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Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

272 points by sultansaladin 11y ago

AndrewKemendo 11y ago
I'm a judge in Brazil. Your comment history says otherwise: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167143 Seem to be a run of the mill dev to me. I'm surprised you got as many credulous responses as you did.
- loceng 11y ago
  Why do you assume they aren't someone with a website and have a career?
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    Anything is possible of course but what is more likely: 1. An elected Judge in Brazil also has a side business of running a marginal tourism website and the time to comment on HN 2. Someone is lying on the internet
    - Retra 11y ago
      The real question is what does it matter to you? Nothing a person says is correct just because they have the right title or label.
      - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
        If the goal is to simply make a compelling argument then stating your title immediately induces bias.
        Retra 11y ago
        My point is that you have nothing to gain by calling into question the title. You give people the benefit of the doubt because that's the way to maintain civil discourse.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        Speaking only for myself, obviously, I don't find the argument itself to be particularly interesting, but I do find it interesting to find a Brazilian judge posting it on HN, just because that's really unexpected to me. If it's all fake, then the comment ceases to be interesting at all.
    - loceng 11y ago
      That just doesn't sound reasonable. University students, to me should be a full-time focus, also very often have one or multiple part-time jobs or even a full-time job while attending classes and doing their school work. Surely being a judge doesn't take 100% of someone's time, and this is also a topic likely close to the commenter. Also, did you look at the date of his tourism website post anyhow?
    - sliverstorm 11y ago
      We can extend your logic to just about everyone on this website.
- soneca 11y ago
  Very weird indeed. Although I agree with the reasoning, despite of the authority.
  - jdmichal 11y ago
    Agreed. This feels like some sort of inverse appeal-to-authority. "You can't be this kind of expert, therefore your assertions are false."
    - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
      If you start your post with "I'm an authority" then you are inducing the appeal to authority implicitly through Priming.
      - EGreg 11y ago
        Similarly if you start your post with "I am not an authority, but..."
      - jdmichal 11y ago
        You are committing the same folly you accuse him of. It would be fine to simply point out his use of it, but following that up with: "I'm surprised you got as many credulous responses as you did." You are basically doing the same thing. Prime that he is not an expert, then state that he should not be getting credulous responses. The implication of course being that his not being an expert means that his argument does not deserve credible thought and response. Also, there's always a fine line with appeal to authority with regards to experts, which you would hope a judge would be in the field of law. For instance, is it folly to point to consensus in science? That is, after all, nothing but an authority.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  There's a large number of HN posters who just come in and turn everything into an anti-US screed. This guy took something unforgivable in Brazil and turned it into a very questionable commentary about the NSA and pretty much blaming the US for all the world's woes. I believe there is a lot of evidence of autocratic regimes like Russia and China paying people to promote anti-US views. Who knows if this guy is one of them or what Stalin called a "useful idiot" but its amusing to see obvious trolling in action. Did he think no one would go through his posting history?
  - justicezyx 11y ago
    I think blaming USA for the world's woes is the most convincing thing to do if you have to blame one country.
- danilocesar 11y ago
  Well, looks like he is a judge. He owns https://github.com/feliperaul https://github.com/feliperaul. The guy who owns that vacation website he mentioned is named "Felipe Raul Benali", from Maringa, and he uses the same nickname (pqdbr) in some other websites. There's a judge named "Felipe Raul Borges Benali", from the same city, and crossing https://medium.com/@felipebenali https://medium.com/@felipebenali , http://jus.com.br/313522-felipe-raul-borges-benali/publicacoes http://jus.com.br/313522-felipe-raul-borges-benali/publicaco... and his linkedin account, looks to be the same guy. He got the position last year, http://noticias.r7.com/sao-paulo/juizes-federais-tomam-posse-na-capital-paulista-23052014 http://noticias.r7.com/sao-paulo/juizes-federais-tomam-posse... and the picture from medium website looks like the guy in the middle of this the news report. So, yeah, there's a good change that this guy is actually a judge. Feels nice to have a judge with technical skills.
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    Cool! Always happy to be wrong when evidence supports it.
    - danilocesar 11y ago
      I was a bit surprise too. Was writing the exactly opposite of this text until I found his full name and the judge thing.
- dang 11y ago
  What you did here is not cool. On HN, we start from the benefit of the doubt. A person can be both a programmer and a judge. pqdbr's comment was coherent and plausible. The null hypothesis is therefore that pqdbr is making a valuable contribution. It's fine and interesting to look through someone's comment history for background. It can also be ok to ask questions based on that, but this is always delicate and must be done respectfully. But to dig around for a bit, leap to a sinister conclusion, and fling it at them with a couple insults for good measure is a serious violation of civility on this site. HN members with outlier backgrounds (and 'judge' certainly is one) are some of the most valuable contributors we have; doubly so—if not more—when they speak computing too. Imagine what it would feel like to share from one's expertise in the most on-topic way possible, only to be randomly slapped in the face and have your character impugned. You owe pqdbr a lot more of an apology than "Cool! Always happy to be wrong when evidence supports it." (Edit: which, now that I think of it, reads more like a humblebrag than making amends.) We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10751003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10751003 and marked it off-topic.
