Technology

Every accusation is a confession. Facebook's cambridge analytica, and other bs was weaponized along with micro targeting, and it worked relatively well, and when that limey journalist lady bravely broke the story, it got some press, but that was it, the bad guys won, didn't investigate, and the democrats wouldn't have done shit either outside the fine.

Not quite it, the lady that broke the story got sued by Bannon. So she is the only one that got punished. She has a new book or something it's supposed to be good she's a real investigative journalist.

I wouldn't say that, these people that use fake news are the ones that push fake news. Every accusation is a confession, we shouldn't get into the habit of reflexively rejecting everything monied interests project onto others unfairly. It's a big problem, and it leads to a loss of credibility to not recognize the harms in something, or the wrongdoing, because it's used cynically by a group trying to make it worse.

Ie, voting. The ones trying to cheat are accusing the ones not cheating of cheating. Do we defend all elections as fair because they projected that onto us, when they are cheating? According to the democratic establishment, yes. We are doomed to the republic being dead already and replaced with an unthinkable autocracy run by the worst people in the country if we continue to follow the lead of that establishment of democrats in being the opposition in fact. But I digress there.

We should turn their words and projections against them, with their own terms, with our own populists, real populists that channel anger towards it's source, rather than the fake populism of the right that misdirects it. It's the only way in fact, we could take a large part of the republican base, enough to overcome the cheating the republicans are planning on doing, in the succession fight, with a popular platform, that is aggressive, and turns their projections back on them, fake news, voter fraud, captured federal agencies, you name it.

Idk, I use fake news to describe like, AI made "medical" videos talking about how MRI is actually bad for you and people older than 50 shouldn't do it. Maybe misinformation is a better term?

Was about to say, where did I hear that before... 🤔

I'm sure Brendan Eich has a normal vocabulary when he isn't talking about "glowies" or "h8ers"... Or when he's talking like Sephiroth

A significant chunk of privacy enthusiasts are libertarians like Brave's CEO. I think there's some level of "same team" trust going on there.

I remember that any little firefox controversy thread in reddit would have a "just use brave" thread going, even when it's controversial or had negative karma.

But since online troll farms are cheap, shoe horning names like this work for brand recognition by sheer amount of times you hear about it. And soon people start believing them.

Because those lists are usually just ads themselves.

It's all about the marketing and nothing about the technology or company.

I opened google for the first time in months (years?) to check out the results for "best private browser". Predictably, the AI overview confidently responds as follows:

The best private browsers in 2026 for enhancing online anonymity and blocking trackers are Tor Browser, Brave, and Mullvad Browser. For maximum privacy with high security, Tor is top, while Brave is best for daily, fast browsing. Mullvad is ideal for anti-fingerprinting, and LibreWolf offers excellent privacy for Firefox users.

I would be very surprised if Brave did not at least at some point sponsor content to position itself as privacy oriented. This hidden advertisement then bleeds into both AI and human armchair experts with no deeper understanding of the tech they're commenting on. And so the myth that Brave has good privacy becomes self-enforcing.

Unrelated edit: Answering "why is firefox bad for privacy", Google AI becomes oddly self-hating:

Firefox is often considered "bad" for privacy by privacy-conscious users because, despite its pro-privacy marketing,
it collects significant user data by default via telemetry, relies on Google as its default search engine, and has updated its privacy policy to allow broader use of user data. While superior to Chrome, its default settings are not "privacy-maximalist," necessitating manual configuration.

and blamed users for not knowing since it's open source and anyone concerned should have read the source.

Yeah, this is what so many people miss: privacy in the moment of browsing is only one of several problems. There's also the much longer term problem of web standards developing in such a way as to facilitate the stripping of privacy, and using a browser that facilitates Google's hegemony over those standards enables that.

they're the same picture ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Considering Mozilla basically did the same thing in Firefox, but turned it on by default instead of off (which is worse), it's strange that they praise Firefox in the same article.

There are plenty of good reasons to hate Brave, but I think this whole article can be trashed, and the website itself put behind a blocklist

They explain it a bit more in the article:

According to Brave’s published technical materials, ad matching occurs locally on the user’s device. The browser downloads an ad catalog and selects relevant ads based on interest signals stored on the device. When a user views an ad and qualifies for a reward payout in Basic Attention Token (BAT), the confirmation process uses blind signatures to validate the event without revealing browsing history or identity to Brave’s servers. The company has repeatedly stated that it does not build centralized browsing profiles and cannot link ad activity to specific individuals.

I don't use nor recommend Brave to people, but if advertising is going to be done this seems like the way it should be done.

Orion