this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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Looking into privacytests.org, the main developer behind it is someone who contributes to Brave source code. He may not be officially affiliated with the company, but it would be hard to ignore any sort of bias towards Brave.
I've been seeing a lot of techy "privacy" blog posts, even here on Lemmy. It's a little annoying when they muddy up the waters like this. People new to privacy will come across them and head off in the wrong direction.
We need more comments calling them out and linking to proper resources. The site linked in this post even has a confusingly similar name to the actual recommended resource:
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/
(And a quick sidenote: privacyguides is the same team from privacytools. There was a name change after the original owner for the domain came back and fought over the project. PrivacyTools is now a paid advertising site, and it is NOT recommended. https://www.privacyguides.org/en/about/privacytools/ )
Edit: while I'm at it, here's the official community on Lemmy
Even Privacy Guides has its own set of controversy, where basically one group completely took over the community from its founder (who themselves wasn't squeaky clean, either).
Isn't that the same controversy, just worded in favor of privacytools?
I'm trying to judge based on what I've read from each party, and I'm still leaning towards the privacyguides account of what went down
The recommendations are probably the biggest factor for me. See the VPN pages on each site
Tbh I don't really care enough either way. But I would lean a little more towards privacyguide's account of things, while I still don't fully trust their judgement either. I can't remember why now but there was something they were very fanboy-like over which I disagreed with, and since then I haven't been following their advice, let alone their drama.
I found this on my privacy journey. Don't know how relevant it is today though
The article on privacyguides I linked above touches on some of this as well. I haven't read through this one, but seems like the less verifiable one in a "x said y said" situation?
Less "took over" more the founder left and the community picked up the pieces.
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Please use universal links
thanks, fixed!
PrivacyTests actually started prior to him joining Brave. Brave contacted him, and used that resource as a kind of checklist, to try and improve their browser. Despite the guy now working there, it remains an independent project.
https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=ygvhCa9-0L4
The project technically being independent does not mean it isn't biased towards one browser.
It’s still unfinished, but he’s working on a tool for you to test your own browser. You can do so here:
https://privacytests.org/me.html
It’s the exact same tests he runs, that are open source. Everything can be found, (if you don’t trust the guy) on his GitHub:
https://github.com/privacytests/privacytests.org/tree/master/scripts
You can have open source software with a bias towards something.
You can but:
A better defense against accusations of bias is a group or persons transparency.
Simply having an open source methodology and code base isn’t transparency either, since it takes a much, much deeper and more developed skill set to audit both software source code and testing methodology than it takes to raise an eyebrow at sus circumstances.
Okay? Where is the proof it’s biased towards one browser