Opinions are obviously split here among HNers about the merits of Brave and what it's actually trying to achieve.
I can only speak for myself but I find that Brave as a daily driver is a wonderful browser. Since it's built on Chromium, it has all the common extensions I use with Chrome (Dark Reader, uBlock Origin, etc.). It has built-in Tor and a rich set of default privacy features. The ads it provides are opt-in and the way that it allows the user to choose which website/content creators to reward allows a level of freedom to users that other browsers typically don't.
I don't know about the ethics behind everything Brave is doing - but this built in functionality of 404 redirects with the help of the IA/Wayback Machine is, to me, an interesting and welcome feature. I did not know, before reading this thread, that other browsers had plugins/extensions available for this. The fact that Brave is simply building it in natively seems to be a bold move. If other browsers adopt similar functionality natively, we'll know that it was a winning move. When all is said and done, despite any missteps Brave may be making, it is trying a different approach, and I think that in the end, whether or not Brave succeeds, that's healthy for a competitive browser ecosystem.
Edit: One thing I'd really like to see for Brave's mobile browser in the future is the ability to use Chrome extensions - it seems completely strange to me that this hasn't been implemented yet (if I'm slow on the uptake and this capability has been added, please correct me)
I can only speak for myself but I find that Brave as a daily driver is a wonderful browser. Since it's built on Chromium, it has all the common extensions I use with Chrome (Dark Reader, uBlock Origin, etc.). It has built-in Tor and a rich set of default privacy features. The ads it provides are opt-in and the way that it allows the user to choose which website/content creators to reward allows a level of freedom to users that other browsers typically don't.
I don't know about the ethics behind everything Brave is doing - but this built in functionality of 404 redirects with the help of the IA/Wayback Machine is, to me, an interesting and welcome feature. I did not know, before reading this thread, that other browsers had plugins/extensions available for this. The fact that Brave is simply building it in natively seems to be a bold move. If other browsers adopt similar functionality natively, we'll know that it was a winning move. When all is said and done, despite any missteps Brave may be making, it is trying a different approach, and I think that in the end, whether or not Brave succeeds, that's healthy for a competitive browser ecosystem.
Edit: One thing I'd really like to see for Brave's mobile browser in the future is the ability to use Chrome extensions - it seems completely strange to me that this hasn't been implemented yet (if I'm slow on the uptake and this capability has been added, please correct me)