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Brave Has a New Search Engine. Please Don’t Use It

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A screenshot from Brave's new search engineBrendan Eich started the Brave browser in 2016, after leaving Mozilla in 2014. He was CEO for just over one week. After pressure from Mozilla employees, board members, Firefox and other Mozilla customers, third party developers, and even other companies, Eich stepped away from his role of CEO of Mozilla. Why did so many groups unite against Eich? Because Eich donated thousands of dollars to Proposition 8 and Prop 8 supporters. Prop 8 was a Californian ballot measure to make same sex marriage illegal again in the state. Due to donations, the campaign against marriage equality was able to make Prop 8 seem about more than just marriage equality, misleading voters. They voted to end marriage equality in the state. Fortunately, a judge struck it down as unconstitutional.

Eich never apologized for his support of hate, nor did he ever claim to change his views. Instead, he moved on, started a new company, and has employees to field questions about his past instead of addressing them himself. Most recently, he found himself once again the target of ire over COVID-19 comments.

Now Brave is launching a search engine to go along with their browser.

I’m asking you not to use it. Use something from a company that’s not lead by someone who may still be supporting bigotry, hate, and—through that—violence.

Canceling Brave

I hate the phrase “cancel culture.” Some people do deserve to be canceled, but sometimes we’re a bit overzealous with it as well. Forgiveness shouldn’t just come automatically. We can’t reward someone with fame and fortune for doing terrible things and never improving. It’s from the same place that I say you shouldn’t eat Chick-fil-a or buy new Harry Potter merchandise/books/tickets/etc. When you give money and a platform to someone who has a history of doing terrible things with money and a platform, they’re going to continue to use that position for terrible things. If they haven’t apologized, changed, or improved at all, expect the same terrible behavior. But threaten that power, and it forces self reflection and growth.

It’s with that in mind that I ask you to consider the actions of Brendan Eich.

Brendan Eich was fundamental in the formation of the internet. While working at Netscape, he was tasked with creation of an internet programming language. Initially, he was going to give us Scheme on the web, but his superiors insisted that it looked more like Java, so you ended up with JavaScript. See, web developers? It could have been far worse.

JavaScript is still the foundation of the web. Sure, people use TypeScript or compile languages to JavaScript or Web Assembly as well, but, by in large, JavaScript still rules the web. Some people hate JavaScript enough to want to cancel Eich over this alone, but, for the rest, there’s more.

Avowed Homophobia

“I challenge anyone to cite an incident where I displayed hatred or ever treated someone less than respectfully because of group affinity or individual identity.”

– Brendan Eich, after an incident where he displayed hatred and treated gays, lesbians, and bisexuals less than respectfully by donating to a gay hate group.

The real trouble started for Eich shortly after he was named CEO of Mozilla. While many already knew, the larger public learned of his views. We found out Eich had donated $1,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure to roll back same-sex marriage rights. He also donated $2,100 to Tom McClintock, a politician and supporter of Prop 8.

When his donations came to light, he apologized for “causing pain.” He did not apologize for his views. In fact, he was quite specific not to apologize or claim he had reformed his homophobic views. Instead, he stood by his hate. This lead to at least one of Mozilla’s board members quitting in protest. Two others quit at the same time, but did not specifically state Eich was the reason and had been planning on leaving before. Half the board left rather than appoint him. Meanwhile, employees, users, and even other companies protested.

OKCupid was willing to ban Firefox users of Brendan Eich’s appointment. Screenshot via Gizmodo.

 

LGBTQIA employees at Mozilla knew that, with a homophobe at the top, they’d never be able to progress at the company. There would always be someone there that was in favor of discrimination. Developers at the company, add-on developers, and other employees threatened to quit. Some pulled their apps from the Firefox Marketplace. OKCupid had a banner for all Firefox users, asking them to use a browser from a company that didn’t support homophobia.

Rather than admit he was wrong, change his ways, pledge to do better, or any of the acceptable motions, Brendan Eich turned in his resignation. He left Mozilla after just 9 days of CEO, rather than make any commitment to putting bigotry in the past. While the board was also uncomfortable with his background in engineering, rather than management, his homophobia was a large and public driver.

Enter Brave

Then he founded Brave and the Brave Browser. It’s a browser that promises privacy and hides ads, but allows users to opt-in to ads, joining in on a revenue sharing platform. Instead of the publisher’s ads, you’ll see Brave’s ads. You get paid in cryptocurrency, Brave keeps a bit, and publishers get another part. Publishers lose, you sell your browser window real estate for ads, and Brave wins. All of that with someone at the top who may still support anti-LGBTQIA causes. After all, he left a job as CEO rather than go back on them.

Alternatives

There are alternatives in the browser and search space. For a better browser, I suggest Firefox, Safari, or even Opera (in that order). Firefox has more privacy protections available through add-ons and containers anyway. Safari is fast and protective on iOS and macOS devices. Opera is innovative. The gamer-focused version is actually pretty cool.

For search, you still have options. If privacy is your #1 concern, you likely already know about DuckDuckGo. It’s the original privacy-focused browser. I didn’t like their results quite as much as Google’s, but you do get to avoid all of the privacy issues.

If you are willing to give up some privacy to make a difference, but give away that data to anyone but Google, you can check out Ecosia. Ecosia plants trees for your searches. You can track how many trees you’ve planted, even across devices. Ecosia will tell you how many searches you’ve completed. About 40 searches will plant one tree.

Behind Ecosia is Bing. Bing powers Ecosia. If you just want to make sure Google doesn’t have all of your data, you can use Bing. I won’t lie, I still prefer Google search results, but 90% of the time, Ecosia has what I need. Besides, rather than doing nothing with your searches, it’s making a difference.

Just Not Brave

The point of this isn’t to cancel people. It’s to ask people to evolve, change, and improve. To cast hate and bigotry aside and instead choose acceptance and equality. If we don’t give people a chance to improve, they’ll never have any motivation to do so. However, Eich has made no public statements about giving up his homophobia. He quit as CEO of a large and respectable company in part so he wouldn’t have to do that. To me, that’s not something you should just ignore. Someone literally chose hate over being CEO of the company he co-founded. A few years later, he founded Brave.

“He can still keep his personal beliefs, but I wanted him to recognize that we faced real issues with immigration and say that he never intended to cause people problems. It’s heartbreaking to us that he was unwilling to say even that.”

– Hampton Catlin, a former Firefox OS developer who couldn’t immigrate to the U.S. until he could marry his partner.

So, yes, Brave has a new search engine to go along with their browser. But it’s ran by an avowed homophobe. This isn’t a political issue, it’s discrimination levied against a group of people. Do with that information what you will.

Happy Pride!

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