I can only speculate, and I don't think that's particularly helpful. The 2010 downsizing was quite transparent. This time no ordinary employees seem to have the full picture of what exactly is going in.
Why would they be terrified of speaking in public -- and if they are, why are several people doing it?
You say that speculating is not particularly useful, and you still speculate that people are terrified of Opera Software, and that the company is lying to its investors about the number of employees?
I‘m not saying there is any fear involved, or a conspiracy theory, just that I haven't seen this as the case, bar private posts, and tweets from some that they left the company. When Google laid a large number off at Motorola (of which I was included), there was some sort of agreement in the package about not speaking bad of the company or products. This could be the case here, I don't know.