this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2026
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Privacy
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I'd recommend Mullvad Browser. It has Tor's anti-fingerprinting features without the Tor part. Designed to use with a VPN to get anonymity from sharing IP addresses. But even if you don't do that it is still a stripped down private by default Firefox fork. I use it for general searches and some anonymous accounts, and Brave or Zen for signing into personal accounts. Brave is controversial but their controversies are at least understandable, quickly rectified, haven't happened in a while, and are generally best in class on features. Zen is a little but slower due to being based in Firefox and not Chrome, but not much, and is much more clean and customizable than Firefox.
Recommending mullvad, in this economy ? That's a bold strategy , if nothing else.
I suppose if you're going to do that then following up with handwaving brave's historic shenanigans and current CEO is consistent.
"They previous did and continue to do some shit i don't care about , i like their products" at least shows some backbone.
The corporate defense version of the narcissists prayer is weaksauce.
What a strange comment. Can't say I've ever been called a narcissist for recommending privacy browsers before.
Mullvad is pretty much the most trusted VPN provider. If you don't want to pay for a VPN, don't. I explicitly mentioned it is still a good privacy by default Firefox based browser without the bloat of Firefox.
Sure, let's go through your list, why not.
2016: Brave announces a feature, then are laughed at because it's a bad idea. They don't do it. Ok then?
2018: for some reason they allow users to donate in someone else's name that Brave is not affiliated with. They give them the money after $100 is reached, which is clearly stated. They don't clearly state which is affiliated and who isnt, confusing the website owners into thinking someone impersonated them. They then label it after someone contacts them about this, and don't use a dumb ass fundraising system like this again. At no point are they being misleading about where money is going, and this does not affect Brave users in any way.
2020: injecting affiliate links. According to Brave, this was a coding mistake, and it was fixed before they made any money from it. Even if I don't believe them, from what I can tell, this is not like the Honey scandal where it stripped out other people's affiliate links to steal their money, but rather only put an affiliate link into a clean link to make Brave money when there would have been no money involved. Not a privacy issue either from what I can tell. It's an "if x then y" thing during the search process. There's not someone sitting in Brave HQ reading everyone's searches and pressing a button, nor is it recorded. Is it scummy and possibly illegal to get money from a company who is thinking someone advertised on their behalf but are effectively not gaining anything? Yeah, and if they did in fact do it on purpose, that is bad. But I can see their logic of it not hurting anyone. Sorta...and if I'm being honest I'm not going to cry for corpos that heavily push ads.
2020: ads on home screen. Like every browser, including Firefox. OK. I forgot this happened because I turned it off. Like I do for every browser, or at least every browser that allows you to do so. Except in Brave's case, they will literally pay you to not turn it off.
2021: Brave makes a Tor plugin that they didn't realize conflicts with their ad blocking in such a way that causes DNS leaks. They fixed it as soon as this was found out. Unlike the affiliate link thing, I don't believe for a second that this would be intentional. Brave does not stand to benefit from this on any way, unless they are fully a fed psy-op.
2023: certainly the most worrying on the list that they're even approaching this as a feature. However, Web Discovery Program is opt in. Your data is not being sold or used for Brave's index unless you tell them to. I think their idea here was to build their own index based on consensually given data rather than solely scraping the internet without consent. However I'd really prefer they just didn't be a part of data selling at all, obviously. Needless to say, this is a big problem with browsers in general. Firefox has stated that they don't sell data, but they have definitely been in bed with Ai lately and their telemetry is opt out.
Now far be it from me to even approach being a corporate defender. I am. not here to suck Brave's dick, I keep up to date with what Brave is doing because I don't fully trust them. But then again, I don't trust pretty much any browser creators more than I am forced to. I just think it's really weird that Brave gets so much hate when it isn't warranted when compared to what other browsers do.
Ungoogled Chromium, for example, removes some key security features from the Chromium project for absolutely no reason, and relies on a bizarre build system that lacks transparency, relying on third parties binaries instead of just, you know, building from source. Helium is a fork of Ungoogled Chromium, and doesn't fix either of those issues. Vivaldi is closed source. Why are we even entertaining them being a privacy browser if we don't know what code they're running? They could be worse than Google for all we know. Firefox refuses to fix a security flaw on Android where they don't sandbox by site, which has been known about for years. Every Android Firefox fork has the same issue. As good as it is on desktop, that's why I ultimately moved away from Firefox, because I need to sync tabs from my PC to my phone.
edit: well shit, i just realised i used a meme/reference that might have been mistaken for me specifically implying an economic reason not to use mullvad.
That's my bad for assuming universal meme knowledge.
, in this economy? was predominantly used to reference economic reasons to not doing something, it has broadened in scope to encompass the idea that the proceeding statement is nonsensical in general (not just for economic reasons)
So "mullvad, in this economy ?" roughly translates to "mullvad is a questionable choice in this current (specific or general) context"
No one was calling you a narcissist, read it again.
And my comment had nothing to do with its technical competence (nor it's economic impact, see note at the top)
Have you really not seen any stories related to mullvad recently?
Not my list, a list.
And all of those explanations are the handwaving I mentioned.
Your take on them all seems reasonable if not exactly the same as mine.
In aggregate though they indicate a potential pattern.
My response was specifically to your implication that because their many shenanigans were in the past and nothing was a current problem that they we should only judge them on their current technical competence.
I also noticed you didn't mention the current CEO and why someone might have an issue with them.
Then you probably aren't hearing all of what people are actually complaining about.
hint : they aren't usually complaining about the technical competence.
Also other browsers get plenty of shit, a lot of it justifiable.
All valid, and I agree.
I could list some you haven't mentioned as well.
I personally use a variant of Firefox that has a whole bunch of questionable shit turned off or removed.
Despite almost all of their recent moves having been to announce some bullshit that actively makes them a worse option for me they are still currently , barely, the least worst option (for my preferences)
And only then it's mostly because of the variants.
What I was getting at is that playing down the continuous bullshit from these companies weakens your arguments.
It also genuinely seems you don't see why the non-technical aspects of these companies might be a point of contention for some people.