Nowadays I wouldn't come near it, mostly because it's proprietary software owned by a company with shady business practices.
Still, this is great news and should be applauded FWIW.
I don't care about the vulns when I'm only browsing my own or trusted websites or localhost.
I actually just switched this week, being fed up with Firefox. So far so good. I very much like the UI/UX.
I hope this isn't just another case of "China bad".
Edit: Ah, I see the link you added. So the new owners seem shady.
I'm guessing you're perhaps conflating criticism of China/CCP with recent idiotic attacks on random asian people in the US?
No doubt, China uses this kind of opportunity to spy on users, which I think is plenty good a reason to stop using Opera. OTOH, Google's also spying on its users for profit (at the very least).
Please consider using Firefox. They're currently a very competent browser, and their principles are still rock-solid.
If you still prefer Chrome but want to support what Firefox stands for, think about donating to the Mozilla Foundation: https://donate.mozilla.org/en-CA/?source=donate_redirect. They do some very good work in the online privacy and digital rights space, and even though they're not the top dog in the browser space, they've got plenty of weight to throw around.
> Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms.
> Additional precise and specific actions must also be taken:
> Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted.
> Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact.
>Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation.
> Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things.
The basis they use to justify their stance is irrelevant. Good crises have always been used as a way to legitimize future abuse. I want a browser, not a tool meant to manipulate what I'm allowed to say and to see while posing themselves as arbiter of truth.
If you want to donate your hard earned money, the EFF are really the most effective, ethical and sane organization that I know so far. GNU is alright but are way too deep into ideology over practicality to my taste.
The article you've linked does not specifically advocate deplatforming as I read it.
It begins by questioning when platforms should make the decision to deplatform, and who should have the power to do so:
> When should platforms make these decisions? Is that decision-making power theirs alone?
It implies that deplatforming is ineffectual, as there's no single voice which could be silenced to prevent hate:
> [...] the rampant use of the internet to foment violence and hate, and reinforce white supremacy is about more than any one personality
And it suggests solutions, which you have included in your post, which do not involve deplatforming, they involve transparency. It says, "Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal", which I suppose you could read as advocating deplatforming as well as their proposals if you approach the article with the intent to find that view, but given the context of the rest of the article suggesting that deplatforming doesn't work, it seems more like the author is suggesting that deplatforming be replaced.
It's a pretty wishy-washy article overall, and I think its suggestions are a bit hollow without more specific steps to take, but it appears to go to great lengths to not specifically endorse deplatforming. Reading what they have said as a call for such action, rather than advocating alternative solutions to the issues faced by social media comes off as disingenuous IMO.
I'll second EFF here though, they're fantastic.
The allegations of predatory lending are cause for concern.
Still, the browser has been solid in my 7 days of use so far.
When expectations are adjusted, country names doesn't make any difference. I don't trust any system I didn't install beyond a certain point.
[1] https://forums.opera.com/topic/38628/why-is-there-a-white-st...
Google had very purposely raised the bar by putting like 5x-8x more competent engineers than the Opera core (non-platform/UI-specific stuff) team had, working on inventing and implementing random new web standards that they then promptly started using on google.com properties. Think e.g. 500-800 engineers compared to 100. We simply couldn't do the same. Then this ratio started growing until it was obvious that it would eventually become an existential threat.
They used their financial success in one business area (search ads) to become dominant in another area (browsers) in a clever and perhaps not entirely legal way.
Now Chrome works well enough as a browser and has so much market share that it exerts too much control over its users and the Web, and it's unlikely that anything will be capable of obsoleting it in the near future.
Or just fork webkit/blink and aggressively refactor.
It certainly feels like Google is using the same playbook for web standards. They've created enough churn that no one else can ever hope to catch up in implementing those standards.
When Google products stop working on some competitors browser they can simply say "it's just web standards" and feign ignorance.
I really liked old Opera and even Edge for their engines that made the web pages feel snappy and somewhat different than the WebKit monoculture.
I was a huge fan and tried to convert my friends from 2004-2012. It was tough watching them slowly convert to firefox or stay on IE.
It really didn't help that Opera handled transparency so poorly. That made myspace pretty much unusable.
Please people, don't use Opera any more.
You are basically implying that opera is beyond rescue because the governance moved from a country you value to countries you value less?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China
That doesn't mean that today's Opera is definitely an untrustworthy piece of software, but it does raise the probability quite a bit.
looks incredibly skeptical at this
My memory of 2009–13 was very much the decisions about Presto being made by people in Oslo.
I was their user since version 5 or 6 (this was before everyone started the crazy version system, back them they released a major version about once a year).
The biggest things that I loved about the browser you couldn't get by extension, they could do many things because they could directly update the engine.
Now learning that they are owned by PRC there's even less reasons for me to use it.
Opera could have done a lot of good if they would open sourced their old browser (kind of line what Netscape did). Someone leaked the original source code, but because it was leaked and not officially published, no one wants to touch it. Anyway now it's too late, because it's way behind the current browsers.
All the reasons (privacy/spying, government unaccountability, etc.) that would make basing a tech company in the US bad are worse in China.
It does seem, though, many are (seemingly in bad faith) increasingly conflating criticism and scepticism of the Chinese government with racial or ethnic animosity. It is almost identical to how discussions surrounding the Israeli government are conflated (seemingly in bad faith) with anti-Semitism.
E: spelling and placement
We have seen this with Zoom: China-Based Executive at U.S. Telecommunications Company Charged with Disrupting Video Meetings Commemorating Tiananmen Square Massacre
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/china-based-executive-us-tele...
America does bad too, but we can't act like this state is any better. Some of the things they're doing to play catch up are appalling.
Actual, executive day-to-day control over the browser tech has progressed sort of like this:
1995: Oslo, Norway
2008: Linköping, Sweden
2014: Wrocław, Poland
2020: Beijing, PRC (the sale happened in 2016, but they were hands-off for quite some time; I think they were being busy with shady fintech stuff in Africa enabled by the Opera Mini work we did mostly in Sweden a decade earlier: https://www.engadget.com/2020-01-19-opera-accused-of-predato...)