This principle applies to so many things in modern life. A bunch of my friends use various smart home devices - Google, Amazon, whatever. They say it's super convenient: "Add x to my shopping list" or "What's the weather like tomorrow". I say I'd rather spend 10 seconds doing these things myself than having every single word that is every said inside my house being sent to and recorded on who knows how many servers around the world. You like the convenience of connecting with friends on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.? Then you are giving away all your data to these companies to use anyway they want and sell to anyone they want.
There is noting free in this world. They let us to use their free product but we pay them without our data.
I think we are living in an age now where more and more people are taking their privacy seriously. But it really comes down to the preference of either choosing privacy or going with easy custom made features designed by the companies to compromise your privacy.
I know that. But just like centralized exchanges NEED to implement KYC at some point (due to their government laws) or they will get shutdown, I think Brave actually needs to do that if they want to keep going with their idea of giving BAT tokens to publishers. What else should they do? Just give up on their idea or go against their law enforcement agencies? As long as they have good intentions and only ask for KYC when needed (for publishers in this case) I'm cool with that. But that's me (I also hate KYC btw).
I have not used their browser so I have no idea about the user friendliness of their service. It seems like KYC is needed only to use the token not for using the browser. So, in my opinion everything comes down to the service they are offering. If they can provide top notch service and if the users find their browser is more comfortable than those exists (like chrome), they will get a group of
customers users who will turn to be loyal for them. Not everyone will be interested in their token. So KYC is not going to be needed for all.