# Talk:Brave (web browser)

current version info lags... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 02:51, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

I noticed that Gyan.Know just created the page Features of Brave (web browser). Nobody complained about the length of this page or suggested splitting. Why are we forking content? Before content was removed this page was at 36k. WP:SIZERULE guidelines say the page needs to be at least 50k before size alone should even be a consideration in forking. Elephanthunter (talk) 16:22, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

No, it's not needed at all. Gyan.Know: Would you mind reversing the split? MarioGom (talk) 10:35, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
MarioGom, I'm really sorry, I didn't paid attention to the Size Rule. I hope you understand it wasn't intentional. And yeah I am just reversing the edit in a minute. Also, I'll empty Features of Brave (web browser) page, so that it could get deleted. Ok? GyanKnow contributions? 10:44, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Gyan.Know: Sure, I understand the change was well-intentioned, no problem. Thank you! MarioGom (talk) 10:49, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Update: Done ✅ GyanKnow contributions? 10:49, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I was not aware of WP:GS/Crypto when making this revision in violation of WP:1RR, so apologies for that - I will refrain from reverting this page for the next 24 hours. I reverted identical changes by an IP user earlier today, as there was no policy reason given for removing these passages that outline well-sourced controversies. BeReasonabl (talk) 11:39, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

In the first topic Brave browser collecting donations on behalf of content creators, Brave historically had a bug that allowed for donating BAT to content creators that were not verified publishers. This was a bug (which is currently fixed), and shouldn't be qualified as under the word "controversy".
In the third topic "Private Window with Tor" DNS leaks, you can see it was clearly a security vulnerability, which was reported through Brave's HackerOne bug bounty platform. Security vulnerabilities aren't new and are found in different browsers (including Brave) every month. There are still some security vulnerabilities, which the Brave team is busy in fixing. Security vulnerabilities will continue to come, and also have been fixed in the past by Brave. If we continue to push this section under "Controversies", we'll just add more and more bugs under "Controversies", which will be clearly a misunderstanding. I therefore appeal the community to remove these sections.
Thanks!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anindependenteditor (talk • contribs) 12:53, 25 October 2021 (UTC) 

Hi @Anindependenteditor:. It's not the fact that they were bugs in and of themselves that makes them notable, it's the discussion by reliable sources of those bugs and the fact they were controversial. I don't see how there can be misunderstanding when it's stated the bugs have been fixed in the relevant sections. However I think the "Private Window with Tor" DNS Leaks section could have better sources. There's a relevant article at ZDnet about it that's worth adding. BeReasonabl (talk) 22:13, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
I disagree with Brave browser collecting donations on behalf of content creators because it simply wasn't a bug (Brave knew they were collecting money from creators with no BAT reward accounts). it was clearly intentional to increase donations and get those creators to open up accounts to claim their BAT rewards.
I also disagree with "Private Window with Tor" DNS leaks because while it is indeed a bug and wasn't intentional, it is such a glaring bug that it would be almost disqualifying for a "privacy browser". RisingTzar (talk) 20:23, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

The article excessively relies on primary sources for non-trivial claims.
Two specific instances where the claims contradict mainstream scholarly sources or each other are:

The article claims that the Brave measures exact number of unique monthly users and doesn't track its users over time. It's unclear how both statements can be true at the same time and how the number of active users is measured without tracking them. Both are only supported by the vendor's claims (the University of Dublin test tested a specific scenario of a new browser installation and not real-world usage over time). My guess is there may be opt-in for tracking at some point (such as enabling the token or ads), but I could not find a source that would elaborate on this unfortunately apart from the related materials published by Brave: 1, 2, 3, 4.
The article uses vague "To prevent browser fingerprinting" claim, which is somewhat misleading as the current scholarly consensus is fingerprinting cannot be prevented altogether but spans a fairly wide gamut, depending on how many identifying signals browsers leak. Brave unquestionably leads in terms of limiting what fingerprinting information can be collected, but it's not the same as preventing fingerprinting altogether, whereas the article seem to use a number of primary sources and journalistic opinions to make such claim.
I've removed some embellishments and added an IEEE conference paper on Brave browser fingerprinting. It's probably worth noting that most of the potentially unreliable claims were added by a single editor User:Dr.KimK, who also reverted without explanation removal of some of the claims done by other editor that was done due to concerns of the sources' reliability.
I would support a more stringent application of WP:PRIMARY, specifically, to limit claims by vendor and primary scholarly sources to factual statements, rather than what benefits it could provide to the user. Not least because of possible real-world consequences of misleading privacy protection claims. PaulT2022 (talk) 07:59, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

The "phoning home" implementation is also described here: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Brave%E2%80%99s-Use-of-Referral-Codes: Clients send their platform and the referral code in the initial referral code ping, except on iOS, where the initial request doesn’t contain the referral code but instead the referral code is inferred based on an IP hash. Based on their IP, we infer a geographic region for them. The client gets a unique download_id in response to the initial ping. In the 30-day confirmation ping, they also send the download_id. After the confirmation ping, download_id is deleted from browser state. After 90 days, the refcode is deleted from browser state. (emphasis mine) PaulT2022 (talk) 14:45, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

The article currently states the following:

