I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.
Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.
Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.
After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL's. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.
Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I'd say the answer is a very clear no.
One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.
Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don't mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.
I would appreciate it if conservatives stopped trying to strip away our rights, including the right to privacy.
Same but it is relevant that there is bipartisan support for stripping away our rights to privacy and general tech/internet freedoms.
Of course it is! But Peter Thiel isn't bipartisan, so idk what that has to do with his involvement in Brave. He self-identifies as far-right. Not leftist, liberal, or independent. And since we're talking specifically about Brave and Thiel, I don't really care about whataboutism in this context.
I don't see how you can acknowledge this being relevant but also consider it whataboutism, those seem like opposite positions. If it is whataboutism, that's a claim that it isn't relevant. It is relevant because partisan affiliation is not a reliable predictor of how someone will approach this issue, which matters for whether considering it in this context makes sense.