I use Brave as a backup browser. My main one is Firefox.
You can turn off the crypto stuff. You don't have to use Brave Shields (in browser ad blocker). It can be turned off. Now you can use uBlock Origin or another ad blocker.
About the CEO, I can't see nothing about his beliefs reflecting in his work. Looks like he kept them separated. I'm not for said beliefs.
That you can is besides the point. You shouldn’t need to. If the first thing I need to think about after installing it is “well, let’s see what garbage is in here that I need to turn off”, then any trust I would have for it has already gone out the window. Especially important odor a browser where that is kind of the main differentiating aspect.
Firefox has telemetry. You can opt out and delete it, but by that logic it shouldn't be trusted either. Also, I doubt people who really care about privacy don't harden firefox. Being able to is not besides the point.
It still has to be feature rich and work or of the box. I haven't been back to Firefox in a few years, but it was pretty dumpy by comparison to brave. I'll look again but the key feature of a browser to me isn't "it's not Google, it's Foss, and I don't have to disable stuff".
I'm gonna hope you're a fellow Linux user if that's the perspective you take.
I wasn’t arguing for Firefox or FOSS. It just seems to me that if your selling point is trust and privacy (at least it is what I see people citing as Brave’s Big Thing), you should be as transparent and irreproachable in that regard as possible. Having said this, of course, good features can be enough for the trade-off to be worth it (this is true of pretty much every piece of software out there, Chrome included), depending t each user finds more important.
By that logic, Firefox would be in the same boat. After initially installing, you have to turn off data collection in the settings and disable Pocket in the config.
But you can make changes once damning information is discovered or attempt to research products and services to try and minimize your own impact on others suffering.
It's like with climate change. Germany has laws against climate change. But they have a small problem:
85% of CO2 is from China and USA. and even like 10% from that 15% comes from poor countries like India or Indonesia, which can't be asked for any change.
I try to not live in a lie. We need to be pragmatic. I believe in transparency of FOSS. But at the same time I think Firefox is doomed to die a slow death.
One swallow does not make a summer.