[monday_]

Thank you for this thoughtful and illuminating perspective. I'll make sure that my octogenarian life-long liberal grandparents hear about this. It's long past time for people above 75 to rise up and topple one of the most entrenched and well-defended authoritarian regimes on the planet. Maybe they can solve climate change while they're at it.

On a more serious note - this is about the opposition being denied foreign infrastructure. This translates into less effective protests, drives people into censored and controlled social media ponds, and makes disseminating thing like videos of war crimes this much harder.

I would understand if Namecheap were to block accounts related to Russian businesses. But this is virtue signalling at its worst - this decision makes situation worse, while making the people who made feel better.

[jacquesm]

I am serious: this is all the important bits regarding the news, anything else is superfluous. There is no sugarcoating this.

That your grandparents have no agency is not the fault of Ukrainians. I totally understand their mindset, having lived in Poland when the iron curtain was still in place. It sucks to be in your - and their - place, but it sucks even more to be sitting in Kyiv right now waiting for the bombs to fall.

> On a more serious note - this is about the opposition being denied foreign infrastructure. This translates into less effective protests, drives people into censored and controlled social media ponds, and makes disseminating thing like videos of war crimes this much harder.

Agreed, which is exactly why I argued upthread, long ago for Namecheap to block businesses but to leave private individuals' accounts in tact as long as possible.

Keep in mind though: any service in the West you currently rely on will likely go at some point in the near future, and some may not give you any warning at all.

> But this is virtue signalling at its worst

No, it is not virtue signalling, they are pretty much based in Ukraine.