this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 309 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (40 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 156 points 9 months ago (33 children)

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.

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