@meow >requesting images on start up(???) ≠ spyware
Merely the act of requesting images can be used to facilitate spying, but even then, I don't believe what Vivaldi does is limited to merely requesting images on startup.

>a webpage with new features after an update that’s behind cloudflare ≠ spyware
Clownflare is a huge MiTM that can see the request being made, so cloudflare there is indeed spying happening if clownflare is used at all.

>If you care about privacy, just change it
It appears that browsers love to give a small selection of search engines that all spy and also make it hard to add other ones, which I assume Vivaldi does too.

>private search engine >DDG >Startpage
Yikes.

>not being "open source"
GNU/Jihad against "open source" and all other forms of proprietary software!!!