Very Disappointed with Brave and It's Support

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1

I recently posted about an issue where Brave started blocking articles in Advocate.com, an LGBT news site, then began a yo-yo cycle of not blocking and then blocking again. It turned out some alt right sites were also having the problem. At first, a forum official said that the developers were looking into it. In the meantime, one of the forum members responded with some insulting, profanity laced posts which I reported. When forum officials failed to do anything about those reported posts, I posted about how I felt about it and the poster cleaned up the posts (somewhat; much of the profanity remained).

As to the problem (and others), forum officials blamed it on users still using the Muon based version and closed the thread. I had explained that the reason I was still using an older version was I had gotten sick and tired of the frequent, automatic “updates” being rammed down my throat (a la Win 10) that mostly were just making Brave take longer to boot up so I had disabled the updates and was waiting to “upgrade” to the chromium based version until the bugs were worked out (which has yet to happen).

Frankly, I’m sick and tired of how quickly threads get closed in this forum. I’m even more disappointed that Brave developers can’t come up with a stable version of Brave, resorting to frequent, often buggy “updates” that sometimes force new “features” that users may or may not want or even need. I’ve tried I don’t know how many different browsers that will also be compatible with Linux for when I switch over to Linux by the time Win 7 reaches EOL and none satisfy me as much as IE 11 (which, obviously, cannot be used with Linux) has, especially with its vastly superior cookie handling. Brave was the best of the lot but it was having some growing pains, which I had hoped would be overcome but, sadly, that has not happened. Instead, Brave has turned into a Win 10 styled mess.

The final straw was Brave’s developers blowing off users still on a Muon version that were suddenly having problems with false malware hits because the older versions were no longer supported. Seriously? It’s seems obvious to me that something had to have changed within the versions some of us are still using, within the blacklists that Brave uses, or something else that had changed, something that should not be all that difficult to track down. It also seems to be more than coincidental that sites being blocked are not popular with the mainstream public (btw, for the record, I do not support the alt right).

I really had great hopes for Brave but, after the recent round of its continuing problems and the poor support of its developers and forum offials, I give up and will settle for something else.

3

@LadyFitzgerald,
I understand your frustration. Please try to understand that my tone is not an angry one, but is rather exhausted – I apologize if I come off prickly, but there are some things that need to be clarified.

There is no “blaming” here.
Using the word “blame” implies that someone (in this case, Brave) has done something wrong and instead of taking responsibility, they attempt to “blame” or “shift” the cause of the issue elsewhere. That is not what’s happening.

The question was/is: “Why are these sites getting blocked and/or flagged as malware?”

The answer is, “Because the Muon version of Brave lacks security updates. The Malware list Muon is referencing also hasn’t been updated in some time due to the fact that Muon is no longer being officially supported.”

You (and all other users encountering this) are using old, unsupported software that references old, outdated databases – a decision nobody forced you to make – because Brave Core (stable, safe, secure, isn’t throwing false Malware warnings), in your words, doesn’t launch “fast enough” for you.

There is a message on the upgrade notification exclaiming that Muon is no longer supported. It was mentioned on our blog that Muon would be depreciated – users were even informed when Community categories were being depreciated in order to stay organized and separate Muon bug reports and support requests from the ones for Brave core.

Anyone still using Muon is more than welcome to do so – at their own risk.

Threads get closed on this forum – for many reasons – to avoid exactly what just happened. We don’t want the same 4 issues or feature requests constantly being surfaced on the site. In addition, when threads are closed, there’s almost always a 1) “Master thread” created which users making duplicate posts are redirected to (consolidates reports) or 2) An issue logged in some official capacity – meaning that the team is already aware that that the problem exists and will address it as time allows.

What good does it do to have every single post on “latest topics” contain hateful, rude, destructive rhetoric about how the “bottom toolbar” on Android has “ruined-[users]-lives-and-now-they-have-to-uninstall-because-Brave-is-unusable-idiot-developers”?

Topics are closed when they are duplicates, the requester refuses to provide requested information, an issue is solved, or someone has violated the policy guidelines – not to “silence” users.

Yes, seriously.

Let’s say someone you knew came to you and said they were having issues running the newest version of Adobe Photoshop. At some point during the discussion, they say to you,

“Yeah I don’t see that option in settings […] – I’m running Windows '98”

:point_up: Should you and your friend put Adobe on blast because their product doesn’t work on legacy software that they no longer support? Is it on Adobe to ensure that their software works on modern OS and for the 28 people in the world still using Windows 98? Or does that seem a little silly?

Again, nobody was blown off.
The main thread where most users were reporting the false malware warning is 35 posts long – 10 of which were me personally responding. But because the “solution” to this is “you’re using unsupported software, you should upgrade to stay safe and secure while browsing”, somehow this means we’re "blowing [users] off?

Every single person working for Brave works very long, hard hours and should any individual team member at random be held under a microscope, it would reveal the massive workload they’re buried under.

Taking dev time away from this workload to break off and make some (potentially) complicated security updates to an outdated version of the browser that we no longer support (and haven’t – for months) isn’t exactly an easy sell nor is it an efficient use of time.

I truly cannot stress this enough:

Brave has not, does not, and will not ever block, censor, or redirect users from viewing any content on any website for any reason other than to protect your privacy or safety.

Political (or otherwise) preferences or leanings have absolutely no baring whatsoever on what content you can view while browsing. Nor will we ever be aware of what sites you’re browsing – remember, Brave does not collect or have access to your data.

This particular question around censorship has come up several times. I’ve answered it succinctly here:
https://community.brave.app/t/censorship-and-brave/33146/2?u=mattches

I cannot control what you do or think moving forward but please take a moment to consider the points I’ve highlighted here.
Thank you.

4

You don’t even know the meaning of the word “troll”; look it up. And the bugs I was referring to were not alleged. There are plenty of posts on the Brave Forum to support that.

5

This response did shed some light on Brave policy toward blocking websites, but the rest merely reinforced my feelings toward the management of the forum and disappointment in the abilities of Brave’s developers. I have no doubt that Brave’s developers work long and hard and that developing a web browser is a massive undertaking (I’ve done some programming in the distant past, probably before most people here were born) but the fact remains that Brave has a forced, frequent update schedule and the updates are frequently buggy. You also provided me with a clue why the the site blockages started happening and it has far more to do with bad programming than not supporting old versions.

It’s also a fact that Brave kept increasingly taking longer to boot than any other browser I have tried. When I started using Brave, it took only a few seconds longer to boot than most other browsers I was using or trying. However, with each forced update, it took longer and longer for Brave to update until it was taking over twice as long to boot and I got fed up with it and blocked the updates. I’ve been waiting ever since for a stable version and have yet to see one.

What was most significant, and disappointing, was Forum’s management’s failure to respond to the profanity laced posts that I flagged, then, after the posts remained, commented on and your failure to address that in your post. I’ve been on only one other forum that allowed such language and even that one would have pulled those posts due to the hateful nature of them (and they did come across hateful, despite the poster’s claim otherwise). To the poster’s credit, he removed one of the posts and edited the remaining one although some of the profanity still remained.

And, your excuses aside, I have yet to see a forum that closes so many threads as quickly as this one does. I felt your excuses (I can’t call them reasons) were, for the most part, pathetic.

6

Your feedback is noted.
I have removed those flagged posts – they were hidden among the 17 other flags I had to triage.

If there’s nothing else, let me know so I can go ahead and close this thread.

EDIT: in addition, it looks like the user has since apologized and edited his previous posts.

7

I actually laughed out loud at this last response.

Go ahead and close this post if it makes you feel better.