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    Totally respect moving it as it is a distraction at this point. That said, my comment wasn't particularly harsh and I think it's reasonable to be suspect of such lofty claims, especially with basically no proof to be found anywhere in a cursory search. One commenter did some serious research to find Portuguese language proof and that is why this was even an issue. Had the commenter been full of BS, which is the overwhelming majority in these cases, nobody would have made much of a fuss about it. I also expressed my gratitude for pointing out the errant conclusion to the other poster who did research, so I have no problem admitting a false conclusion. Being wrong with a lot of support (upvotes) seems to be my primary sin here.
    - dang 11y ago
      You're misinterpreting the upvotes on a comment like that. They simply mean what GIFs of popcorn mean. Outrage and drama drive more upvotes than intellectual curiosity does. That's why upvotes, though vital, are not the final arbiter here. HN is a constitutional democracy, and what you did was unconstitutional. Please don't do it again.
etiam 11y ago
Shame they went there instead of to Signal, but I guess it may still be a marginal improvement.
- sultansaladin 11y ago
  I have used both, but never heard of Signal I'll try it.
  - alistair77 11y ago
    +1 for Signal (used to be TextSecure). They now have a desktop app in beta which synchronises perfectly with my mobile
    - julioneander 11y ago
      Installing Signal to try as well! Can Signal be taken down like WhatsApp if the same happens again in the future?
      - vincentkriek 11y ago
        Yes, Signal's advantage is the cryptographical security of the messages. It's NOT server independent.
        etiam 11y ago
        I practice I agree, for now. In principle, since both the Signal client and server are FLOSS, it should be possible to resist a block in some ways that might not be so easy with for example Whatsapp, but as far as I can tell, as things stand right now there is no built-in way to switch server, and asking millions of regular people to make changes to the source code of their cellphone software, recompile and manually reinstall does not seem like a recipe for success. I wonder if one might sensibly work around these things by fallback/optional connection to the server through Tor if Tor is available on the device?
    - 11y ago
hamhamed 11y ago
When startups say being lucky was a big part of their success..I guess this is what they meant
nasir 11y ago
This is how regulations can influence you're business. Unrelated to this, but in corrupted countries a relative of the guy in the government can easily kill your business by asking him to ban yours or promote his!
fiatjaf 11y ago
I would love if a huge part of the population remained in WhatsApp while another migrated to Telegram and another kept both apps. I want people who use instant messaging services to suffer.
- tazjin 11y ago
  What a strange remark. Are you envious of those who have someone to talk to?
  - fiatjaf 11y ago
    Yes, I am alone crying in my empty room while I write this.
    - pedrodelfino 11y ago
      Hahahhaha
  - dang 11y ago
    Please don't feed comments like this. Instead, flag the comment by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'flag'. (This requires a small amount of karma, currently 30.)
- dang 11y ago
  Please post civilly and substantively or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - fiatjaf 11y ago
    Ok, I will. I'm sorry.
junto 11y ago
All of this is good. The more competition the better. Pity they aren't all compatible. Then we might actually have an real email killer on our hands.
rplnt 11y ago
These messaging apps are worse than... well, I don't know. This is as bad as it gets. Bicycles maybe? Incompatibility, fragmentation.. the worst thing you can have for application that is supposed to be used for communication.
- yoavm 11y ago
  At least Telegram has an API and a documented protocol... It could have been a lot better, but WhatsApp is a reminder that it could have a lot worse too.
- distances 11y ago
  Messaging apps are worse than bicycles? Sure, but to be fair, almost everything is worse than bicycles.
  - rplnt 11y ago
    Bicycles are pretty bad when it comes to dozens of incompatible standards for each part.
- rmc 11y ago
  There has always been fragmentation with messaging apps. In the 90s/00s it was MSN and Yahoo and IRQ etc etc
  - rplnt 11y ago
    Depends... in eastern-ish Europe it was ICQ only. That was kind of fine. What I don't get is why mobile carriers still charge for SMS. They could have all deployed their own SMS apps with ads/premium where you could write messages for free. Some did that, but rather badly I think. They just let that market go.
  - amyjess 11y ago
    In the 00s, we had multi-IM clients like Trillian, Gaim/Pidgin/libpurple, Kopete, Telepathy, etc. Now, there's so little work done in reverse-engineering IM protocols. It's really sad. Part of this is because Sean Egan got hired by Google to work on Hangouts, so he's out of the reverse-engineering game for good, and it's sad that nobody took up the mantle from him.
dataker 11y ago
Interestingly, Fitch downgraded Brazil's Debt to junk yesterday. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/057c1240-a40f-11e5-b73f-9545472cb784.html http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/057c1240-a40f-11e5-b73f-95454... Anti-technology culture tells a lot about an economy, group or nation.
- jzwinck 11y ago
