mr. paperclip

A fresh Brave install in 2026: sponsored ad wallpapers on new tab page by default (opt out). Brave VPN, News, Talk, Leo (AI), Rewards and other revenue-milking bloat is advertised/pinned by default. Analytics and "phoning home" by default. Google as default search engine in most regions by default. Sponsored search engines like Russian Yandex in CIS countries by default: github.com/brave/brave-co… Brave has an ad branch that handles advertising within the browser: brave.com/ads. Brave does on-device ad targeting based on cohorts and interests, just like what Chrome used to do and what Google was largely hated for (remember FLoC?). This applies to additional (opt-in) rewarded ads, shipped as part of Brave. Brave has injected referral IDs to crypto-related URLs entered into the omnibox in the past, intentionally, by design: x.com/CR1337/status/… github.com/brave/brave-br… reddit.com/r/privacytools… Brave also uses dark patterns to drive users away from turning off ads in their browser. For example, an article linked from the "opt out" button in the browser has a wall of text making excuses for ads before the actual steps needed to be taken to disable them: support.brave.app/hc/en-us/artic… kind of hypocritical for brave to judge firefox for lesser bullshit, don't you think?