Opera accused of censorship, betrayal by Chinese users
Opera accused of censorship, betrayal by Chinese users. Opera is no different than say Yahoo, who hands over info on political dissenters in China and gets paid for it. The article is written from a "surprise viewpoint" and there is no surprise. It is business as usual.
Opera, the maker of Web browsers such as the popular "Opera Mini" for Java-based mobile phones, has been accused of betraying its users in China, by apparently caving in to top-level demands to stop allowing China-based users to use the international version of the Opera Mini browser.
This stems from a unique feature of Opera Mini, where the traffic is sent via Opera's own servers, for the speed and convenience of its users, most of whom use the slowest GPRS mobile connection. But in China, the pleasant side effect of that rerouting has been that Opera Mini is effectively allowing users in China to easily circumvent the so-called Great Firewall of government-implemented Web filtering. Thus, Chinese users, up until yesterday, were merrily logging into Facebook--which has been blocked here pretty much all year--on their mobile phones using Opera Mini. Not any more.
Of course, the Norwegian software company is not the one who enforces the nationwide censorship of hundreds of Web sites--it's yet another company which has had to comply with local laws and idiosyncrasies, however uncomfortable it feels about this--but now Opera has become somewhat complicit in it.
Anyone now trying to access any Web site at all on the Opera Mini browser (versions 4 or 5 Beta), when inside China, gets the "friendly" notice, in Chinese and English: "For better browsing experience, please upgrade to Opera Mini China version on mini.opera.com." That message, however, is clearly a lie, as the Chinese version of the browser no longer reroutes traffic via Opera's 100 proxy servers worldwide. So, it'll be slower than before. Instead, the newly enforced Chinese-language version uses only locally based servers, and hundreds of Web sites are now inaccessible with it. That's hardly a "better browsing experience".
So, Opera's users in China are now being held at software update gunpoint, and must use the Chinese-language version of their browser.
According to a recent Opera press release, China is number 4 on its list of the most Opera Mini users worldwide. So that's a large number of angry customers today who are being forced to "upgrade" to an inferior version of the browser, and many Chinese users are feeling betrayed, as if they're second-class users.
PR nightmare for Opera
On Twitter today and yesterday--yes, there are clever ways of getting on Twitter in China, without a VPN--many of the tweets using the "gfw" (Great Firewall) hashtag were talking about Opera Mini, why the international version was no longer working, and some were even venting anger at Opera for seemingly kowtowing to an oppressive law. Here are a selection of the tweets:
The grim reality...
In practice, Opera likely had little choice but to comply with local laws, and make a new version for Chinese users that cannot access all the "filtered" sites, same as any other Web browser. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (with Bing, especially) have all likewise faced compromises when doing business in China, and have suitably modified and "harmonized" their search results in the Chinese versions of their search engines.
I contacted Opera's director of Communications at its Oslo HQ just over 24 hours ago, via email, but have had no response (though it is the weekend). The only dialog with a member of the Opera team has been via Twitter, where one of Opera's "Desktop QA" people spoke out. Though, by that individual's admission, he does not work on the Mini browser, and is not familiar with the situation. Nonetheless, @opvard defended Opera's enormously difficult situation:
Between a rock and a hard place, indeed. The Opera staffer, @opvard, did later concede that more communication with users would've been nicer, and speculated that Opera may not be able to reveal how exactly it got its arm twisted so that it complied.
On a final note, the Chinese-language version of Opera Mini 4, and 5, works fine in China, minus the blocked sites; but life goes on, and Opera can be relieved if it doesn't lose any Chinese users over this confusion. But a weird spinoff is that if you're a foreigner in China, your non-Chinese language version of Opera Mini will not work. To quote Homer Simpson: "D'oh!"
Here's a 25-second video showing how the international version of Opera Mini 5 Beta no longer works in China:
Opera, the maker of Web browsers such as the popular "Opera Mini" for Java-based mobile phones, has been accused of betraying its users in China, by apparently caving in to top-level demands to stop allowing China-based users to use the international version of the Opera Mini browser.
