Brave is chrome

Chromium, and no. It’s downstream from it and they remove the parts they don’t like. They did some things in the past that makes them highly untrustworthy in my opinion (like replacing affiliate links with their own ones or using user data from their search engine to train AI) but Brave is still far better than Chrome.

never ever ever use a free vpn ever,

Proton VPN has a free tier and it’s legit.

Hell, if they do a Patreon-esque model where people can just throw money at them because they appreciate the service, I’d subscribe. (If a similar thing exists that I don’t know about, please link)

I didn’t find anything after a short search but you can look at their ads.

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