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Interesting take.  I could definitely see that -- it does seem to add up across the board.  But ironically, in doing so they made me realize that brave's privacy policies appear to be better and more well-written all around -- at least upon a quick examination of them both.  So, by making this change so poorly, they probably spurred me and many others to switch.  You have to imagine a lot of the people who still use firefox, given their much smaller market share, are probably people who care about details like this.  Most people who don't care about stuff like this are probably already just using chrome because it works fine and it's ubiquitous.  So the fact they went about this in the way they did -- just being vague and not explaining what they were doing to their user base, even in their follow up about it -- that clearly was not a smart move, and also baffling and out-of-touch as well.  If they just said that they're changing our privacy policy quite a bit to comply with california law and here's the basic reasons why -- maybe even add some positive news in alongside it, and then a link to the more detailed reasons why and how these things won't have any effect on those that are using it and their care for privacy.  That would have been a move that made a lot more sense.  But I really like California for doing stuff like this -- just like how they made websites let you choose what level of cookies and trackers they can use before reading them.  It makes people think about privacy and if this stuff matters to them, and it gives everyone more transparency and control with respect to their data -- even if most people really don't care about this stuff and/or understand the implications or relevance to them and how society progresses.  Oh yeah, and this guy mentioned as far as using Librewolf. I'm definitely going to install that.  I think I'm pretty happy with Brave, but from the research I did that seems like another solid option. Also, what he said here (timestamped) sums everything up so well, lol:     Also, I hadn't heard of this guy before, but I like his take here, and with respect to how companies operate after that.  Good stuff -- I appreciate you linking that video, thanks for that.

For sure. I definitely think it's worth exploring.  Tbh before I switched to brave browser, I didn't think it would work well for me based on my initial experience with it, but with some adjustments I think I prefer it to firefox in quite a few ways.  Like I've always had to admit in a lot of areas chromium runs a bit smoother, and more websites also seem to be built with it in mind these days so I like those benefits (though it might have more exploits designed with it in mind as well, -- not sure.) I also like how you can see a lot more tabs you open without scrolling, and it by default shows you which tab is playing on youtube (though I had to set it so youtube doesn't autoplay.)  This is really useful if you're discovering music and opening a lot of tabs to go through all the different songs -- that's what I do when I've found a lot a want to listen to that I want to look through so I know which ones are playing if two play at once which can happen sometimes (went through a bunch of really good video game remixes and covers last night and it was really nice for that.) It also lets you have a lot more tabs visible to look through without having to scroll to the right like firefox. So yeah, little things like that are really nice quality of life features.  I also like that it will show you how much memory a given tab is taking up by default, even though I turned it off. But that can be good to turn on when one tab is slowing everything down for some reason -- then you can just close that tab and everything should run smooth.  All neat things to consider.  It's nice to just take your browser and things like that forgranted, but sometimes taking a bit of time to consider the other options can be worthwhile it overall. This actually reminds me (and maybe I'm just rambling a bit) that I'll probably have to switch from Windows 10 to Windows 11 at some point. If I had two computers at this point I'd explore linux or maybe even mac for non-gaming stuff with how ridiculous microsoft has been in so many respects.  They even still mess up my windows 10 settings sometimes with updates -- like the other day they added news, weather, and other nonsense to my login screen as if I would want that for some reason.  But yeah from what I've seen about Windows 11 a lot can be configured well, but there's just so many dumb things they did with it imo.  But yeah, I'd really rather just keep using windows and probably will for awhile, but man -- these things that may feel like large switch ups can be really worthwhile sometimes.    

Sure, I mean -- I agree and resonate with a lot of that.  If it's any indication as to with what respect I view this stuff -- I have a vpn that I just leave off most of the time.  Because I'm not all that concerned about privacy for many things -- though I still prefer it on a certain level.  But when it comes to stuff like politics or other personal details in this day and age I'd prefer those online details be minimal and not easy to compile.  I think we live in a day and age where the details compiled on us seem likely to become a lot more granular, and I'd rather not support that trend. It's also likely to be fed into an ai at some point if that hasn't already happened -- and more advanced ai beyond that.  In addition, just for cyber security reasons its good to know you have strong base layers at the very least -- companies that don't value privacy in certain clear respects, in my opinion, also likely do that across the board in other respects. And it doesn't matter what they say about how much they value it -- you have to look at their actions to see how they are.  Like for example, google claims, "we value privacy".  But lets be real.  They have never valued privacy through their actions.  They gather all the data they want to, and maybe do the bare minimum to give you some control so others don't get that data.  Maybe it's better now to an extent, but I don't think anyone can realistically trust them all that much with their data. But I agree with you about finding the right balance of caution and openness (I'd say openness isn't equal to courage though, but sometimes it take courage -- but I think that's what you were going for.) That being said, I think it's very reasonable to choose a browser that you feel actually values privacy to a large degree based on the evidence -- and not one that appears to blatantly disregard it in areas they didn't before, and didn't care to truly offer a detailed explanation for why they made the changes.

Louis Rossman's take is more that Firefox is trying to comply with laws like California's, and that they went about this in the stupidest and most own-goal way possible.    

I was interested enough with the hubbub to try out some Firefox alternatives, and ocremix.org was the first url I typed in. This is great 100% fucking fun all in all! I do appreciate the discussion.