Marketing has really worked for Brave.

I know of the controversies, I just don't think they're all that big when you actually examine them.

Homophobia

I'm part of the LGBT community and I just think there are bigger fish to fry. One of the guys involved made a $1k donation to an anti-prop 8 campaign like 15 years ago. That's it. That's the controversy. Like, yea it's shitty, but there was a lot more hate toward the community back then. People have grown and changed their views a lot in the years since. If we boycott every single company or individual who ever did anything even remotely homophobic, no matter their actions since, we'd essentially have to be living in a commune growing and making literally everything ourselves. Btw, this same guy is the one who developed JavaScript and I don't see even remotely the same level of hate for that, so it really feels like people are just being selectively upset.

Cryptocurrency

It's opt-in. It asks you once, and then never again. It was developed at a time when crypto was popular and was a feature people wanted. It was seen as a good thing when it first came out. Public opinion on crypto has soured, but plenty of people who wanted it still use the feature on brave. They have no good reason to scrap it. Especially because, again, it's opt-in only. Don't like it? Cool, don't use it. They aren't pushing it on you. But people hear the word crypto and immediately break out the pitchforks.

Do you even know what the goal of their cryptocurrency was? I think it's safe to say its failed at this point, but the goal was to completely rework how ads function on the internet. It would have killed the modern advertisement methods where ads are shoved in your face and you get nothing for it. Instead, it would have directly paid you a tiny amount any time you saw an ad, with you being able to choose how many you saw, or even if you saw any at all. Then you'd either be able to either keep the money for yourself, or donate it to websites/content creators of your choice. Take away the crypto part of it, and that's actually a pretty admirable goal in my book.

Ad affiliate links

Brave's biggest, actual, controversy is that they replaced some affiliate links with their own. Specifically links to binance.us, which is a crypto market. When it was found, Brave changed their code extremely quickly and claimed it was a bug. Now, companies have often lied through their teeth and claimed malicious actions were a "mistake" or a "bug", so maybe that is the same case here. But considering it was one site only, it was fixed almost immediately, and when you look at how it was actually replacing links (suggested auto fill in the address bar, pulled from browsing history) I am leaning toward it actually being unintentional.

Conclusion

I think people just like to hate things, and will find any reason to continue to do so as long as their little corner of the internet tells them they should hate it. People most vocal with their complaints rarely take the time to dig into the facts and see if it's really as bad as they claim; or they fully know it's not as bad, but never want to let the truth get in the way of a good ol' fashion, hate-boner, circle-jerk.

Is Brave the best browser? Hahahaha no. It's still a chromium fork and has been a little too eager to integrate AI in my opinion. But it's FAR from the worst and is the probably the best privacy focused browser for those that don't understand technology and struggle to use third-party ad-ons. It's just a little ridiculous that while there are legitimate things to complain about, most people's arguments seem to always stem from the 3 topics above.

Now cue the downvotes because I'm clearly some crypto fascist boot-licker for daring to believe "nuance" isn't a made up word.

Which it isn't, and also Chromium sucks, so they're really just mag dumping into their foot

While I'm sure you are right I think Brave also likely pays for maintaining opinion on social media and posting positive comments supporting it. Many others learned of doing that (for example musk has bots astroturfing its image pretty much everywhere.) Similarly for example you don't see controversies section about Brave.

Can anyone reccomend good options fo browsers?