I've read the article and I don't understand the issue.

The founder is a homophobe

I don't care. He represents Brave just as little as he represents Mozilla or Javascript.

It didn't do ad replacements

I don't care. Why should that be a reason not to use the browser? It doesn't have a feature that no other browser has either, oh no.

Setting up a system to turn BAT into money isn't worth it for websites, since not enough people use Brave to generate relevant revenue

I don't care. If you care about maximizing websites' profit, you should use Chrome (with no adblock).

It's bloated with Web3 stuff

I don't care. Browsers are extremely bloated anyways.

They partnered with Web3 companies

I don't care. They didn't try to scam anyone, they just offered services/features for those interested in Web3.

They added affiliate codes to URLs

I care a little, but not much. Claiming it's anti privacy is ridiculous. The website can see you're using Brave no matter whether you're using an affiliate link or not. But it's still something a browser definitely shouldn't do without user consent (and an option to opt out).