May be tone down your paranoia bit, once I disabled brave rewards, which was offered as a part of installation without any dark pattern I never saw any shilling. Also what’s wrong with premium search? You expect free things which cost a lot of money, but you must not see Ads? And Tor themselves wouldn’t recommend any other browser. Tor feature in brave doesn’t seem to be intended for super serious, but a safer VPN like alternative instead of say Express or Nord. Even that is optional. You are never forced to use any of these features. I don’t understand the sentiment of everything must be free and open source, when your daily life is not. At least on Yc backed HN, I wish I see people supporting alternate business models. If it works for them good, else market speaks.