Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
And the title article is all about astroturfing and foreign agents and the like, so it seems like if you don't want to read that discussion you shouldn't really be reading this comment section. It should be pretty obvious what the content is going to be like from the title. Flag the post if you don't like it and want it all gone.
Seriously, I found myself thinking that most of the criticism against Brave is done by... not an organized group, but a group that is predisposed to loudly criticize it regardless of any actual failing or problem. But that kind of thinking is unfair to the vast majority of posters, pro OR con, who are honestly expressing their opinions. It's probably best to assume good faith, as the good lord and HN guidelines dictate.
So that makes him a hero-by-default to a variety of conservatives - some who think his political views unfairly eclipsed his technical achievements, some who feel his free speech was curtailed, some who are just homophobes. Eich hasn't talked much about the issue since so it's hard to say how much of this support is rooted in people projecting their own feelings onto him. Brave also appeals to the crypto crowd because it has its own token with which you can earn and/or redistribute 'Brave Attention Tokens.'
I don't know that the behavior around Brave is any sort of astroturfing in the sense of being coordinated; it could just be organic behavior by people who happen to have similarly narrow reasons for preferring it.
Don't get me wrong, i am sure there exists people who are motivated by that, but except in the early days of brave, i have not really seen brave evangelists talk about that at all. The talking points mostly seem to be anti-google, anti-big advertisers, anti-chrome monoply and pro-privacy stuff. And i think the amount of people motivated by those talking points far eclipse the other drama, which at this point feels like a historical footnote. Especially because as far as i know Eich hasn't continued to publicly express these views.
Once people feel loyal to a brand (or anything really) the original reasons don't have to stay top of mind for very long, and the loyalty symbol becomes a sort of in-group signal in its own right. It's not very different from fashion signatures in music subcultures.