Why Browser Wars Are Silly: Here's What Matters!

I think browser Wars are silly yeah I do I use multiple browsers for my privacy and security and have used numerous to get where I am today and I wanted to share the browsers I use why I use them other browsers I've tried along the way and hopefully some takeaways for you all and what I suggest for all of you now probably four plus years ago my browsers ultimately boiled down to Firefox and Tor back in this day hardening Firefox was a weakened activity where you adjusted a bajillion items in the about config menu and spent hours tinkering with extensions to try and find the perfect balance between privacy security and usability why did this random site break which extension caused it it's like playing whack-a-mole oh it drove me insane and most importantly the configuration I was using was wiping my data on exit every time it was completely ephemeral meaning I didn't really have a browser to conveniently stay logged into things poor existed on my system as well and they'll spoil some of the video and tell you that Tor has been the most consistent browser throughout the years where it's always kind of been just a browser I exclusively use for highly sensitive tasks or just to access onion websites I'd say I might boot up Tor once or twice a week it's just not a common thing I require from my specific use case so back in this day just to summarize I'd say I used 99 Firefox and one percent Tor the pros being ultimate control and being away from necromium Monopoly altogether the cons being my sanity sometime around 2019 I finally gave Brave a shot and I quickly realized how powerful yet simple it was which surprised me because on paper Brave doesn't really align with my values from their web 3 nonsense to their conflict of interest ad product and frankly even their CEO I don't align with but right away I saw potential in Brave to finally give me a browser where I can actually do just a few select things in a non-ephemeral environment so I could stay logged into things this was a big step in trying to improve the usability of my browser workflow which kind of sucked after testing Bray for a few weeks I was sold it was based on chromium so my accounts were universally more compatible with it especially things like YouTube I was receiving fast security updates being based on chromia meant I actually had some security perks not found in Firefox and brave also natively supports Progressive web apps which for my accounts is incredibly useful but most importantly Brave is simple for my go-to browser I want something that I know for a fact will almost always work no matter what and that for me was Brave and this decision has only aged better with time as Brave has continued to push the envelope on their out of the box practices from limited Telemetry to privacy features and while they definitely had a few scandals to get there none of them made me question the privacy and security of the browser nor my faith in the team to continue being a trustworthy source of progress in the privacy and security space to summarize this I finally was able to add usability to my workflow flow Brave became my main browser used for non-ephemeral use cases Firefox did remain though and was used for ephemeral uses like generic searches and really anything outside my select accounts used within brief so at this stage I was using I'd say 30 Brave 69 Firefox and one percent Tor because I felt like this was the best combination I used this workflow and was fairly happy with it for a long time though I did eventually call what I'm calling my emo phase of this video where I just really wanted to find something different and revamp my workflow I tried Vivaldi and it just was not for me I totally see who this might be for but as someone who really values a simple experience Vivaldi was just overwhelming and it wasn't going to replace Firefox in my workflow and I didn't want two frustrating browsers to manage Opera was a browser I looked at for probably about maybe 15 seconds before writing it off edge was a browser I really wanted to like Microsoft genuine only did some good things in Edge and making it cross-platform made it something I at least tested I didn't end up sticking with it but I have to commend Microsoft for making such massive improvements to the usability of their browser and security privacy is questionable and that seems to be a continual pattern so staying clear this was probably a good move on my end on the topic of stock browsers Safari was another option for also probably about 15 seconds before it was also written off for only being available on one operating system I never want to feel locked down to an OS because of just one software I use almost like that's an intentional feature of safari I don't know another major browser I tested was ungoogled chromium now this was one I really wanted to like connections to Google are entirely removed it's pretty much vanilla chromium and it seems to be a clean experience but on Google Chromium and I just never got along we had different Love Languages the lack of automatic updates was not something I was happy about the extension situation I wasn't happy about and this was just never going to replace brave for me Norm Firefox they still had my love when I looked at my workflow there was just nothing that ungoogled chromium would improve in any specific workflow so I realized it was something I was trying to force into my workflow than something that just genuinely improved it organically I know some people love ungoogled chromium and I'm not knocking you but it just wasn't for me the last browser I tested was Arc thanks to Jonah's invite and I didn't even get to test it as it made me register to use the browser which I found ridiculous and a big bold reminder that this isn't really public as it was in beta when I tested it and I think it still is I don't know either way it's not even really cross-platform either at least to my standards so it just wasn't