  If you think this makes Brazil "anti-technology" I am curious to know your opinion about South Korea, which despite making a huge fraction of the world's smartphones and televisions has prevented Google Maps from working fully for their country. Point being, there are lots of reasons for countries to block certain things, and the notion that technology is inevitable and unquestionable does not carry water in many places outside the Bay Area.
  - dataker 11y ago
    It would "be reasonable" to ban if the alternative was a similar local service (e.g. Baidu vs Google in China). The alternative here was an outdated SMS communication (telecoms in Brazil are so terrible they make Verizon look good).
    - PauloManrique 11y ago
      Yeah, because we can't access ICQ, Skype, Telegram, Viber, Line, WeChat, GroupMe and several other apps, right?
- atmosx 11y ago
  Aren't these the same guys - along with few others - who gave a triple-A to Lehman before collapsing?! Why are they still on business?
- mahouse 11y ago
  Is blocking an app because they ignored perfectly reasonable legal requests "anti-technology"? I'd then call the developers "psychopaths" because they don't understand the harm done by drug smugglers.
pedrodelfino 11y ago
I am from Brazil and I can say: we are almost becoming the new Argentina. And this is quite interesting because Argentina is becoming the new Venezuela (at least they were, but few weeks ago they had elections and the left wing lost). And Venezuela clearly is becoming the new Cuba.
- personjerry 11y ago
  Can you explain each of those statements in turn?
  - jpatokal 11y ago
    "Argentina is becoming the new Venezuela": formerly prosperous country adopts ridiculous economic policies (key industries nationalized and handed over as private fiefs to incompetent cronies, exchange rate controls, price caps), sees economy go down the toilet and inflation rocket out of control "Venezuela clearly is becoming the new Cuba": Not content merely with wrecking the economy, leadership squashes all opposition and turns country into a straight-up dictatorship (of the proletariat!) Fortunately both statements are hyperbolic, as both countries have just held reasonably fair elections where the electorates decided to kick the bums out, but there are still choppy waters ahead...
    - aesoprock 11y ago
      Argentina cannot into economic prosperity since 1700s
      - saint_fiasco 11y ago
        Weren't they prosperous for a while after World War I?
        mahouse 11y ago
        They were prosperous when they had surges of incoming white immigrants from Europe, yes.
caio1982 11y ago
What really happened: a drug smuggler with ties to a major criminal organization had been investigated and sentenced several months ago and since July Facebook and WhatsApp folks had not complied (actually they simply ignored all requests) with some users data the justice demanded to keep prosecuting the guy and his associates. Allegedly, according to the new https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Civil_Rights_Framework_for_the_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Civil_Rights_Framewo... if a company does exactly what they did, they can be temporarily blocked by a court decision as some sort of punishment for obstruction. Mark Zuckerberg complained saying it was just one judge who ordered this but AFAIK the block was requested by PA's office. To be fair, some Brazilian judges are pretty stupid and have no idea how the internet works so it's quite possible the original users data request was super broad and that's why Facebook and WhatsApp just ignored it. On the other hand, it's only through very effective wires and digital data examination in recent years that the Brazilian justice is finally putting some big sharks into jail. That's why I have mixed feelings about all this (and I'm a Telegram user myself). Source, in Portuguese: http://gizmodo.com.br/investigacao-trafico-droga-bloqueio-whatsapp/ http://gizmodo.com.br/investigacao-trafico-droga-bloqueio-wh...
- antocv 11y ago
  Had the same request arrived to FB/WhatsApp from any low US judge, do you think they wouldnt have complied?
- thiopental 11y ago
  No worries, in a few years, corporations will be able to sue governments into oblivion for lost revenue on cases like this...
  - pqdbr 11y ago
    I'd love to know what your background in law is to say such an absurd thing. What case would they have ? "We failed to comply with a judicial order and decided to protect criminal's privacy instead, and we got blocked. We want damages". Seriously ?
lenlorijn 11y ago
Facebook/Messenger is sending a message to Brazilians stating they're working to get WhatsApp back up and suggest to use Messenger while WhatsApp is blocked. https://imgur.com/kx4B3na https://imgur.com/kx4B3na
pqdbr 11y ago
I'm a judge in Brazil. Even tough I'd pray to not be the one that had to give such an impopular order (affecting more then 100 million Brazilians - WhatsApp is really a hit here), we have laws in this country and we must prosecute criminals. Mark's talk about privacy is, in my opinion, totally misplaced. No right is absolute, and that includes the right to privacy. Criminals, for example, simply don't have it. This is not me saying; this is our Constitution saying it (and the Constitution of every Western country that I know). We are biased to see all measures against privacy with bad eyes, specially after Snowden. But that's because you are good people and see the matter with those eyes, not with the eyes of a criminal. Do you guys think that pedophiles, terrorists and drug dealers have the right to privacy ? I don't. Also, what the NSA was (is?) doing is a complete absurd, with no judicial oversight, mass collecting everything they can get in secrecy. This has nothing to do with what we have here. In Brazil, only a judge can authorize someone to be wiretapped, it can only be done in criminal cases with jail time (no civil cases). Also, the judge must specify a single phone number or single e-mail account and the decision must be reviewed every 15 days, otherwise it expires. Also, there's a national database of wiretaps that every judge must feed by the end of the month, specifying how many wiretaps there are currently running. WhatsApp and Facebook are not, by any means, above the law. If they want to provide a communication service here, the law is clear that they must abide by judicial orders that allow wiretapping in very specific cases.
