Monomate

Hezbollah can throw any excuse they want, but the reality is that they attacked first. They should have known the limits of their military strength and shown restraint against a much more powerful nation. Too bad they were lacking in common sense. Now all their top leaders are eliminated, half their missile launchers are destroyed, and if a ground incursion by Israel occurs, they're basically finished.

And if Israel ends up occupying the south of Lebanon, it won't be the first time they've done so. In the year 2000, they voluntarily withdrew from the south of Lebanon after defeating Hezbollah, in the hopes that they'd stop attacking Israeli territory. Looks like being the nice guy with a terrorist group that's determined to destroy them at any cost is not a very good idea.

Hezbollah has been sending missiles to Israeli territory for almost a year. So they started this war, but Israel has been very lenient by not starting a full-scale war until now. The patience has run out. Like they used to say: fuck around and find out.

Maybe they're eyeing potential spoils of war? These military operations will need sources of financing.

But, realistically, they're probably planing the formation of an exclusion zone to avoid Hezbollah installing missile launchers so close to Israel's borders.

I'd argue Lemmy is turning into its own echo chamber. I've seen some mods power tripping just like good old Reddit. I erroneously thought people would learn from past mistakes, but sadly this is not what happened.

In other words: the judge issued an order that affects everyone, not only the parties involved in the judicial process, and without the need for each affected individual to be formally notified so he/she can know how to avoid being fined. So, he basically legislated by himself. No wonder people are saying he's a dictator.

Before Elon acquired Twitter, the platform enforced an one-sided policy of censoring right-wing points of view. It even started actively shielding the left from any criticism, such as when the Hunter Biden Laptop story was blatantly censored so as to not affect Joe Biden's presidential campaign negatively.

Now, he lets both sides of the political spectrum participate in the debate without censorship. Are you trying to say things got worse because of this?

Actually, Bolsonaro is a fraud. He only acts in the self-interest of himself and his immediate family members. As he's being threatened by the dictator, with some speculation that he could be arrested at any time, he's keeping silent during this whole X blocking incident so he doesn't suffer retaliation from the dictator.

As for Musk, I know that, like every businessman, he has his financial interests. I surely would if I were one, and I would not blame anyone for doing the same, as nobody gets rich spending money unwisely. However, I can recognize that his passion for free speech is genuine; otherwise, he wouldn't have bought Twitter for $44 billion. Under the most reasonable analysis, this was a bad deal in terms of return on investment. Maybe it'll bear fruit in the long term, but it's a big, nebulous maybe. So as he decided to buy it anyway, he surely did so on principle, not for money.

If the solution is as simple as downloading a VPN app from the smartphone app store and clicking "activate VPN," I wouldn't consider it tech-savvy territory. In the past, VPNs were indeed esoteric tech for nerds, but nowadays they're commoditized stuff. And if Brazil's regime keeps getting more repressive under the dictator, with the blocking of more social media sites, more people will have the opportunity/necessity to learn about VPNs.

Free VPNs don't cost money. And times have changed: there are some reputable free VPNs, like ProtonVPN and Cloudflare's WARP.

When a X user finds himself unable to load X's main page or the app, he will be motivated to investagate why, and finally he'll find out VPNs are the solution. X's brazilian users were already discussing and suggesting VPNs to each other on the days leading up to the block. And the block is not 100% yet: smaller ISPs are taking longer to set up the block.

ISPs shall block, X users shall use VPN to circumvent.

Are we seeing the same thing? I've never seen as much activity from Brazilian users on X as now.

I guess all this block did was teach the Brazilian population how to use VPNs. And most are just ignoring the threat of a US$ 8.900,00 daily fine from the dictator because, by its very nature, VPNs keep them anonymous. X is on bad terms with the dictator, so it will not expose anyone's IP addresses even if requested by him. None of the major VPN companies are based in Brazil, and it would be hard to ask them for IP addresses too.

Even some major news outlets are still posting on X, saying that they're posting through "international staff members." Some politicians and notable personalities are starting to use the same excuse: "someone out of the country is posting for me." This block is looking pretty ineffective, and it's serving as an educational incentive for people to start using VPNs. If any more social media platforms are also blocked, people are already well prepared to circumvent the blocks.

So, what has the dictator gained from this temper tantrum? He forced X out of the country, leaving no local offices to receive his orders, even the reasonable ones like those related to normal (non-political persecution) crimes. And he strengthened the protests that were already scheduled for September 7th (Brazil Independence Day), which will turn into an event mainly asking for his impeachment.