for me I wasn't gonna bother finally though just a few months ago actually I left my emo phase when mulvad the VPN company decided it was for some reason a good idea to release a browser and it actually kind of was because it wasn't just any old browser like DuckDuckGo which just rebrands things that already exist to their own benefit molvad was actually of new new useful browser that fulfilled a brand new use case for the Privacy Community I covered Mobile's browser in a dedicated video for people curious but pretty much it boils down to being kind of like a hardened Firefox out of the box meant to blend users together but backed by a trustworthy company that is actually informal collaboration with the Tor project in other words this greatly greatly greatly simplified my Firefox use case of needing just a hardened ephemeral browser the first day movad browser was released I uninstalled Firefox and didn't even have to touch a single setting and move that browser to have a better experience than what I had in Firefox for years and let me tell you I never looked back once I really think that Firefox hardening is on its way out thanks to projects like movad Arc and fox and librew wolf and I'll talk about that in an upcoming video but long story short after movad was released my new browser configuration just swapped to become 30 Brave 69 percent Mo bad and one percent tour now I have to say people after a few months of this I'm overall really happy with this workflow with that said what's next what issues do I still have that I hope are resolved or improved going forward well first Brave has to keep doing what they've been doing I think Brave is the most likely browser to Pivot in a direction I won't enjoy they've made it through the last several years and I hope they continue to overall stay on the right path second Brave recently announced forgetful browsing which is almost a hybrid ephemeral feature where by default every site is ephemeral kind of like a private window but you can customize it to essentially whitelist specific sites in other words my theory here is that once Brave finally decides to release forgetful browsing this may largely eliminate my need for mobile browser is I can just do everything through Brave and manually exclude the sites I use to log in so it's ephemeral and non-ephemeral within the same browser customized to my liking now I'll probably still keep will that browser installed but I wouldn't be surprised if with forgetful browsing my Brave usage will definitely rise third in the future I'd love to see browsers offer consistent cross-platform experiences as of today iOS is the biggest crutch as browsers are fairly limited thanks to Apple's strict webkit requirement but that's kind of on its way out and so I'm really looking forward to seeing how closely I can replicate my future workflows across all my devices I want to be able to buy a new device running any operating system and instantly replicate my browser workflow I'm not blaming any particular browser here I'm just excited for the entire space to develop and evolve in the coming years so that hopefully we see better feature parity across all operating systems for these browsers because my mobile configuration is kind of very different than the desktop one if you want to hear what that is and what that Journey's been like make sure to subscribe and leave a comment below so I can see if there's any demand for this I don't know if you guys care about this or not so what does this mean for you well I hope that people can move away from the my browser is the best type of discussions because it's really quite silly from a subjective point of view almost every browser will have different pros and cons for different people and even from an objective point of view almost every browser will have different pros and cons for different people what I'm a fan of is embracing the options that we do have here leaning into to the pros offered by each browser and finding unique workflows that let you reap the most amount of benefit for yourself and in most situations that's going to involve using multiple browsers so for most of you if you want the best possible browsing experience for your own unique workflow that respects your privacy and security I'd recommend stepping away from the idea that there's a single perfect browser for you and just try them all out and see how they interact with your life maybe you'll find you only need one browser but for a lot of you I think having more than one might actually be the best so what browser do you use I would love to hear and I'm sure other people would too it'd also be great if you shared why you picked each browser that you use and we can also while we do that try to be welcoming to each other and hopefully you can learn a thing or two from someone else's workflow when it's done in good faith in the comments section just something to try out finally I wanted to as always thank our amazing patrons who are supporting us at patreon.com their names are down below and I'm just so grateful for all of you I cannot be doing this content without all of you if you want to join them and help us spread privacy to the masses join us at patreon.com techlore or we also have different support methods down below as well like Monero and many other things see y'all next time on Tech floor and have fun in your browser Journey [Music]

Channel: Techlore

Views: 78,119

Keywords: best privacy browser, firefox, brave, vivaldi, Tor Browser, mullvad browser, safari privacy, safari security, edge privacy, edge security, vivaldi browser, opera browser, arc browser, ungoogled-chromium, librewolf, arkenfox, which privacy browser, brave vs Firefox, firefox vs edge, firefox vs brave, secure browser, private browser, techlore, techlore browser, techlore firefox, best browser for security and privacy, tor, firefox hardening, privacy, security, browser war, browser wars

Id: 1eRlAbyjKfU

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2023