- hvis 11y ago
  > Do you guys think that pedophiles, terrorists and drug dealers have the right to privacy ? Do you mean _alleged_ criminals? Yes, they do. Convicted criminals, on the other hand, don't have that right already.
  - pqdbr 11y ago
    No they don't. Your argument doesn't make any logical sense. Wiretapping is needed during the investigation phase, which you need to gather evidence BEFORE trialling and convicting anyone. And is only authorized if you have strong evidence that a crime or criminal organization is in place. If only convicted criminals didn't have right to privacy, how would you get them convicted in the first place ? Also, you really got it 100% backwards. Convicted criminals have right to privacy after they are convicted, because we don't assume they will commit new crimes. Everybody is presumed innocent until proven otherwise. We must have new evidence that convicted criminals are commiting crimes to start a new wiretap.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
lordnacho 11y ago
Would it be possible to get the messages if FB/WhatsApp decided to do so? I heard they started doing end-to-end encryption, with the keys only on the user's phone. Also, if you've designed a system like this, could you also design one where you'd be unable to comply with the shutdown order? I suppose one of the Bitcoin related message services would be like that.
plusquamperfekt 11y ago
http://l.aunch.us/hjhZc http://l.aunch.us/hjhZc
Grazester 11y ago
So what does this tell us about Telegram? Are they willing and able to provide the authorities with the relevant info should a request such as the one made to whatsapp be made to them?
Dolores12 11y ago
So facebook\whatsapp is criminal in Brasil because they broke the law.
jdahlin 11y ago
I'm sure that the phone operators were very happy to comply to ban, they hate WhatsApp. When WhatsApp first got popular here it ended their very lucrative business of SMS and more recently they introduced VOIP calls which considerably cheaper than normal phone calls, especially long distance. Three of the major phone operators (Vivo, Claro, TIM) implemented the ban, while the fourth (Oi), did not. The CEO of Vivo, one of the major phone operators, came out a couple of months ago saying that WhatsApp is "piracy", since they are not affected by the same regulations as the normal phone operator.[1] [1]: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2015/08/1666187-whatsapp-e-pirataria-pura-afirma-presidente-da-vivo.shtml http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2015/08/1666187-whatsap... (portuguese)
dheera 11y ago
I miss the days of ICQ, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Zephyr, Gtalk, Facebook's XMPP, and all those other messengers. They had relatively open or decipherable protocols, and on almost all OSes there were at least a couple decent applications that allowed you to login to all messaging services using a single piece of software. I could even write gateways and plugins to use NLP and autoreply, encrypt messages, and all kinds of other awesome things which I can't do anymore. It seems like we've taken a step back in technology.
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  Me too. A lot of those open standards still exist, but everyone has walled off their garden. It's infuriating. I don't mind using whatever protocol my contactee wants, but I'm not going to install 10 different messaging apps with various permissions just to communicate with them. Inter-connectivity is the name of the game, not exclusiveness.
kamilszybalski 11y ago
Wow. Merry Christmas indeed.
soneca 11y ago
A superior ranked judge ('desembargador') just revoked the ban. And said (my translation): "In face of the constitutional principles, it does not seem reasonable that millions of users are affected in result of the company (whatsapp) inertia" In portuguese: """em face dos princípios constitucionais, não se mostra razoável que milhões de usuários sejam afetados em decorrência da inércia da empresa" The judge also said that a fine would be more appropriate. source (in portuguese): http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2015/12/whatsapp-justica-concede-liminar-para-restabelecer-aplicativo-no-brasil.html http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2015/12/whatsapp-just...
hidingfromherd 11y ago
Perhaps I'm being hard-headed here, but I don't understand the need to debate secure communications here, beyond the benefit of opening doubt in the minds of those ignorant of the underlying physical process. This boils down to the fact (for me, and by proxy, my community) that I (and by proxy, my community) will not use insecure communication because someone or someones wants me to do so. Shake your fist, rattle your sabres, put me in your sights, it will not change my (and by proxy, my community's) resolve. And if I (and by proxy, my community) is to be prosecuted for using secure channels, then I (and by proxy, my community) will resort to steganography. Exact circumstances aside, there's no getting around the effects of a dedicated mind and an overwhelming power (of math) on my communications' transit. The only means by which a paternal element can mediate the policies of my interactions would be to mediate the interface by which I (and by proxy, my community) communicate (in this case -- electronic/digital computer<->human), and enforce this with vigilant, and economically costly violence. This matter-of-factness is similar to that in traffic stop interactions. I'm not happy that men with guns can systematically stop my transit, search my belongings, and steal my assets (at least in Texas), with ex post facto logic applied to the inherent justice, and I have no way of stopping this. The exact circumstances aside, there's no getting around the effects of a dedicated mind and an overwhelming power on my transit. So I work around it, I try not to get stopped, and I deal with it when I do get stopped. I don't shake my fist or pout, beyond for the benefit of opening doubt in the minds of those ignorant of the underlying physical process.

