> such a fervent supporter in the face of much evidence
Two different people talking about the exact same issue does not constitute "much evidence".
I am not a supporter of the "browser". I am a supporter of having an alternative way to have a healthy economy on the internet that does not rely on Ad Tech.
Tracking, privacy violations, the billions of dollars that go to waste due to ad fraud and the maintenance of an oligopoly that only exists due to it all... These are the real "shady practices" that we should be be pissed about, not "they added a button to the webpage that is actually aligned with their value proposition".
If Brave ever gets to do something that violates user privacy or works as a hostile user-agent, then I would gladly be the front of the line to call out for "shady practices". But the points you are arguing are none of that. What you are doing is basically Googling for "Brave Controversies" and spitting out whatever confirms your biases. This is irresponsible and creates a self-reinforcing loop of bad, unfounded reputation for you people that are working on something you don't care about, but that is important to a growing number of people.
> If you want to donate money using Brave go for it.
It's not a matter of "donate money using Brave". Brave is not the point. Brave is just a tool to build something bigger: a way to have a global digital economy free from Surveillance Capitalism. If lynks gave me that, I would use it. But Apple and Microsoft is not interested in doing that, and Mozilla has shown nothing but some naive idealism and very kind words of support (while at the same time paying enormous amounts of money to its board members). I would love to go back to Firefox if they had something similar to the BAT network. I would love if Mozilla started offering paid services to foster and fund an open web free of tracking and privacy violations, but they don't.
Brave (the company, through the browser) does. They have built a (completely opt-in and configurable) system that allows people to receive money for attention and which lets them use this to circulate in the economy, or even cash out. So when I ask you for an alternative, it's not because I want you to do the work for me. It's for you to realize that there is not any other system out there that compares to this, which then maybe will make you understand that the only reason I am "fervent supporter" of Brave is because it's the current best shot we have.