This stems from a unique feature of Opera Mini, where the traffic is sent via Opera's own servers, for the speed and convenience of its users, most of whom use the slowest GPRS mobile connection. But in China, the pleasant side effect of that rerouting has been that Opera Mini is effectively allowing users in China to easily circumvent the so-called Great Firewall of government-implemented Web filtering. Thus, Chinese users, up until yesterday, were merrily logging into Facebook--which has been blocked here pretty much all year--on their mobile phones using Opera Mini. Not any more.
Of course, the Norwegian software company is not the one who enforces the nationwide censorship of hundreds of Web sites--it's yet another company which has had to comply with local laws and idiosyncrasies, however uncomfortable it feels about this--but now Opera has become somewhat complicit in it.
Anyone now trying to access any Web site at all on the Opera Mini browser (versions 4 or 5 Beta), when inside China, gets the "friendly" notice, in Chinese and English: "For better browsing experience, please upgrade to Opera Mini China version on mini.opera.com." That message, however, is clearly a lie, as the Chinese version of the browser no longer reroutes traffic via Opera's 100 proxy servers worldwide. So, it'll be slower than before. Instead, the newly enforced Chinese-language version uses only locally based servers, and hundreds of Web sites are now inaccessible with it. That's hardly a "better browsing experience".
So, Opera's users in China are now being held at software update gunpoint, and must use the Chinese-language version of their browser.
According to a recent Opera press release, China is number 4 on its list of the most Opera Mini users worldwide. So that's a large number of angry customers today who are being forced to "upgrade" to an inferior version of the browser, and many Chinese users are feeling betrayed, as if they're second-class users.
PR nightmare for Opera
On Twitter today and yesterday--yes, there are clever ways of getting on Twitter in China, without a VPN--many of the tweets using the "gfw" (Great Firewall) hashtag were talking about Opera Mini, why the international version was no longer working, and some were even venting anger at Opera for seemingly kowtowing to an oppressive law. Here are a selection of the tweets:
@stinson--"Got hit by Opera's forced upgrade too. Disgraceful if Opera chose to cooperate with censorship."
@stinson--"Just noticed the URL for the Opera Mini redirect: "/error/blocked_country/china.html"
@ullrich--"How Opera betrays it's Chinese users http://ow.ly/EcsW"
@roadtom--[Translation] "...national web-filtering has been built by Cisco and is now being helped by Opera"
@toadloading--[Translation] "Opera has also been hit by The Wall..."
The grim reality...
In practice, Opera likely had little choice but to comply with local laws, and make a new version for Chinese users that cannot access all the "filtered" sites, same as any other Web browser. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (with Bing, especially) have all likewise faced compromises when doing business in China, and have suitably modified and "harmonized" their search results in the Chinese versions of their search engines.
I contacted Opera's director of Communications at its Oslo HQ just over 24 hours ago, via email, but have had no response (though it is the weekend). The only dialog with a member of the Opera team has been via Twitter, where one of Opera's "Desktop QA" people spoke out. Though, by that individual's admission, he does not work on the Mini browser, and is not familiar with the situation. Nonetheless, @opvard defended Opera's enormously difficult situation:
"Regarding Opera and the #gfw of China I'd guess that [the] only alternative to this would be no Opera Mini at all for China... What do u suggest that Opera does about China? Ignore [the] government & be completely blocked instead?"
Between a rock and a hard place, indeed. The Opera staffer, @opvard, did later concede that more communication with users would've been nicer, and speculated that Opera may not be able to reveal how exactly it got its arm twisted so that it complied.
On a final note, the Chinese-language version of Opera Mini 4, and 5, works fine in China, minus the blocked sites; but life goes on, and Opera can be relieved if it doesn't lose any Chinese users over this confusion. But a weird spinoff is that if you're a foreigner in China, your non-Chinese language version of Opera Mini will not work. To quote Homer Simpson: "D'oh!"
Here's a 25-second video showing how the international version of Opera Mini 5 Beta no longer works in China:
.jpg)
Comments