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.
Yeah, ladybird is dead to me. I think the assumption that you can keep politics out of anything is wrong. Everything is political and only if you are in a privileged position (because you are rich or not a suppressed minority or whatever) you can afford to be apolitical because things are already going your way. When someone demands to "keep politics out" I think it should be interpreted as "I don't want to renegotiate the status quo because I don't want to lose my privilege."
Another thing that annoys me about his comment is the victimhood complex. He is complaining that people are being mean to him but if people are "repeatedly" calling you nazi or fascist ... chances are you are saying fascist things and I don't see any self-reflection here.
I guess at the very least, we can be happy he is building a new engine that we (the community) can fork when done ๐
Also check out servo.org if you haven't already. It's another open source browser engine in development, backed by the Linux Foundation.