Ever heard of Opera News? No, not the one that reports about news in the, well, opera music niche market. The Opera News that wasted half an hour of my day today is compliments from the well-known Opera browser, with its several innovative browsers and deemed to be one of the big players in the browsers niche.
This particular company used to be Norwegian, and claims to still be. And somewhere the Snow Mexicans (Canadians) slips into the picture too, if my mind serves me correctly. But in reality, Opera is owned to a large degree by a Chinese company as stakeholder.
What that means, is that all the data the browser collects about you – including those passwords you type in on various sites – goes straight to the Chinese government. For real. It should creep you out.
Under Chinese law, any company owned by any Chinese entity have to hand over any and all data about all users without a warrant to the Chinese government. We all know what a big surveillance state China had become in the past 15 years, and the data they collect from apps and more is a tremendous amount. You think Facebook and Google is scary with their data collection? Try a browser, that collects even more. Don't let privacy statements fool you.
True, Norwegians are still involved in Opera, and for the most part they're an honest, decent people. But Chinese and Nigerians are involved too, and neither of those two nations can be trusted. I'm stating it as fact, although generalizing is never 100% accurate, of course. It's like saying all Russians are complicit in war crimes, which is only true for the 71% that supports their warlord Vladimir Putin.
All Opera's software is proprietary, closed-source, meaning security analysts cannot review each product's code to check for spyware in there. Opera Mini, when in Extreme or High modes in the settings, first send all your data through their servers to be compressed, before passing it on to your device. Great idea, you save data, and thus money. A major selling point in poverty-stricken Africa, one of Opera's largest markets.
But, that means Opera gets hold of whatever you have typed into a website, like your bank's site. Your passwords. Your messages on Facebook. That naughty pic you sent. And all data under those two modes are decrypted on their servers, Opera says so itself somewhere in their lengthy legalese, before being encrypted again. It remains in possession of Opera for some months, and under Chinese law with the Chinese government too. I'm not certain if that data goes through servers in China or not, and if data from Europeans are somehow protected from the Chinese government. The EU has strict privacy laws, but as we've seen, Communist regimes are not exactly sticklers to rules.
Interestingly enough, Opera brought out yet another browser recently, called Opera Crypto. Great, with a built-in crypto wallet for Ethereum, and more currencies underway. They claim it is a non-custodial wallet, meaning your keys that safeguard your crypto wallet is with you only. But how certain can one be when the browser's code is closed-source?
We all know crypto is the money of the future, or rather, of tomorrow, which is kind of today already. Over two years, everyone will be using crypto. Will be a pity if your crypto wallet is hosted inside your closed-sourced browser… I personally like Opera Crypto, it's a very innovative idea, but will definitely not use it. Then it is far better to have the MetaMask Wallet add-on in your Firefox browser (absolutely avoid Google Chrome with all things' crypto!), or the Electrum software wallet app on your desktop.
Opera diversified, clever move, some 3 years ago. That's what this post is about. The longer users can be kept in a browser, the more ads they get to see, that the developers of the browser benefit financially from. Deals with Google, Yahoo, and so on. And users love to see some quick news headlights, just to stay up to speed with the world. That's why one uses a browser anyway, right. It's your portal to the world of free information.
Norwegians love themselves some black tail, and so when they launched Opera News, the unfortunate choice fell on Nigeria. Unfortunate, because Nigeria is a nest of religious people, that apparently all try to fuck each other over with a 419 scam once they leave church. Mind you, Nigeria is probably the only country in the world where there is practically a building doing duty as a church in every street. Heavily fucked by religion in the head, I tell you.
As any sane person knows, nothing corrupts the moral value system as properly as the mental illness religion. Victims of religion have to fabricate lies all the time when they peddle their godsnot, in order to justify some atrocities their favorite book skunk committed. Even the kidnapping of children as sex slaves is in the Bible, as an order, mind you. I'm still trying to figure out why the hypocrites in Nigeria makes so much noise when their fellow religiots then follow that order. Maybe Michelle Obama can tell me.