"Advertisers must purchase BAT to show ads on the Brave Rewards platform. Brave facilitates USD-based ad purchases, but will then buy BAT on behalf of the advertiser."
This is not sourced, and is incorrect. According to https://ads-help.brave.com/account-management/billing/, "Brave Ads are available to be purchased via various different pricing models. By default, all ad campaigns globally will be billed in USD, however, other options are available."
While it is possible to purchase via BAT, this is not a requirement. In regards to using a utility token or cryptocurrency, the aforementioned resource states the following, "Please note that we currently accept Basic Attention Token (BAT), USD Coin (USDC), and Tether USD (USDT) on the Ethereum blockchain." Jonathansampson (talk) 19:11, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Why were all the controversies and problems with the app mostly removed? I was linked to the page from a news article, and saw the section it described was completely missing as well as the content in the article. Such as that can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brave_(web_browser)&oldid=1038064457#Controversies Captchacatcher (talk) 00:08, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I think it was me, I merged them into the 'Business model' (which possibly needs to be renamed) and 'Tor windows' sections per the reasoning in Wikipedia:Criticism#Integrated_throughout_the_article: it seemed more logical to describe positive points of view alongside with the negative ones instead of tucking all negatives away in the bottom of the article. PaulT2022 (talk) 19:42, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
Feel free to undo it, it was a great source to link to when determining what browser to go with. Dogdisaster (talk) 19:36, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

maybe i'm overthinking this, but i feel like the "reception" section is overly positive. serious allegations, such as "[…]diverting ad revenue from websites to itself, collecting unsolicited donations for content creators without their consent, suggesting affiliate links in the address bar and installing a paid VPN service without the user's consent" should, in my opinion, be featured more prominently than at the very bottom of the section and should be described in more detail, especially given the fact that most of the rest of the section quotes glowing reviews mainly highlighting brave's speed. then again, i'm not a very experienced wikipedia editor, so i wanted to see if anyone else thinks the same way Noodels102 (talk) 09:59, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

@Noodels102 I agree. There's five fairly long paragraphs based on one positive review each, and then a single paragraph with negative aspects backed by a bunch of sources.
I suggest boiling down the big about positive reviews, so the article reflects the way sources report on Brave. Cortador (talk) 19:36, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

User @Sohom_Datta has removed all the content and put its own version of the article. Can someone revert his edit, please? The new version only contains software features. That well may be just an advert. 188.77.74.81 (talk) 13:01, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

That is a incorrect characterization of my edits, the edits are not promotional, in fact they explicitly mention controversy like the affiliate link controversy and interrogates various claims as "Brave claims X, Y and Z" instead of "Brave is X, Y and Z". Sohom (talk) 13:46, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
The current version of the article is much better than the previous version that promotional-ly list all the features in a WP:PROSELINE format. Sohom (talk) 13:49, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
I would disagree - the current version is much less of an advert than previous versions of this article. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 17:50, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Brave (web browser)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Nominator: Sohom Datta (talk · contribs) 04:05, 23 June 2025 (UTC)
Reviewer: GalStar (talk · contribs) 03:41, 11 July 2025 (UTC)


### General review
 The see also could use a rework, something like Firefox#See_also and Google Chrome#See_also. GalStar (talk) (contribs) 03:50, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

I'm typically not a fan of See also sections and IMO the Firefox and Google Chrome "See also" sections are too bloated. From my POV I've included almost all relevant links in the body of the article (including privacy-related ones and references to other browsers) Sohom (talk) 14:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
 The history section seems too long, adding subheading or splitting out the acquisition history might be a good option, but there are many others.

 Done (by other folks!) Sohom (talk) 14:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)


### Prose review
 "On March 3, 2021, Brave Software announced the acquisition of Tailcat, a search engine developed by the team formerly responsible for the privacy search and browser products at Cliqz, a holding of Hubert Burda Media" is straight from https://brave.com/blog/brave-search/, this should be rephrased. GalStar (talk) (contribs) 03:47, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

Fixed (I think) -- Sohom (talk) 14:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)


### Citation review
No problems found. GalStar (talk) (contribs) 17:38, 16 July 2025 (UTC)


### Other notes
I remembered some issues about brave scraping personal data for AI training (https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/). Maybe this deserves a mention? GalStar (talk) (contribs) 04:03, 11 July 2025 (UTC)
Stackdiary and Hackernews are not reliable sources, similarly neither is Hackernews (the other place that covered it) -- I did not find any mention of this incident in RS which is why I did not include it. Sohom (talk) 14:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
Depending on the majority opinion "privacy-focused web browser" might be better if reworded as "Brave markets itself as a privacy browser", this isn't something I'd suggest, but just a note. GalStar (talk) (contribs) 04:10, 11 July 2025 (UTC)
I think in every place I've said "privacy-focused web browser" I've said something of the effect "marketed as a privacy-focused web browser" or "... released Brave browser positioning it as a privacy-focused browser" -- Sohom (talk) 14:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
"Criticism" might be a good subsection to add. GalStar (talk) (contribs) 04:10, 11 July 2025 (UTC)
See WP:CRITICISM, MOS is kinda iffy about adding Criticism sections since it tends to skew the article towards the negative side. For what it's worth, I've included almost every piece of criticism covered by RS inline (including references to Tom Scott, revenue model, privacy issues, the founder's views and the cryptocurrency incident) -- Sohom (talk) 14:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
GalStar, I've responded to your points! Sohom (talk) 14:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
@Sohom Datta Thanks for taking the time. GalStar (talk) (contribs) 17:38, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
I've approved it for GA. GalStar (talk) (contribs) 17:43, 16 July 2025 (UTC)