272 points by sultansaladin 11y ago

I'm a judge in Brazil. Your comment history says otherwise: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167143 Seem to be a run of the mill dev to me. I'm surprised you got as many credulous responses as you did.

loceng 11y ago
Why do you assume they aren't someone with a website and have a career?
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  Anything is possible of course but what is more likely: 1. An elected Judge in Brazil also has a side business of running a marginal tourism website and the time to comment on HN 2. Someone is lying on the internet
  - Retra 11y ago
    The real question is what does it matter to you? Nothing a person says is correct just because they have the right title or label.
    - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
      If the goal is to simply make a compelling argument then stating your title immediately induces bias.
      - Retra 11y ago
        My point is that you have nothing to gain by calling into question the title. You give people the benefit of the doubt because that's the way to maintain civil discourse.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Speaking only for myself, obviously, I don't find the argument itself to be particularly interesting, but I do find it interesting to find a Brazilian judge posting it on HN, just because that's really unexpected to me. If it's all fake, then the comment ceases to be interesting at all.
  - loceng 11y ago
    That just doesn't sound reasonable. University students, to me should be a full-time focus, also very often have one or multiple part-time jobs or even a full-time job while attending classes and doing their school work. Surely being a judge doesn't take 100% of someone's time, and this is also a topic likely close to the commenter. Also, did you look at the date of his tourism website post anyhow?
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    We can extend your logic to just about everyone on this website.
soneca 11y ago
Very weird indeed. Although I agree with the reasoning, despite of the authority.
- jdmichal 11y ago
  Agreed. This feels like some sort of inverse appeal-to-authority. "You can't be this kind of expert, therefore your assertions are false."
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    If you start your post with "I'm an authority" then you are inducing the appeal to authority implicitly through Priming.
    - EGreg 11y ago
      Similarly if you start your post with "I am not an authority, but..."
    - jdmichal 11y ago
      You are committing the same folly you accuse him of. It would be fine to simply point out his use of it, but following that up with: "I'm surprised you got as many credulous responses as you did." You are basically doing the same thing. Prime that he is not an expert, then state that he should not be getting credulous responses. The implication of course being that his not being an expert means that his argument does not deserve credible thought and response. Also, there's always a fine line with appeal to authority with regards to experts, which you would hope a judge would be in the field of law. For instance, is it folly to point to consensus in science? That is, after all, nothing but an authority.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
There's a large number of HN posters who just come in and turn everything into an anti-US screed. This guy took something unforgivable in Brazil and turned it into a very questionable commentary about the NSA and pretty much blaming the US for all the world's woes. I believe there is a lot of evidence of autocratic regimes like Russia and China paying people to promote anti-US views. Who knows if this guy is one of them or what Stalin called a "useful idiot" but its amusing to see obvious trolling in action. Did he think no one would go through his posting history?
- justicezyx 11y ago
  I think blaming USA for the world's woes is the most convincing thing to do if you have to blame one country.
danilocesar 11y ago
Well, looks like he is a judge. He owns https://github.com/feliperaul https://github.com/feliperaul. The guy who owns that vacation website he mentioned is named "Felipe Raul Benali", from Maringa, and he uses the same nickname (pqdbr) in some other websites. There's a judge named "Felipe Raul Borges Benali", from the same city, and crossing https://medium.com/@felipebenali https://medium.com/@felipebenali , http://jus.com.br/313522-felipe-raul-borges-benali/publicacoes http://jus.com.br/313522-felipe-raul-borges-benali/publicaco... and his linkedin account, looks to be the same guy. He got the position last year, http://noticias.r7.com/sao-paulo/juizes-federais-tomam-posse-na-capital-paulista-23052014 http://noticias.r7.com/sao-paulo/juizes-federais-tomam-posse... and the picture from medium website looks like the guy in the middle of this the news report. So, yeah, there's a good change that this guy is actually a judge. Feels nice to have a judge with technical skills.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  Cool! Always happy to be wrong when evidence supports it.
