Iirc it was the mobile browser not blocking Microsoft trackers. Lemme check
Edit: can confirm, it was not blocking MS trackers, seems to have been due to legal terms. Link: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/duckduckgo-microsoft-tracking-scripts/
Just looked into it. If that closed source bit only has GUI stuff and has no tracking bits, which is what they claim, then it is probably alright. They mentioned something about community deobfuscation for theming based modding being alright with them (Which is really excellent! Props to the Vivaldi team for outright saying it’s chill to technically break their TOS for customization), so if the GUI code has been fully deobfuscated and no tracking things found in it I would probably trust it more than Brave.
Honestly, I don’t have a huge problem personally with closed source if I know it doesn’t have tracking stuff, but unfortunately companies have lots of incentive to lie and mislead about that.
If Chrome didn’t have a monopoly, and if I knew they didn’t have tracking stuff, I would very strongly consider switching from Firefox, because in my limited experience trying Vivaldi a while back, it is really great, and I love how customizable it is.
Vivaldi is closed source though, so I personally distrust it more than I distrust Brave.
If Vivaldi was FOSS then that might change things, but it isn’t.
ETA: I felt I should mention I am a bit of a hypocrite here as my preferred Lemmy client (Boost) isn’t FOSS, but I am too used to Boost when I still used Reddit, so any other client just doesn’t feel right.
Probably not, since there has to be some processing of the noise to identify what it is. TheBackyardScientist did a video somewhat similar to that, here: https://piped.video/watch?v=4WSQqDHK1Yw