former user of their product. originally presented to me as a chrome alternative with the ad-block built right into the browser itself and not as a javascript extension. But as the product has evolved, they've changed in ways to monetize it themselves. While they still block ads, they're deciding which ads they want to block now based on how sponsors compensate them. As a bonus, they're throwing you back a bone to put up with their new business model. Brave has inserted itself as a new middleman between the advertisers and web users.

Not sure what your motivation is here in asserting something which is completely false.

Ads are blocked by default, and their research team is pioneering new approaches to ad blocking. See for instance https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.09155

The browser is also open-source: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser