I don't defend Brave adding this feature or believe that it is even a good idea but how does this constitute a scam?

> I don't defend Brave

Maybe not, but you spend quite some time spitting on Mozilla for taking money from Google.

Yes, because (1) they spent that money badly as can be seen from the non-Google revenue numbers of Mozilla and Firefox's market share and (2) people are comparing practices of a company that gets $500M for free and a practices of a company that is essentially bootstrapped, which makes no sense.