I wonder who's more unethical: The guy who comes in, smashes your stuff and leaves or the guy who comes in, smashes your stuff and leaves a check for you at his place.

I bet that's a common battle ground between consequentialists and idealists.

Fun aside, I don't think the comparison holds up very well. I don't think that anyone has a right to execute code on my devices just because I'm browsing a website. In this concept, "hijacking" ads is completely void of any ethical meaning.

Braves platform attempt is still not very good. A good solution for paying content creators would need to be open, decentralized and accepted by the stakeholders involved.

When a user views a website using an ad blocker, that website doesn't get paid.

When a user views a website using Brave, that website doesn't get paid.

There may be extra ethical concerns due to Brave's model, but there's no way you can claim that Brave is "strong-arming" websites.

I've read a few threads on this and while I don't want to be absolutist and say you are wrong, I believe it's a lot more nuanced than what you described. My understanding is that the Brave injected ads are strictly opt-in at this point for the user, not the default, which makes it a lot less of a racket imho, but I dislike Brave simply because I don't need it, which seems like a good enough reason to grumble about it.