Spectrism

Yes, the feature is working exactly as intended, and therein lies the problem.

Believing that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be a government-supported institution isn’t the same as believing LGBT people are “invalid” or “wrong” or whatever.

That’s great and all, but we don’t live in those times yet. Not granting people the right to marry whoever they want in current times based on the premise that we should change the marital law somewhere in the future is still nothing short of discrimination. And let’s not forget that Eich supported a campaign that was very explicitly against gay marriage, not the current concept of marriage altogether. Weak argument.

and that we should replace it with a series of contracts that grant certain legal privileges (e.g. joint tax filing, power of attorney, etc)

That’s what marriage already is for the most part in many parts of the world. And in those cases, the resulting financial disadvantage for example also makes it more apparent, why being against gay marriage is not just about names on a piece of paper.

I don’t know Eich’s personal political views, and I honestly don’t care, as long as they don’t interfere with his role.

How empathetic of you. Might as well support Josef Mengele with that attitude. A bit more personal responsibility couldn’t hurt.

My understanding is that they can’t really do that, because the payments are anonymous.

Well, last I checked it’s just another ERC-20 Token and not a new Monero, so I have my doubts about that. I also assume that they must keep transaction logs somewhere to keep track of the amount of BAT donated to a creator. But I can’t be sure either.

Use established, proven tools like Tor Browser.

It’s also kind of useless for Brave to have implemented Tor in the first place. Even if Brave matures further, there’s basically no reason not to use the Tor Browser for its intended purpose.

My understanding is that he had a very good working relationship w/ LGBTQ people in the org

Then why betray them? He has nothing to gain from funding such a campaign. There is no logical explanation and sure as hell no justification for it.

[…] so it really shouldn’t be anyone’s business.
How he votes or spends his personal money shouldn’t be relevant at all.

Oh, shut up. When this asshole funds a campaign that’s actively fighting against the rights of millions of people, it absolutely is our damn fucking business.

Yeah, this is totally wrong, and they reversed course immediately.

It’s bad enough that they even got the idea, let alone implement and actually ship it. Negative reactions shouldn’t be the first deciding factor for reversing such decisions.

Brave should have worked with major websites to share revenue

Not just share, completely give up that revenue. Blocking ads is one thing, but to then also monetise other people’s content should not allow Brave to earn even a single cent.
Your proposed solution sounds fine, though.

CEO is generally a right-wing dick.

Fair, but that should be a separate consideration from whether to use a given product.

Again, no. Maybe if there weren’t any alternatives, but there are plenty.

You probably wouldn’t like the CEO of any company whose products you like,

That’s probably true, however, Eich is a different story. Despite not gaining anything from it, neither for his companies nor for himself, he was willing to go out of his way to support a campaign in favour of discriminating millions of people, proactively. This doesn’t just make me not like him, it makes me despise him.
Other CEO’s typically at least keep quiet about politics, and make me dislike them mainly because of self-interest and their resulting business decisions, which can at least still be somewhat understandable.

And let me be clear that I’m not going to jump on people who use Brave for whatever reason. But under no circumstances will I defend those who downplay or justify Brave’s, and especially Eich’s, actions.