  - danilocesar 11y ago
    I was a bit surprise too. Was writing the exactly opposite of this text until I found his full name and the judge thing.
dang 11y ago
What you did here is not cool. On HN, we start from the benefit of the doubt. A person can be both a programmer and a judge. pqdbr's comment was coherent and plausible. The null hypothesis is therefore that pqdbr is making a valuable contribution. It's fine and interesting to look through someone's comment history for background. It can also be ok to ask questions based on that, but this is always delicate and must be done respectfully. But to dig around for a bit, leap to a sinister conclusion, and fling it at them with a couple insults for good measure is a serious violation of civility on this site. HN members with outlier backgrounds (and 'judge' certainly is one) are some of the most valuable contributors we have; doubly so—if not more—when they speak computing too. Imagine what it would feel like to share from one's expertise in the most on-topic way possible, only to be randomly slapped in the face and have your character impugned. You owe pqdbr a lot more of an apology than "Cool! Always happy to be wrong when evidence supports it." (Edit: which, now that I think of it, reads more like a humblebrag than making amends.) We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10751003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10751003 and marked it off-topic.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  Totally respect moving it as it is a distraction at this point. That said, my comment wasn't particularly harsh and I think it's reasonable to be suspect of such lofty claims, especially with basically no proof to be found anywhere in a cursory search. One commenter did some serious research to find Portuguese language proof and that is why this was even an issue. Had the commenter been full of BS, which is the overwhelming majority in these cases, nobody would have made much of a fuss about it. I also expressed my gratitude for pointing out the errant conclusion to the other poster who did research, so I have no problem admitting a false conclusion. Being wrong with a lot of support (upvotes) seems to be my primary sin here.
  - dang 11y ago
    You're misinterpreting the upvotes on a comment like that. They simply mean what GIFs of popcorn mean. Outrage and drama drive more upvotes than intellectual curiosity does. That's why upvotes, though vital, are not the final arbiter here. HN is a constitutional democracy, and what you did was unconstitutional. Please don't do it again.

etiam 11y ago

Shame they went there instead of to Signal, but I guess it may still be a marginal improvement.

sultansaladin 11y ago
I have used both, but never heard of Signal I'll try it.
- alistair77 11y ago
  +1 for Signal (used to be TextSecure). They now have a desktop app in beta which synchronises perfectly with my mobile
  - julioneander 11y ago
    Installing Signal to try as well! Can Signal be taken down like WhatsApp if the same happens again in the future?
    - vincentkriek 11y ago
      Yes, Signal's advantage is the cryptographical security of the messages. It's NOT server independent.
      - etiam 11y ago
        I practice I agree, for now. In principle, since both the Signal client and server are FLOSS, it should be possible to resist a block in some ways that might not be so easy with for example Whatsapp, but as far as I can tell, as things stand right now there is no built-in way to switch server, and asking millions of regular people to make changes to the source code of their cellphone software, recompile and manually reinstall does not seem like a recipe for success. I wonder if one might sensibly work around these things by fallback/optional connection to the server through Tor if Tor is available on the device?
  - 11y ago

hamhamed 11y ago

When startups say being lucky was a big part of their success..I guess this is what they meant

nasir 11y ago

This is how regulations can influence you're business. Unrelated to this, but in corrupted countries a relative of the guy in the government can easily kill your business by asking him to ban yours or promote his!

