The article itself proves why Monero is necessary. Even the author admits Bitcoin's transparent ledger "can be disastrous for anti-authoritarian pro-democracy protesters."

Lightning doesn't solve this fundamental issue. While Lightning transactions themselves aren't on-chain, channel openings and closings create permanent blockchain fingerprints that can be analyzed. As Andreas Antonopoulos himself said: "If you can do analysis on the base layer, that gives a great degree of insight into what's happening above."

Research has already exposed Lightning privacy vulnerabilities. Even Lightning advocates admit "there are scenarios where Lightning is not great for privacy" and users must implement multiple complex techniques correctly to achieve decent privacy.

The privacy problem compounds with Lightning's increased attack surface - another layer means more complexity and greater likelihood of exploits and data leakage.

Monero solves this at the protocol level with mandatory privacy. No optional tools needed, no channel fingerprints, no special configurations - just hit send and you're done.

When people's freedom or lives depend on financial privacy, they choose the tool designed for privacy from the ground up, not the one with privacy bolted on as an afterthought.