Let me know when it is discovered that they in fact replaced MS Recall with their own version that was scraping your data in yet another sketchy attempt to make money.
Just avoid using an “AI” cpu.
All I have to say is I hope this catches on with other browsers.
The better option would be to not use spyware as an operating system.
Do you consider any form of telemetry “spyware”?
You consider actual, literal spyware as being merely telemetry?
I don’t think taking screenshots of everything you do every few seconds is telemetry.
It’s not, but it’s also not spyware - it’s local, encrypted, AND optional.
Optional like how it reminds me every 3 days that it wants my info for “customization” purposes, and I can only sleep the notification for another 3 days instead of telling it to fuck off?
They have been so predatory, at this point no one should see anything they do as benefiting end users.
Microsoft is known for making things “optional” at first then eventually forcing it down everyone’s throats. Removing offline accounts is one of them.
It’s not so much the technology itself is malware, but its behavior replicates that of malware.
Honestly it largely is.
Personally I like sharing crash reports, but even then, the user should be able to turn that off if you like.
Telemetry should be 100% opt-in.
Honestly it largely is.
I mean, by definition, it isn’t.
It’s anonymous and not malicious in nature. It’s a diagnostic and engagement measuring tool.
And how do you know it’s not malicious in nature? I’d like to know what your definition of “malicious” is if you’re just fine with letting a Corpo run system look at everything you’re doing.
diagnostic
I think it is useful to send crash reports, but the user should have power over it (see: when macOS generates a crash report, it asks the user if they would like to send it)
engagement measuring
That is your data they are taking to make money off of without your consent, and I consider that malicious. There are ways to do that with consent. See: Steam’s annual hardware survey
how the hell do you not?
I don’t know, maybe because I understand the definition of “spyware” and “telemetry”?
Well, semantically yes, not all telemetry is spyware. However regarding Windows telemetry it’s indistinguishable from spyware - you have no idea nor control over the data gathered, measured and processed.
The crux is that Windows telemetry is opt out, opting out can’t be done during installation, and historically opting out wasn’t sticky. Additionally some Windows telemetry is still being sent despite opting out.
That makes Windows telemetry fulfill all spyware criteria.
In this thread something I see a lot on lemmy is happening. Maybe someone can give me a hint on how that happens. The post itself is 90% upvotes, while the comment section is really anti-Brave (for good reasons). Do most upvotes come from people scrolling through without looking at the comment section and those with an opinion on the topic dive into it?
I upvote the post because I support the feature, and would like to see more browsers implement more privacy focused features.
I upvote the anti-Brave comments, because fuck Brave.
The post itself is reasonable quality and informative so I find it upvote worthy. If a post is low quality or a shit post then I downvote.
To me the karma system is about quality. Not an “I agree/disagree” button.
For comments I only down vote obvious trolls, bigots/racism etc.
The problem is that people routinely upvote bullshit, falsehoods, and flat out disinformation. Just because it was well written does not make it true.
Well, one could argue if just posting a link with a title is a ‘quality’ post. But the topic is still worth a discussion so I don’t see why it should be downvoted.
I think you should not downvote a post you have a negative opinion about. If the post is worth to discuss then why should I not upvote the post and then say that I disagree in the comments. If we all down vote those posts nobody will see it (apart of those who sort by controversial) and there will be no discussion.
If the software in question is bad, then I’d like to reduce visibility of the post while explaining why in the comments.
Brave is connected to the BAT pay-to-surf scam. Its CEO donates to homophobic causes.
Most people never bother to read anything beyond the title of the post. Let alone click the link to the article.
Now, i don’t know how everyone sees up/down votes. But I always thought that content and comments that is relevant and promotes discussion is good. And comments that aren’t are bad.
Rather than a measure of others opinions.
people just scroll around up voting headlines that they think sound good or support their identity
I try to counter this by randomly downvoting everything
I’ve noticed this on political posts too, among others and I’ve wondered the same thing.
It seems to me most people simply upvote the post to reward OP for bringing things up, exposing etc. Comments serve opinions on the topic itself, but upvote/downvote is more for if it’s good according to community rules and if the topic itself is interesting.
Linux blocks that “feature” too…
What feature? Recall?? That’s Windows 11-specific and hasn’t even launched yet??
I love this comment so much
The joke is that Linux blocks this by not doing it at all. Which is why people should switch to Linux. Which is a good idea. But that’s up to the people.
I still have literally thousands of clients that use Windows and want support… for these kinds of things. Firefox has recently stopped working on a few things and Brave works better for me right now. It’s not convenience when FF doesn’t work…
But I digress, Win 11 here and Brave. My choices, for lots of reasons. Lots of linux boxes as well though. Each to their own and all thatThis is about the Smart App Control feature in Win11 that takes screenshots periodically to check for “malicious activity”. its basically a glorified keylogger built into the OS. Firefox should really follow suit and block this too.
Holy shit, what a comment!
This is about the Smart App Control
It’s not, it’s about Recall.
that takes screenshots periodically to check for “malicious activity”
It doesn’t. Smar App Control does code validation and reputation check. Recall makes screenshots, OCR’s them and keeps them in an encrypted vault for the user to interact with.
built into the OS
It’s not, you can turn both off at any time.
its basically a glorified keylogger
It’s not, it fundamentally is NOT, because it doesn’t log any keystrokes. SAC isn’t even in the picture here, while Recall literally only makes screenshots, runs OCR and encrypts that.