fiatjaf 11y ago

I would love if a huge part of the population remained in WhatsApp while another migrated to Telegram and another kept both apps. I want people who use instant messaging services to suffer.

tazjin 11y ago
What a strange remark. Are you envious of those who have someone to talk to?
- fiatjaf 11y ago
  Yes, I am alone crying in my empty room while I write this.
  - pedrodelfino 11y ago
    Hahahhaha
- dang 11y ago
  Please don't feed comments like this. Instead, flag the comment by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'flag'. (This requires a small amount of karma, currently 30.)
dang 11y ago
Please post civilly and substantively or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fiatjaf 11y ago
  Ok, I will. I'm sorry.

junto 11y ago

All of this is good. The more competition the better. Pity they aren't all compatible. Then we might actually have an real email killer on our hands.

rplnt 11y ago

These messaging apps are worse than... well, I don't know. This is as bad as it gets. Bicycles maybe? Incompatibility, fragmentation.. the worst thing you can have for application that is supposed to be used for communication.

yoavm 11y ago
At least Telegram has an API and a documented protocol... It could have been a lot better, but WhatsApp is a reminder that it could have a lot worse too.
distances 11y ago
Messaging apps are worse than bicycles? Sure, but to be fair, almost everything is worse than bicycles.
- rplnt 11y ago
  Bicycles are pretty bad when it comes to dozens of incompatible standards for each part.
rmc 11y ago
There has always been fragmentation with messaging apps. In the 90s/00s it was MSN and Yahoo and IRQ etc etc
- rplnt 11y ago
  Depends... in eastern-ish Europe it was ICQ only. That was kind of fine. What I don't get is why mobile carriers still charge for SMS. They could have all deployed their own SMS apps with ads/premium where you could write messages for free. Some did that, but rather badly I think. They just let that market go.
- amyjess 11y ago
  In the 00s, we had multi-IM clients like Trillian, Gaim/Pidgin/libpurple, Kopete, Telepathy, etc. Now, there's so little work done in reverse-engineering IM protocols. It's really sad. Part of this is because Sean Egan got hired by Google to work on Hangouts, so he's out of the reverse-engineering game for good, and it's sad that nobody took up the mantle from him.

dataker 11y ago

Interestingly, Fitch downgraded Brazil's Debt to junk yesterday. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/057c1240-a40f-11e5-b73f-9545472cb784.html http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/057c1240-a40f-11e5-b73f-95454... Anti-technology culture tells a lot about an economy, group or nation.

jzwinck 11y ago
If you think this makes Brazil "anti-technology" I am curious to know your opinion about South Korea, which despite making a huge fraction of the world's smartphones and televisions has prevented Google Maps from working fully for their country. Point being, there are lots of reasons for countries to block certain things, and the notion that technology is inevitable and unquestionable does not carry water in many places outside the Bay Area.
- dataker 11y ago
  It would "be reasonable" to ban if the alternative was a similar local service (e.g. Baidu vs Google in China). The alternative here was an outdated SMS communication (telecoms in Brazil are so terrible they make Verizon look good).
  - PauloManrique 11y ago
    Yeah, because we can't access ICQ, Skype, Telegram, Viber, Line, WeChat, GroupMe and several other apps, right?
atmosx 11y ago
Aren't these the same guys - along with few others - who gave a triple-A to Lehman before collapsing?! Why are they still on business?
mahouse 11y ago
Is blocking an app because they ignored perfectly reasonable legal requests "anti-technology"? I'd then call the developers "psychopaths" because they don't understand the harm done by drug smugglers.

pedrodelfino 11y ago

I am from Brazil and I can say: we are almost becoming the new Argentina. And this is quite interesting because Argentina is becoming the new Venezuela (at least they were, but few weeks ago they had elections and the left wing lost). And Venezuela clearly is becoming the new Cuba.

