DON'T USE OPERA #shorts

DON'T USE OPERA #shorts

After my video telling people to STOP USING GOOGLE CHROME, I felt the need to discourage a common browser recommendation I've been seeing from youtube influencers: Opera.

Opera and Opera GX are scams. They're privacy invasive and Opera has been involved in some predatory loan scams. It's best to avoid Opera GX and to instead use Brave or Librewolf

#technology #tech #firefox #chrome #opera #operagx #privacy

[tldrtech]

📌 READ OR WATCH THE LONG VIDEO BEFORE COMMENTING (if you didn't I will just refer you to here)📌

Video here:


Ok so I'm seeing a lot of comments and a lot of the same bad arguments, please read this before getting your pitchforks ready. If you chose to ignore it I will just tell you to read it anyways.

1. "Where are the sources"?

This is basically the only fair criticism of the video, there's no proper citations because

a. I didn't really expect this to get a large amount of attention (despite what some people think)

b. I figured people would be able to google this information anyways as these are well known scandals.

In hindsight neither of these things happened so I'm going to make a follow up video at some point with proper citations. (I've already done further research and my conclusion is basically unchanged)

EDIT: Full video is out with sources, no excuses for this comment anymore go watch that video. It's called "Why I don't like Opera GX (Responding to dumb comments)"


2. "I'm using Opera anyways 😛"

I mean ok. This is basically like telling posion control that you're going to drink bleach anyways but whatever. I genuinely don't care what you choose to do, the point of the video was to explain to people who may not know that Opera is not a privacy respecting browser, should they chose to no longer trust the browser (like me) is purely on them.

3. "But Chromium is open source so that means Opera isn't proprietary/as bad"

No, you clearly don't get how open source works so I will use a metaphor. Say I bake a delicious cake that anyone can have the recipe for. Now say my friend Peter takes the recipe, adds laxatives and a bunch of other dangerous chemicals in the recipe and then starts selling cakes without distributing the recipe.

Now, would anyone reasonable claim that Peter's cake is like mine? NO, of course not because Peter is a lot more secretive and has basically completely changed the entire idea of the cake. When you say "Chromium is open source so Opera is fine" that's just like saying Peter's cake is just like my innocent cake.

4. "you're a shill lmao"

It should be obvious to anyone with a brain but neither Brave, Firefox nor Librewolf paid a 200 sub channel to target like the 5th most popular web browser, lmao.

I "shill" the product because it's good, not because I get money.

5. "But you use privacy invasive stuff to so doesn't that mean you're a hypocrite"

You can enjoy niceties like cloud storage, video platforms, some social media while still not wanting your browser to know everything about you, that isn't hypocritical.

I use Firefox without Javascript on my personal computers because I don't want random sites getting my information and I especially don't want browser vendors getting my information. If you think I am hypocritical because I consciously choose to give some services information then that is on you.

6. "Privacy doesn't matter" / "I don't care" / *insert your argument here*

The video isn't addressed to people who know the risks of using Opera (GX) or simply don't care about privacy.

The video is addressed to people who care about privacy but choose to use Opera without understanding the implications. Apologies if that was unclear.

I could argue about why the position of "privacy is never important" is a dumb argument but that's probably for another video.

7. "But everyone violates my privacy so why does it matter"

"But everyone does crack so why shouldn't I" that's how you sound right now.

Of course most browsers do that stuff, that's why I wouldn't recommend using most web browsers. That's why I don't recommend "Google Chrome" or "Microsoft Edge". They're as bad but the difference is more people understand that and are willing to compromise or they use something else.

8. "You said the VPN was fake, but the VPN works for me"

This comment is based on a misunderstanding of what "fake" is. The "VPN" is real in the sense that it does what most people want (it hides your ip and it can be encrypted). BUT IT IS NOT A VPN! The technology being used is an HTTP proxy, this technology is NOT unique to Opera and is only unique because Opera includes the proxy URLs with the browser. You could set up the "VPN" on *any* browser and achieve the same results.

9. "Wow I can't believe that Opera knows my passwords *pretends to be shocked*"

I have no clue where this sentiment comes from but I advise you rewatch the video as I literally did not say this.

So you "debunking" or making fun of this argument is completely moot because I never made this point

10. "Opera also has an ad blocker btw"

Cool. I never said it didn't.

If you have any arguments relating to any of these prompts, respond here instead of making a new comment. Thanks and sorry for the long read.

[ryuzen]

"violates privacy". *keeps using Google that does exactly the same*

[E_E]

When the browser i put all my passwords in knows all my passwords:🤯

[TheDreamerFrom]

Did my own research, and found out that while the browser was bought by a Chinese consortium, the headquarters is still based in Oslo, Norway, meaning that they still have to follow European regulations, so data and privacy are still (mostly) safe, shady actions aside.
As for the VPN, just use an external VPN instead, it's probably better anyway. Ultimately though, you don't *have* to switch from Opera/OperaGX if you don't want to, it's not as big a deal as the video makes it out to be.

[thelewend]

But can they have mod that replaces every sound with metal pipe?

[patrickraymonson]

"People hated him because he spoke the truth."

[AlwaysWithDaWatching]

If u already been on the internet for awhile now and ur just now realizing about data selling and all that, it doesn’t matter what browser u use now, ur shits already out there. So use whatever browser u want.

[kobeanimatesyt]

next thing u know hes gonna tell us to use bing instead of our wifi

[gustav]

It was so *brave* of you to say all this! I use Firefox myself.

[aminkk]

Tell me you're sponsored by brave without telling me you're sponsored by them

[xjuicex]

Mate What you described describes every single Bowser

[kyronxs]

Opera GX also has a built-in ad blocker.

[hexagonal]

And also, they threw one of their YouTubers, A-Kun, under the bus when Twitter didn’t like his video, which left him with an almost shattered mental health. He’s just a Filipino boi who likes making funny videos, yet Opera just abandoned him completely to take the full brunt of Twitter’s outrage.

[livewireOrourke]

To add, it won't let many people uninstall it without jumping through hoops.

[justme]

Never let them know your next move: use both.

[serotonin-youtube]

bros mad he didn't get sponsored by opera 💀

[wolfrust]

Remember that LibreWolf breaks 99% of websites and you have to whitelist every one of them (youtube breaks)

[spongebobsquarepants-xc]

I have a question, if I use brave, will it still show my history through internet bills? (the persons wifi im using wont be able to see it?)

[creamimochi]

Opera has a built in ad blocker you just gotta turn it on in settings

[c.i]

Imagine thinking that opera is the only browser that violates privacy