There is some valid criticism made of Brave in this thread, which seems to ignore that those additional features are opt-in. In my experience, Brave is the best browser for empowering the less technically literate to protect their privacy. Until Mozilla ships Firefox with more aggressive, integrated, on-by-default privacy protection, Brave is the best browser to advocate for non-techies.
Current browser situation looks like a giant skyscraper of the rich anti-privacy monopolist surrounded by 2-3 decrepit hovels of pro-privacy or neutral competitors. As of today all of the hovels except for one are burned down to the ground and bulldozed over. Promoting Brave is essentially the same as painting logo "privacy" on the back entrance to the skyscraper while pouring gasoline on the last remaining competitor hovel. If Firefox will die, there will be zero privacy in the internet left, because these Chrome mods with fancy icons are powerless against real "owner" of the Chrome codebase and all future changes in it.
There may be zealotry involved in the attacks on Brave, but I don't think it is essentially OS/free software zealotry. Brave is open source, after all.
Edit: I am a passionate advocate for freedom, privacy, and free software and I like Brave.
It feels to me like even a nice comment about Brave is an outright threat to openness and virtue. IMO it’s the same bizarre Manichaean zeitgeist that pops up in so many other aspects of life and discussion.
