this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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[–] DontTreadOnBigfoot@lemmy.world 308 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 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.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 155 points 10 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.

[–] fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 78 points 10 months ago (23 children)

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.

[–] Wermhatswormhat@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

I’ll say this. I use chrome and I KNOW I need to switch to Mozilla. It’s just such a pain to switch that I inevitably go back. Maybe this is the wake up call I need.

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