Fuck me, where do you people get this bullshit from? It used to be “oh no, Microsoft will be making screenshots of your activity and sending them to their servers” not so long ago which, while still bullshit, was at least in the same ballpark as what Recall does.
Now you’re throwing SAC into the mix somehow?
I worry that the prevalence of ill-informed hot-takes dilutes the validity of complaints, and I appreciate your work here
Brave browser blocks Windows feature that takes screenshots of everything you do on your PC
As does Linux.
You use Linux? Here take this you’ve earned it 🍪
What if they always decline cookies? Or is this cookie one of those necessary ones?
Someone who used Linux would know that
OK, you need to explain to me how tf does Linux block something that works only on Windows.
No Windows, no such Windows “features”.
Well, you certainly need to be in a specific state of mind for this to make any sense…
yeah, no, i’m not using your shitty browser.
But it’s funded by an unrepentant homophobe! How can you pass on that?!
An unrepentant homophobe who accused people who dislike him for his homophobic views/actions as being closed-minded and bigoted for disliking him over it.
You can’t make this shit up
It’s probably the best chromium browser out there
Firefox has done shit too
sadly we don’t have a lot of choice, but they’re one of the least worse
Firefox has done shit too
Firefox has injected my URLs with affiliate codes?
Nope, but it put a closed source Mr Robot plugin without asking anyone
Just don’t use Chromium unless you for some reason absolutely have to. Mozilla is just another corporation, but they’re not exactly threatening to monopolise the internet. Google is, and using Chromium directly aids in their effort to do so.
It’s not that bad. Sure, having more choice is good, but it’s not as life threatening as you make it seem
Using android and stock ROMs is a bigger problem
I think it’s a compounding issue, primarily of Google products just kind of being the “default.”
Google pays to be the primary search engine in Firefox, on iOS, and sets themselves as the default on their operating systems. They, wherever possible also set their browser as default. Yes, Chromium is open source, but they have the ultimate final say, and no one seems to have the interest in forking it. This puts Google in a similar position that Microsoft was in in the 90s and early 00s, where they can essentially hijack the web and force their ideas through whether others want to or not.
We saw this with Google forcing Manifest v3, all Chromium-based browsers essentially just had to follow suit. That was just Manifest v3 however, who’s to say what else they’ll do?
Then there’s my tinfoil hat worry that Google essentially being the window to the web for so many people, on an OS, browser, and discoverability level is just overall a cause for worry. That’s not even considering their communications and media platforms.
I’m pretty sure if Firefox/Mozilla decides to change their policy on something, most forks of firefox will have no choice but follow the same path
afaik all firefox forks are really small, just like chromium forks
Mozilla might not have as much conflicting interests though, I admit it
Oh yeah, absolutely. There are no good options for a truly libre web, unfortunately. :(
Sometimes bad people do good things.
They haven’t blocked the windows feature, they’re using DRM to interfere with it. Microsoft could easily change how the DRM works any time they want, rendering all these hacks useless.
Exactly, how do you even fight with the OS except just making it bit hard for them lol. You have to tell the OS what pixels to put in the screen, there’s literally no way you can hide things from the OS if they want to know.
People, ynless they are at work, can choose to use Linux any time. I will personally assist if needed.
then people can complained it on Brave Github or their official forum and it will be fixed by their team
My point was that brave’s solution, like Signal’s, is dependent on microsoft playing fair. If microsoft decides they don’t want brave, signal, or anyone else using DRM to interfere with their screen scraping chatbot, there is not going to be an easy way to fix it.
No way they’d do that though, because then they’d have the mouse and the other members of the content mafia breathing down their necks.
It’s an image every few seconds. Not that piracy is currently even interested in tech that reencodes the content.
And for training, copyrighted stuff is already everywhere; AI tools seem to be limited on the output side rather than raw training data.Sure it wouldnt be rational to care about DRM being broken a small amount allowing limited amount of copyright material to be copied.
What do you think their response would be?
Unfortunately that would involve using the Brave browser, which is an antifeature in itself.
Can you elaborate? I don’t use it.
They shit on it because just like Mozilla, they made some shit decision by making some shady partnerships, and because the CEO is transphobic/homophobic/can’t remember
Apart from the usual bullshit and antifeatures it has, it’s still a great browser choice, just like Firefox
“Just like Mozilla”.
Let’s compare.
Mozilla: installed a closed-source plugin once, and then apologised for it.
Brave CEO: actively supports homophobic organisations, donates money to them, injects affiliate links to stores, whenever given a microphone will say something bigoted and homophobic.
Yeah, it’s totally the same exact issue with both browsers!
Brave: injected affiliate links once, then apologised for it too. Developped a search engine to be less dependent on big companies
Mozilla is spending money like crazy, just like Wikipedia, has little to no democratic system which makes people fork the stuff they make, and prefer to use the money from donation to buy trips all over the world to educate about privacy and shit while they proceed to keep adding more telemetry and BS in firefox
They also make it close to impossible to install plugins outside their plugins website, which I’ve heard has some strict rules and take a lot of time to approve stuff. Closed garden bullshit again
“Feature”
