[Misleading Title] Brave now blocking conservative news sites

Brave is now blocking certain legitimate and reliable conservative news websites because they apparently don’t fit the views and narrative that someone at Brave holds, under the false pretense that the news website might be distributing malware. I would think that Brendan Eich would be opposed to censorship, as opposed to allowing Brave to participate in it.

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@pulleco,
Brave does not blacklist any particular website. You’re likely running into a standard web compatibility issue. If what you’re saying is true, then threads like this wouldn’t exist, would they?

If you can provide some examples of websites you’re experiencing issues with I’d be happy to assist you in getting them to render properly.

Mattches
Browser Support

    March 19

@pulleco,

Brave does not blacklist any particular website. You’re likely running into a standard web compatibility issue. If what you’re saying is true, then threads like this wouldn’t exist, would they?

If you can provide some examples of websites you’re experiencing issues with I’d be happy to assist you in getting them to render properly.

This is what I see today when trying to view an article on Breitbart that is critical of Beto O’Rourke:

I’ve been using Brave now for almost a year. I have never had any difficulty viewing an article on Breitbart before today.

"temporarily disabling ‘Block Phishing/Malware’ " does not help. I still get the above message.

If “blacklists” does not mean the Brave blacklists websites, what does it mean?

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Mattches
Browser Support

    March 19

@pulleco,

Brave does not blacklist any particular website. You’re likely running into a standard web compatibility issue. If what you’re saying is true, then threads like this wouldn’t exist, would they?

If you can provide some examples of websites you’re experiencing issues with I’d be happy to assist you in getting them to render properly.

This is the original URL for the Breitbart article I was attempting to access:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/19/report-beto-orourke-ate-dirt-with-fabled-regenerative-powers-after-losing-to-ted-cruz/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20190319
But I got exactly the same error message attempting to view an article on the Western Journalism website:

http://click1.e.conservativetribune.com/zzllwgvbjsgkwglckbzrgkgrgzkzdqpvdvsfzlqlfrsmfp_adlmhsktymnmhhdbmstll.html

Both of these – Breitbart and Western Journalism (aka, Conservative Tribune) – are websites that I have viewed regularly, always with the Brave browser, without any difficulty until today.

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Your link works fine for me on the Brave Dev browser.

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What about the error message? What is generating that?

Blacklist.jpg

@pulleco,
All of the links provided work for me in Release version as well (v0.61.51) on macOS and Windows machines. Can you tell me what operating system you’re using?

No. Just, no. We are not blocking conservative news sites. We are not blocking liberal news sites.

Brave is a browser, not playing political favorites.

It looks like the process is clear on the message you received for reporting an issue with a site being blocked.

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Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Can you see the graphic image of the error message that I posted in my previous response?

Please explain why I began getting this error message just beginning today.

Is it possible that this is fake and is, itself, being generated by malware? (There is nothing “dangerous” about the 2 domains – Breitbart and Western Journalism – which I have previously accessed frequently without problem.)

It is possible that it is, in fact, trying to trick me into turning off the Phishing/Malware blocker?

For your safety, Brave has blocked this site because it is distributing malware or stealing login credentials.

Brave uses crowdsourced blacklists from Spam404 and Disconnect.me to block dangerous domains. If you believe this domain should not be blocked, Please report the site at https://community.brave.com/c/site-blocking

You can access this site by clicking the Brave icon in the top right corner and temporarily disabling ‘Block Phishing / Malware’. This is not recommended!

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You are correct, pulleco.
Sites like Breitbart, Daily Wire, and Western Journal have most/all of the stories on their sites blocked, but I just checked HuffPost, Salon, and Slate, and everything is cool.

What Brave is doing is not cool.
If it is true that Brave workers have not specifically targeted conservative sites, then either they’ve been hacked, or they are relying on fake news from some Progressive who can’t stand the truth.

Once again: No, we are not doing that.

We are looking into this issue. The last time this happened, it was inherited behavior from a Chromium update – not something we added. You can test by trying to visit the same sites on an up-to-date version of Chrome and see if you get the same results. If you do not, let us know and we will troubleshoot the issue together.

Again, I’d like to reiterate that I am able to visit the same site on the same version, on the same OS (and any OS):

Things to try:

  • As stated above – does it behave the same way in Chrome?
  • Have you tried with your Shields down?
  • Try visiting one of these links in a Private or Private w/tor Window
  • Does anything show up in the [Console] window in dev tools?

I just got knocked out of A&E live watching an episode through DirectTVNow. Same exact issue as OP. I’ve tried 4 times to continue watching and each new login with fresh restart of video episode the screen goes orange and says exactly what came up for OP, malware, stealing login credentials. Clicking the option to down shields for phishing/malware does not allow me to continue on the site. Some page filled with gobbledygook pops up lol.

Thank you for showing your screen shot showing that you can go to the articles on Breitbart.

I cannot.

Since yesterday, I can’t read any story on https://www.hln.be/
This is a regular news site (newspaper “het laatste nieuws” in Belgium.
I can open the site, but if I click on any story, I get that “Brave has blocked etc…” message.

Dear Pulleco,
I am getting the same message. I am blocked from my favorite news page, The National Catholic Register. I use this as my homepage so I am very annoyed. I have been talking up Brave to my friends but will stop now. Please fix this Brave.

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PS: Brave, I did go through Edge and I can get in fine there. It is just Brave.

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Both of these from @pulleco , as well as the one @johanok posted and the one @kharum posted, come up fine in Brave 0.61.51 Chromium: 73.0.3683.75 (Official Build) (64-bit) for Windows 10 Version 10.0.17763 Build 17763 and Brave 0.60.47 Chromium 70.0.3626.119 for Linux Mint 19.2. I can test Release, Beta, and Dev in MacOS.

@pulleco @johanok @kharum can you post version of Brave and OS? (open a new tab, type brave://version and hit return for Brave version; doing that with brave://help will check for/start update)

For everyone following this thread, I’ve passed this on to our security team. I appreciate your patience while we figure out whats going on.

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