- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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Holy shit.
I thought this was just going to be a matter of poor security implementation or crappy feature sets.
Turns out they converted the company into a loan shark operation owned by Chinese ad companies
when the Opera browser continued losing users (due to competition from Google and Apple), the company shifted gears to building mobile apps that provided predatory short-term loans. The interest rates on those loans ranged from 365-876% per year, and loan terms from 7-29 days.
This behavior is just beyond batshit. Before anyone decides tl;dr, the article is well worth a read.
I had a hunch that Opera was circling the drain when I started seeing them sponsor Youtubers. A general rule of thumb is that no company that has anything worth a shit devolves to sponsoring Youtube videos. I had no idea about the predatory loans thing, or the crypto scam chasing thing, or the ripping off ChatGPT thing…
Back here in reality, there is no reason anyone should be using any other browser than Firefox. There is one organization left in this arena still devoted to protecting privacy, maintaining open standards, and a fair and open web for all. And it ain’t Google, it ain’t Microsoft, and it ain’t Opera.
I do not agree with your generalisation of YouTube sponsorships, but with the rest I absolutely agree with.
Honestly, I read something about Opera being vaguely connected to shady Chinese companies right before I started recommending ppl to switch away from Opera or Opera GX. Glad I stuck to that, looks like my intuition did not fail me.
And it’s always been Firefox since day one. Out of the ashes of Netscape Navigator rose Firefox and Mozilla have been one of the only bastions of the free and open web ever since. I honestly don’t understand why anyone would use another browser.
Fear of change and effective marketing. Those are the only reasons.
Actually it’s an effective cloud-based password manager that doesn’t rely on local storage or weird plugins or backups.
That’s what keeps me using chrome. I could lose everything in a house fire, pick up any device, log in and have access to all my stuff without any further action on my part, right out of the box.
That’s the only feature I care about, and chrome is the only browser I’ve seen that provides it.
Get me that in firefox, and I’ll switch today.
What are you talking about? Firefox has had literally Sync since before Chrome existed.
Firefox Sync initial release: December 21, 2007
Google Chrome intial release: September 2, 2008 (Beta), (1.0) December 11, 2008
A full year, my guy.
Cuz Firefox was for a long time just some shiiiiiiit. It was overloaded, blocky, seemed outdated etc., so ie wasn’t any worse. When chrome came, whooo.
Now tho, I am simply still prejudiced against it. And I found Edge suits me ideally so I don’t care for any other browser. Until my adblock stops working, then I’ll run.
Hindenburg is an investment firm that researches publicly-traded companies and shorts their stocks if they find sufficient evidence of investor fraud before releasing its report.
What a wild business plan. I’m amazed it’s legal.
It’s kinda scummy to manipulate the market as such, but it’s much more scummy to partake in the fraud.
They’re like the anti-hero of this story.
I don’t want to touch any Chromium-based browser. Firefox all the way.
Vivaldi has been a better option for those who love the feel of Opera. But Firefox is an overall better package imo
Explain why don’t just clickbait me.
Man its fucking sad what’s become of Opera. They gave us tabbed browsing, CSS, and lots of other stuff and then just like that, they became another uninteresting Chromium fork and its been straight to the shitter since.
PSA: The old Opera guys have a new browser, Vivaldi.
It’s quite nice and I use it daily.
Vivaldi has the best tab management ever.
That’s what I thought until I installed Firefox with Sidebery and oh man, that’s another level. It required quite a bit of configuration make it really fit my needs, but when you configure it, it’s incredible.
Thanks for telling me about sidebery!
Yep. I daily drive Vivaldi on both macOS and Android.
I love it. The sidebar is a great feature; I stash my extension icons there. The theme is highly customizable; I have mine set to something similar to the Opera dark theme.
I don’t use the email or calendar features. The great thing about Vivaldi is that they provide a ton of power user features, but don’t shove it in your face. It’s super easy to turn off the things you don’t want and to turn on the things you do want.
I do use UBO, but they also have a builtin ad blocker if you want to use that instead.
The settings page is very extensive. Tons of customization. True to the Opera legacy!
The sidebar is a great feature; I stash my extension icons there.
That’s amazing, I didn’t know you could do that. I’ve been using Vivaldi since the alpha days and I had no clue you could drag the extensions there.
Is this a shitpost or is that idiot actually telling me not to use Opera because of alleged investor fraud in 2020?
I don’t give a fuck about that, mate, when the other option is a Monopoly that literally removed the “Don’t be Evil” clause from their code of conduct. If you want me to stop using Opera then you’ll have to give me a reason about the specifications of the program, not about the company’s petty crimes due to Chinese regulatory failures.
I’m just tired as the next person about posts that provide a million half-assed reasons to not use anything but Firefox. But honestly If we don’t stop these places from building dossiers on us and locking us out of websites that are unsanctioned by them, It will a erode our opportunities in years to come.
Right now, it doesn’t feel like it matters. Lexis-Nexis knows every nickel you ever spend and every creditor that ever ran a check on you, Google knows what type of porn you like to watch, tik tok and opera are storing everything that you’ve ever been into in a place that can be retrieved by other governments.
At some point we’re going to have to take our privacy more seriously. Preferably before 1984 actually becomes real.
If you could just provide some citations about Opera intrusively tracking and building profiles then I’d happily switch. The thing is, though, it’s still leagues better than Chromium in that regard.
For what it’s worth their privacy policy does say they gather telemetry and they did pay how many billions for the company?
Almost everybody else is gathering telemetry as well obviously. The actual root of the concern is that the companies are based in China, you know the great firewall of China, China. The Chinese government holds a stranglehold on the companies that operate within them. For example if you have a US company and you want to do some business in China you have to find a Chinese partner company to sponsor you. Everything you store there everything you touch runs through the Chinese government. If they want any of the data, that required to be given access.
If you remember when Google went to open a data center in China there was a pretty big kerfuffle. It was because the Chinese government was going to be handed keys to the kingdom for anything that was stored in China. For better or for worse it’s just how they operate.
You may not feel the same way but I’m sure you at least get the concern there.
Personally I try not to use Google integrated Chrome or Microsoft integrated chromium. I still use brave when I need a Chrome browser and that’s not the best either. They’d sell me up the river if they decided they needed a buck.
I honestly wish we had more Firefox competition. And unified plug-in languages. The stuff that Opera and brave are providing aren’t difficult to mimic. And I really like there being developers fighting YouTube ad blocking and website pop-ups and pay wall bypasses.
I’m not saying oh my God they’re going to rape you over the coals right now but do consider that the people that are making these crazy ass posts aren’t delusional or entirely wrong, and do use who’s getting your data on your consideration.
Usually the saying is “rake you over the coals” but I kind of like your version in the context.
If you’ve done nothing wrong then you’ve got nothing to fear. If you’ve got something to hide then you shouldn’t even be here.
20 years later you’re denied a house loan because your internet records show you went to a fascist website. Or an anti-fascist website, whatever floats your boat.
Things that were acceptable or slightly garish 20 years ago are now grounds for dismissal at a job, you know.
God I miss old Opera
Opera died when they killed Presto and pretended they couldn’t make anything like that with blink.
Then the old ones made Vivaldi and proved that was a damned lie.
Somebody here is going to have a reason: why shouldn’t I use Safari?
While inferior to Firefox due to reason outlined by another user, it is infinitely better than going with Chromium-based browsers.
Keep on using it if you feel comfortable with it
I stopped using Opera when the CCP bought up the company a few years ago.
Yeah I mean I wouldn’t use that CCP bullshit.
