Notices by switching.social (switchingsocial@mastodon.at), page 13

@deezthugs

No, that's not how it works. If Brave wants people's trust, they have to work for it.

Brave markets itself in public as being about privacy, but in private they literally sell themselves to one of the world's most notorious surveillance barons.

Brave cannot have it both ways.

Imagine if an anti-smoking lobby group turned out to be owned by tobacco companies. Who would trust them any more?

@greyor

Other than Firefox I'm not sure...

Anyone got suggestions for this?

@mary @fitheach @cubicgarden

Yeah, seems to be down for me now too. It was working a few minutes ago!

@fitheach @cubicgarden

I don't know what connection this is to the Mirror's story though.

@fitheach

If I understand correctly from @cubicgarden 's previous posts about BBC Box, it's intended to be something similar to FreedomBox, where data is physically hosted by the end user:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2019-06-bbc-box-personal-data-privacy

@deezthugs

What fallacy?

This isn't about association, it's about ownership.

If you run a browser company that is part-owned by a surveillance baron, that naturally calls into question your commitment to privacy.

@AtlasFreeman

For non-tech users, probably Firefox with uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger both installed. It's easy to use and has good support and onboarding for ordinary people.

For tech users, there are a number of indie browsers you can try to see if they fit your needs, @masterofthetiger was recommending IceCat for example.

Also, if you need maximum privacy, try the Tor browser. It may be slower and some sites might not work, but it does the best job at providing privacy.

@thomasfuchs @mike

Yeah, sounds like a pretty nasty guy :blobsad:

@masterofthetiger @torproject

Let me know if you do! 👍

@masterofthetiger @torproject

I think switching.social's target audience doesn't know what a repo is :/

If you are ok with that though, yes, do try Icecat or similar if it works for you.

@masterofthetiger @akarshanbiswas @torproject

I agree fully, and I'm not happy with how dependent Mozilla is on big tech donations, but we can only go with the options we have.

With browsers, it seems to be a selection of "least worst" choices for non-tech people.

@masterofthetiger @torproject

Is there an onboarding site for Icecat which is aimed at non-tech people?

@akarshanbiswas @masterofthetiger @torproject

If you're comfortable editing it, you can turn off any telemetry in Firefox by going to about:config and deleting the URLs used for tech reports etc.

I did this and Firefox works fine without them.

@akarshanbiswas @masterofthetiger @torproject

If you're comfortable editing it, you can turn off any telemetry in Firefox by going to about:config and deleting the URLs used for tech reports etc.

I do this and Firefox works fine without them.

@masterofthetiger @torproject

I'm not saying Firefox is perfect, I'm saying it's the least worst option for non-tech people.

I know there are indie browsers that many people have good experiences with, and that's great, but they tend to demand a bit more awareness of FLOSS and tech in general. Their "onboarding" is geared towards techy people.

@akarshanbiswas

I've used Firefox on Linux for many years and it's fine for me at least.

People should try it and see if it works for them. I'm guessing that most people will find it works fine.

Much better options for browsers are Firefox or @torproject browser.

Firefox is the best for non-tech people, it has good support and it's easy to use.

Whatever browser you use, remember to install both uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger addons. Together they will protect against most forms of tracking and are very easy to use too. (Note, "uBlock Origin" and "uBlock" are two totally different addons. "uBlock Origin" is the one switching.social recommends.)

Reminder why switching.social does NOT recommend using Brave:

-Brave is a for-profit ad sales and cryptocurrency promotion company, funded by venture capital firms. Its primary purpose is to make money, not protect privacy.

-Top of the list of Brave's VC owners is Founders Fund, which is Peter Thiel's company ( https://web.archive.org/web/20190831163230/https://basicattentiontoken.org/ )

-Peter Thiel is also the head of Palantir, which makes its money by spying on the general public ( https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/ )

#Brave #PeterThiel #Palantir

@megfault @Mantaure

Also, @Framasoft 's DeGooglising list is excellent:

https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/alternatives

@sangv @glimpse

Yeah, I'm getting that error now too.

The site was working fine (for me at least) yesterday, so presumably something has broken just recently?

cc @trechnex