Brave browser

Brave is a fine idea in that it offers a way to browse websites while depriving their hosts of revenue that accompanies interest-based, targeted advertising and the invasion of privacy that results from it. In so doing, the bandwidth those advertisements require won't be contributing to slow webpage rendering. Therefore it stands to reason Brave should be "faster", but I have not attempted to make any meaningful comparisons much less any objective measurements.

Here is the underlying concept I suggest you keep in mind at all times: Browsing the Internet it not free. You pay for it one way or another. It gets worse when you pay to consume data used to deliver those advertisements to your eyeballs. (Bear in mind most if not all advertisements are developed by programmers whose job it is to impress their employers with their visual appeal, with zero regard for the effect it has on webpage rendering, the demands on your computer's resources, or the time they take to load.) Then, you pay again when advertisers target you for products they deem you are more willing to buy, and presumably pay more for, than someone disinterested in those products. The price paid for collection and retention of personal information and the invasion of privacy that entails cannot be measured, but whatever it is I am not willing to pay it.

Personally, I would prefer to pay websites and services directly—through subscription fees, for example. That way I know exactly what I'm paying and can determine for myself if the content they deliver is worth the price or not. This site (Apple Support Communities) is one of very few that don't host those bandwidth-demanding, intrusive advertisements. I'd be hard pressed to come up with more examples. Wikipedia, perhaps.

Having said that Brave's concept, as worthy as it might be, is probably not a long-term business model. The e-commerce world is moving away from browser-based interaction for many reasons. For every attempt to insert junk advertisements you don't want, there will be offsetting electronic countermeasures—and the good ones aren't free. In the future everything will be apps. Of course generic Internet browsers will still exist, but they'll be relegated to techno-nerds. The rest of us won't be using Safari or anything like it. The behemoth that was built on delivering interest-based, targeted advertisements is already seeking other ways to do that.

Firefox is an excellent browser and can be configured to be very secure.

I haven't tried it and know nothing about it. What issues are you having with Safari?

I use it on occasion. Yes, it's safe. There's nothing wrong with it.