That’s a romantic view. There’s folks on HN working for direct competitors of brave. I doubt that everyone defending brave is a shill, or that everyone criticizing it does so with the purest intent as you’re suggesting.
The only real competitors for Brave are other cryptocurrencies, which yes there are many. I feel there's plenty of reasons to not like Brave and few if any are about suggesting a superior cryptocurrency.
The only non-compromised Brave users I've come across are mobile, and they are the ones that find using the Firefox add-ons menu to install uBlock origin too complicated. They are unlikely to learn the BAT system.
