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Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X
  • For me, the page doesn't allow me to scroll past the first sentence of the article.

    Maybe it's because I'm using mobile Firefox with uBO? I only managed to read the article through here.

  • YouTube Premium is now showing ads
  • I think you're mistaken about what this lower price tier offers. It is still ad-free, except for Youtube Music which is ad-supported. If a regular YouTube video uses a song that belongs to the YouTube Music catalog, it will have ads as normal. Also, this tier doesn't offer background playback (with the phone screen turned off).

  • Hospital patients burned alive in Israeli attack as genocidal campaign intensifies in northern Gaza
  • I got genuinely curious, and so I asked ChatGPT to write a less biased headline. I got this: "Israeli airstrikes target Hamas militants hiding in civilian areas, leading to tragic collateral damage at a hospital in northern Gaza."

  • Hospital patients burned alive in Israeli attack as genocidal campaign intensifies in northern Gaza
  • "World Socialist Web Site". No wonder the headline is so biased.

  • UN says Israeli tanks burst through gates of peacekeeper base
  • The moment Hezbollah resorted to launching missiles at Israeli territory, and Israel fought back, then diplomacy failed already.

  • UN says Israeli tanks burst through gates of peacekeeper base
  • Then maybe they should identify themselves as war inspectors or historians? "Peacekeepers" is kinda misleading...

  • UN says Israeli tanks burst through gates of peacekeeper base
  • If they're indeed peacekeepers, then they failed their job miserably. As it stands, their only usefulness is being human shields for Hezbollah.

  • Israel conducts raids in Lebanon ahead of potential invasion
  • 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.

  • Israel conducts raids in Lebanon ahead of potential invasion
  • 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.

  • Israel conducts raids in Lebanon ahead of potential invasion
  • 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.

  • Brazil’s supreme court upholds ban on Elon Musk’s X over ‘illegal conduct’
  • 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.

  • Brazil’s supreme court upholds ban on Elon Musk’s X over ‘illegal conduct’
  • 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?

  • Brazil’s supreme court upholds ban on Elon Musk’s X over ‘illegal conduct’
  • 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.

  • Brazil’s supreme court upholds ban on Elon Musk’s X over ‘illegal conduct’
  • 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.

  • Brazil’s supreme court upholds ban on Elon Musk’s X over ‘illegal conduct’
  • Free VPNs don't cost money. And times have changed: there are some reputable free VPNs, like ProtonVPN and Cloudflare's WARP.

  • Brazil’s supreme court upholds ban on Elon Musk’s X over ‘illegal conduct’
  • 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.

  • Brazil’s supreme court upholds ban on Elon Musk’s X over ‘illegal conduct’
  • ISPs shall block, X users shall use VPN to circumvent.

  • Brazil’s supreme court upholds ban on Elon Musk’s X over ‘illegal conduct’
  • 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.

  • Brazil just banned X. Could other countries follow suit?
  • Fighting crime is desirable, but within the limits of the law:

    Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework

    Art. 19. In order to ensure freedom of expression and prevent censorship, the internet application provider may only be held civilly liable for damages resulting from content generated by third parties if, after a specific court order, it fails to take steps to, within the scope and technical limits of its service and within the specified timeframe, make the content identified as infringing unavailable, except for legal provisions to the contrary.

    § 1º The court order referred to in the caput must contain, under penalty of nullity, clear and specific identification of the content identified as infringing, which allows the unequivocal location of the material.

    Note that the legislator took the trouble to say right at the beginning that the intention is to prevent censorship. Few laws are written in such detail as to reinforce their guiding principles in the middle of the provisions. If the legislator went to this trouble, it is because the intention of avoiding censorship is fundamental to this law. If judges are ignoring the law, they're ignoring the will of the people.

  • Brazil just banned X. Could other countries follow suit?
  • Here in Brazil we have a judge that concentrates the powers of: judge, prosecutor, victim, legislator, chief of Federal Police. And he wasn't elected by the people. Are we still really a democracy? Are we so different from countries like Russia?

  • Monomate Monomate @lemm.ee
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