I feel like there is no web browser with a sane default configuration that I can recommend to other people. All browsers are preconfigured in a way that harms the privacy of their users or include services that no one wants such as Pocket and BAT.
Here are my problems with some popular browsers.
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Mozilla Firefox: Pocket integration, no ad-blocking without extensions.
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Brave: Everything related to crypto. Also its start page is horrible.
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Chromium: No ad-blocking without extensions and soon Manifest v3 will cripple all content blockers.
Now, these suboptimal defaults wouldn’t be such a big problem if the configuration files were easy to backup and restore and respected the XDG base directory specification.
Just use Librewolf. It’s a fork of Firefox, with Pocket disabled, Ublock Origin preinstalled, and privacy settings enabled by default.
True.
I wish someone can fork Brave on desktop and mobile and take out all the other stuff. And if someone could fork firefox for desktop and mobile and make it a hardened browser out of the box.
Firefox has librewolf for desktop.
But not for mobile, especially Android. I would like librewolf to maintain a hardened Android app with their own F-Droid repo.