That's actually one of the reasons I do not use Brave.

My guess is because Brave is a relatively known Chromium browser that's been degoogled. Along with built in ad and tracker blocking, and it's an easy less evil of the two.

I want to like Firefox, both as normal user and as web developer, but something about it keeps bugging me. The UI feels sluggish, sites seem to be slightly less performant, and I can't seem to get used to it.

That said, I've started using Vivaldi, and while it can be considered bloated, I really like the tab options it has, while also offering a degoogled chromium that's being kept to date.

Brave has been hyped as a privacy browser despite having several major privacy failures baked into it repeatedly. It's 100% hype. You get the same level of privacy on paper by installing Chromium with an ad blocker and tweaking a couple settings. Firefox has better privacy defaults and is better with an ad blocker installed. Chromium has a slight edge on security (FF needs to really push tab isolation harder) but if privacy is your main concern I would always recommend FF.

I have installed Brave on my grandparents' computer, because:

1. They had only used chrome, so brave is more familiar than firefox.
2. Less chance of something not working/loading properly.

Personally I use firefox.

I don't use brave, but I use Vivaldi.

The main reason for me is native mouse gestures. They are so much better than addon mouse gestures.

And speed dials. Addon ones are okayish, but I prefer the Vivaldi implementation.

If Firefox would ever ass native mouse gestures, I would swap in an instant. Until then, no can do :(

Being chromium based it

• has better performance
• has less bugs
• has better standards compatibility

Don't get me wrong, I am using Firefox, but your entire post is pretty disingenuous. Criticizing Brave over privacy concerns and then suggesting Firefox instead requires disingenuity or a special kind of ignorance and/or stupidity. Firefox has had 10 times as many privacy "mishaps" as Brave with all the "experiments" of corporate affiliates they shipped to users unannounced. There's a reason there are so many forks of Firefox.

Pretty much everything you criticize about Brave is entirely optional.

Then you title a link as Brave "getting ousted as spyware", and the linked to page does not oust Brave as spyware at all. You would do good to adopt some of the more neutral/factual tone of that page.

And in parts that page is pretty ridiculous, too: complaining about what is set as the default search engine (the same as Firefox, btw). Who the fuck cares what search engine is set by default? Just change it. Opt out of everything you do not like. If there's stuff you cannot opt out of which is bad, we can talk about that. But arguing about optional features is ridiculous.

Edit: little add-on: Brave factually has better out of the box (no plugins) privacy protection than Firefox: https://privacytests.org/

The thisisunsafe bypass - although I'm pretty sure it's a Chromium feature and not specific to Brave. One of our servers has a completely fucked-up SSL cert, which I can't fix for reasons outside my control. Firefox won't allow me to connect, but thisisunsafe on Brave works.

Defaults. Install Brave and you're done. Site doesn't work? Report non-working site. Wanna support creators? Top up your Brave Wallet or turn on Brave ads.

I've a limited budget and limited time to tip websites. I ain't gonna tip manually every other rando on the internet. Brave takes care of that. Small amounts, yes, but better than just ad-blocking [yes, website owners have to opt-in to it].

Completely uninformed take follows: Also, Mozilla seems to be trying to ramp up their ads department -- search for Mozilla Ads. And no-one gonna convert because they already have Google Adsense.

TL;DR: Firefox is faster but using recommended tools like uBlock Origin leaves websites without income.

Brave is better out of the box than Firefox

The only reason I use it over firefox is about tab grouping and how tab mutting work by default. I don't feel like trying out a bunch of extensions to find one that does what I already get from another browser. Also don't have to worry about installing ad blocker. Originally switched because it worked better than uorigin for a specific use-case that was relevant for me. I also have vivaldi, firefox, and librewolf install and will use them occasionally. Privacy isn't a big concern for me though; when I tried to switch to librewolf, the privacy features ended up annoying me so I disabled a lot of them because they interfered with using the browser how I wanted.

Not recommending Brave. I agree at least in theory with using Firefox and I want more people to use Firefox. But its what I'm use to and there was reason for me to try it out at the time I switched to it (that's probably irrelevant now).

On iOS, unlike Android, Firefox doesn't come with extensions. No ads are blocked. Even if I use Safari and Adguard extension, it doesn't block YouTube ads. Brave works like a charm in this regard. I've opted out of all telemetry stuff that I could find, and btw even Firefox opts into everything by default. Any other open source browser you can suggest that blocks ads including YouTube on iOS?

Due to some specific hardware issue on my end affecting all firefox based browsers, I have to use a hardened and stripped down version of Flatpak Brave, which I did manually, as a backup browser. I used to use Ungoogled Chromium but it is not reliable. Other than that there is absolutely no reason to use Brave and I would immediately switch back to Firefox only if I get newer hardware.

As a plus point, firefox (gecko based browsers in general) are the only ones I have seen which provide the best theming flexibilities.