Brave is essentially just Chrome with an adblocker, a bunch of bloatware, and a bunch of controversies.
Brave took BAT donations in YouTuber's names without their consent, with them keeping the money if the YouTubers didn't claim it. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-browser-no-longer-claims-to-fundraise-on-behalf-of-others-so-thats-nice/
Brave's search engine crawler hides itself from websites by pretending to be Googlebot, and Meta (Facebook) buys API access from them to train their AI. https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/
The business model of Brave rewards as a whole is to block all other ad networks to replace them with their own, which is unfair as only YouTubers and websites that have joined can make money from most Brave users.
If Brave actually cared, they would create an acceptable ads style feature which was free for everyone and allowed simple contextual banners while blocking ads which track you, take up most of the page, or have NSFW content.
Their approach is monopolistic as they have full control and can strangle YouTubers and websites by dropping pay at any time.
And Brenden Eich has said on Twitter that he plans to release "Brave Origin", which is a paid version of Brave without the bloatware. That name is ironic as he is admitting that his browser is commercialised and bloated, which is similar to when gorhill gave uBlock way to Chris Aljoudi who commercialised it, which led him to create uBlock Origin.
If you use Brave, ditch it and look at using Librewolf or Helium instead, which both include no ads nor tracking and don't have Brave News, Rewards, Wallet, Talk etc bloatware.
For all my folks on android a really good chromium browser would be Cromite which is a fork of Bromite a really good privacy browser. I use it with Kagi as my search engine and it works so well for me.
For FF, I used IronFox for a bit. But it had issues with using alternative search engines as defaults. But it's still a solid browser.
I recommend using the TOR browser as a heavy security measure and for privacy if you need it the most. Remember to change the defaults to the strictest security measures for the best privacy and protection from Malware (ads) and the works.
Waterfox is an option too
i recently installed cromite to find its adblock completely non-functional, anyone knows if it's just me?
(i mean the obvious ones like google ads were shown..)
just disable the in built blocker and use ublock instead
Adblock was purchased by Google years ago and now allows "non-intrusive" (is Google) ads by default. Use uBlock if you can.
lol ik, i'm not talking about adblock(tm) but instead i mean the ad blocking feature integrated in the cromite browser. afaik it uses ABP engine/filters tho