The author (hello) doesn't really have an opinion about Egypt and the situation in 2011. Regarding attribution. As you can see from the linked images, the mess

The author (hello) doesn't really have an opinion about Egypt and the situation in 2011. Regarding attribution. As you can see from the linked images, the messages all have the sender "Vodafone". While they may genuinely be from the armed forces, the reader has no way to verify that. If you received a message saying "The armed forces requires you to pet a cat today" would you immediately believe it was from the army? Regarding the government's unpopularity. I think you might be inferring something I didn't imply. All I've done is link to contemporary news stories and quote from press releases. I haven't expressed any thoughts on the situation at the time, because I wasn't there and am not a scholar of modern Egypt. The point isn't about the Arab Spring per se - it is used as an example of when a network was forced to send messages to their subscribers. Regardless of whether the Government was right to do so, I think we can both agree that compelling speech through violence is not an ideal scenario.