So, Nigerians are without doubt the most dishonest bunch on this planet. Corrupt to the core. Almost all 200 million of them. As a result of their mental Aids, they either fight physically with each other all the time – think Boko Haram and other death cults – or they try to make money with some criminal endeavor. And wherever they emigrate, migrate, or flee to, they continue their despicable antics there. South Africa is filled with examples, and unfortunately, South Africans picked up those tricks too.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying all Nigerians are bad. Certainly they can't all be scum. It's just that I have never met or heard of an honest Nigerian. Whenever you hear about them in the international news, drugs or fraud or killings or religious instability is involved. Go check any news media outlet, use the search bar and type in Nigeria, and you'll see it for yourself. (You will see many articles about sport events too, because they are fast fuckers, from running away from their equally corrupt police.)
In 2019 Opera thus opened Opera News, and first invited ordinary Nigerians to do some citizen journalism. What a disaster. The quality of articles were breathtakingly bad. Then Opera branched out to Kenya, then South Africa, and Ivory Coast, then Ghana. Not sure about the following order, but Nigeria was first. One would expect some improvement quality-wise, right.
Today I reviewed their 'news service' again. Man, it's bad.
I was practically forced by my conscience to email Opera at operanews-external@opera.com. (Feel free to email them, and tell them you're a prince and they had won five hundred gazillion dollars from the FBI. Lol.) Which I did, the decent email without 419-phishing crap I mean, and here it is below. The email's title is the same as that of this blog post.
Hi,
Just a quick email to tell you I have never come across any news service as bad as Opera News. I am following 245 news outlets via their RSS feeds in my feed reader, and if I want to kill myself I'll add Opera News there as well.
Spelling mistakes, even in the titles. Click bait titles galore. And in the articles itself, more spelling mistakes, opinions intertwined with dubious facts, often no sources mentioned, incoherent train of thought, and more.
Doesn't Opera News have any rules? Citizen journalism is one thing, but whatever is being committed on your site does not qualify for that term.
It appears you are dealing with the dumbest people in Africa to write for you. Yes, it's meant as an insult, but it is a fact too, judging by those 'articles.' Certainly the talent pool in Africa must be bigger, especially in South Africa.
Please, add rules prominently that each article must meet, for all contributors, right next to the space where they submit their articles. Like:
1. Length of article (300 to 700 words), and
2. to write all facts in point-form down first (can use it as summary on top of article) before typing the full article, and
3. several titles as options your editors can pick from then.
4. Proper clear photos from royalty-free sources like Pixabay or Pexels.
5. Sources where the news was obtained from, at least three of those.
6. Each article must first be sent through both a spell-checker and Grammarly or LanguageTool.
I spoke to a few friends, and to say they were revolted after browsing your site is mildly put. It's a disgrace to any form of journalism. And yet, the site can be improved dramatically and fast, by just laying down basic rules for each writer where they can see it while they paste their articles into their dashboards. You can even consider an upvote/downvote button below each article and tie payment to that, or a judging system like that where readers can vote on spelling, accuracy, etc. Anything to improve pretty much every article!
I hope my bitchy advice leads to some form of improvement.
Okay, so that's the gist of my rant. It's noteworthy that syntax errors even crept in on Opera's official website the past few years, with poor English on there. Gotten influenced by some Nigerian standards, perhaps? I can explain my bad English, but a company have no excuse. Hire a proofreader, man. How long before your software code becomes just as sloppy and leave exploits for hackers to grab some crypto, huh?
Opera's browsers are great. I'm a big fan. About the company, a bit more skeptical after I found out about the Chinese connection. About Opera News, well, that's a nice way to destroy your image as a professional company. What's next, a product called Opera 419 Pyramid Investments?
IMAGE SOURCES:
Cover pic: JHefferson on Pexels
Secondary Pic: Screenshot from Main Page, Opera News.