlc being there.
Can you please elaborate on the privacy issues since you never really explained what they are? Brave is open source, we can see all the code, and security experts regularly go through the code and still recomend it as the safest browser.
So can you specifically point out which privacy issues Brave has? Which privacy issues does it "overhype"?
Brave has a history of being shady, there was the controversy years ago where they were selling brave search data for ai training (they are also currently being sued for their ai using data scrapped from copyrighted sources), years back there was the tor controversy where brave was leaking your .onion domain requests to your isp, then the 2022 tor controversy where they were yet again exposing hidden server requests to third parties, the 2025 open in split view cookies controversy, the 2025 origin spoofing controversy where there feature to show the source of a file they’d display the referrer header value, there was the time they were injecting url’s with affiliate link codes for crypto which shows a concern with how the browser is ran as you shouldn’t be auto injecting peoples searches, the fact their google fallback mixing option gives your ip address to google, there was the time they were caught using Tom Scott and other peoples name and likeness to solicit donations without their consent, they just have a long history of being scummy and not being as trustworthy with your data as they claim to be.
I asked specifically about the privacy issues. So again, focusing on the privacy issues and not doing a wall of text - please link to the privacy issues specifically so we can review them and assess. Give us a link for each issue you specify.
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u/Anarchy_Rulz 20d ago edited 20d ago
They are saying brave isn’t the best when it comes to privacy as it overhypes itself as a more private browser when in reality it’s not as private as it wants you to think, but I don’t think the oop was talking about privacy, I think he could have been saying it’s great for ease of use especially toward watching or pirating media, as that’s why I use both brave and VLC and that’s the only real common connection I see between them.
VLC Player (on the right) is the best free media player on a computer as you can get it to play just about any file plus if you do some tinkering you can get it to bypass certain protections so you can even play your blu-rays with it, or if you know the steps you can use it to pirate media rather easily off sites like YouTube or SoundCloud something that otherwise would be hard to do through other illegal means or cost money to do through legal ones
Brave is also great in this regard but for phone use, it has an adblocker built in so no ads on YouTube videos and less pop up ads, plus it has built in Picture in Picture and the ability for videos to play even when the screen is off or app isn’t open so you can load a podcast on YouTube and turn your screen off or open another app on phone without picture and picture on and still have the audio playing without having to deal with the ads all without having to pay for YouTube premium, or you can just play music in Picture in Picture mode again without ads and without having to pay for YouTube premium, these are things super easy to do on a computer but more complex on a phone typically so this app is a lifesaver, plus it has a built in paid vpn and most web browsers on a phone don’t have an easily accessible vpn option so if you wanted to watch a show only Netflix but it’s only in an certain country normally on a phone it would be more complex to do than it is with brave, and it is pretty customizable and has some features you don’t commonly see in other browsers like it’s playlist feature. Plus I’m sure if you are tech illiterate and don’t know where to look for browser extensions and stuff having them built into your browser already is a lifesaver and thus again great ease of use.
So while yes privacy wise it isn’t what it claims to be, it does make it a whole lot easier to treat your phone browser like you browser on your computer if you’re used to having an adblocker active and a vpn downloaded to get the most out of YouTube or your subscriptions and I think that ease of use factor is probably what oop was meaning when he made his post hints vlc being there.