An earlier version of the browser let early adopter users direct where Brave's own marketing budget of BAT tokens was sent to, including sites that hadn't yet signed up.
If those sites didn't sign up, the tokens would eventually go back into the marketing budget pool of tokens, to be distributed to other sites (not to Brave).
That's very different to the mischaraterisation you mention above, but no surprise as Brave's model is a threat to the current fraudulent ad tech ecosystem.
They did make changes to the product immediately after that episode though. Now if you want to donate to a site that hasn't registered your browser will try for a period of time, and if the publisher doesn't sign up the tokens are returned to you to distribute elsewhere.