Brave caught a lot of flak when it was new because of its false marketing and considering the low market share, it seems no one bothers posting as much about it as in the past.
However, it is near impossible to trust a company that sells itself on privacy and has been caught:
1. Implementing their own fork of uBlock Origin with their own whitelist so they can display the ads that they have received payment for
2. Installing VPN service even when not selected, and which has been caught leaking DNS multiple times
3. Tor implementation that simply leaked data to the point that Tor Project specifically mentioned to not use it on Brave
4. The affiliate scandal that you mentioned
5. Entire crypto implementation and the donation thing
6. Not respecting browser flags
7. Brave search selling search data for AI training without informing the users
8. All the bloatware that you can opt in or out of, when people were freaking about a Firefox integration
Maybe they have turned over a new leaf but considering the CEO and investor are the same, I doubt it. It is possibly a good suggestion for those stuck with Chrome and Edge, but definitely not a privacy and security first suggestion to those conscious about it.
Someone tried to create a fork with all the bloatware removed and even though they tout themselves as open-source, they came down heavily on that developer and forced him to close the project. It is a matter of trust that will not change until things change immensely.