personjerry 11y ago
Can you explain each of those statements in turn?
- jpatokal 11y ago
  "Argentina is becoming the new Venezuela": formerly prosperous country adopts ridiculous economic policies (key industries nationalized and handed over as private fiefs to incompetent cronies, exchange rate controls, price caps), sees economy go down the toilet and inflation rocket out of control "Venezuela clearly is becoming the new Cuba": Not content merely with wrecking the economy, leadership squashes all opposition and turns country into a straight-up dictatorship (of the proletariat!) Fortunately both statements are hyperbolic, as both countries have just held reasonably fair elections where the electorates decided to kick the bums out, but there are still choppy waters ahead...
  - aesoprock 11y ago
    Argentina cannot into economic prosperity since 1700s
    - saint_fiasco 11y ago
      Weren't they prosperous for a while after World War I?
      - mahouse 11y ago
        They were prosperous when they had surges of incoming white immigrants from Europe, yes.

caio1982 11y ago

What really happened: a drug smuggler with ties to a major criminal organization had been investigated and sentenced several months ago and since July Facebook and WhatsApp folks had not complied (actually they simply ignored all requests) with some users data the justice demanded to keep prosecuting the guy and his associates. Allegedly, according to the new https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Civil_Rights_Framework_for_the_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Civil_Rights_Framewo... if a company does exactly what they did, they can be temporarily blocked by a court decision as some sort of punishment for obstruction. Mark Zuckerberg complained saying it was just one judge who ordered this but AFAIK the block was requested by PA's office. To be fair, some Brazilian judges are pretty stupid and have no idea how the internet works so it's quite possible the original users data request was super broad and that's why Facebook and WhatsApp just ignored it. On the other hand, it's only through very effective wires and digital data examination in recent years that the Brazilian justice is finally putting some big sharks into jail. That's why I have mixed feelings about all this (and I'm a Telegram user myself). Source, in Portuguese: http://gizmodo.com.br/investigacao-trafico-droga-bloqueio-whatsapp/ http://gizmodo.com.br/investigacao-trafico-droga-bloqueio-wh...

antocv 11y ago
Had the same request arrived to FB/WhatsApp from any low US judge, do you think they wouldnt have complied?
thiopental 11y ago
No worries, in a few years, corporations will be able to sue governments into oblivion for lost revenue on cases like this...
- pqdbr 11y ago
  I'd love to know what your background in law is to say such an absurd thing. What case would they have ? "We failed to comply with a judicial order and decided to protect criminal's privacy instead, and we got blocked. We want damages". Seriously ?

lenlorijn 11y ago

Facebook/Messenger is sending a message to Brazilians stating they're working to get WhatsApp back up and suggest to use Messenger while WhatsApp is blocked. https://imgur.com/kx4B3na https://imgur.com/kx4B3na

pqdbr 11y ago

I'm a judge in Brazil. Even tough I'd pray to not be the one that had to give such an impopular order (affecting more then 100 million Brazilians - WhatsApp is really a hit here), we have laws in this country and we must prosecute criminals. Mark's talk about privacy is, in my opinion, totally misplaced. No right is absolute, and that includes the right to privacy. Criminals, for example, simply don't have it. This is not me saying; this is our Constitution saying it (and the Constitution of every Western country that I know). We are biased to see all measures against privacy with bad eyes, specially after Snowden. But that's because you are good people and see the matter with those eyes, not with the eyes of a criminal. Do you guys think that pedophiles, terrorists and drug dealers have the right to privacy ? I don't. Also, what the NSA was (is?) doing is a complete absurd, with no judicial oversight, mass collecting everything they can get in secrecy. This has nothing to do with what we have here. In Brazil, only a judge can authorize someone to be wiretapped, it can only be done in criminal cases with jail time (no civil cases). Also, the judge must specify a single phone number or single e-mail account and the decision must be reviewed every 15 days, otherwise it expires. Also, there's a national database of wiretaps that every judge must feed by the end of the month, specifying how many wiretaps there are currently running. WhatsApp and Facebook are not, by any means, above the law. If they want to provide a communication service here, the law is clear that they must abide by judicial orders that allow wiretapping in very specific cases.

hvis 11y ago
> Do you guys think that pedophiles, terrorists and drug dealers have the right to privacy ? Do you mean _alleged_ criminals? Yes, they do. Convicted criminals, on the other hand, don't have that right already.
- pqdbr 11y ago
  No they don't. Your argument doesn't make any logical sense. Wiretapping is needed during the investigation phase, which you need to gather evidence BEFORE trialling and convicting anyone. And is only authorized if you have strong evidence that a crime or criminal organization is in place. If only convicted criminals didn't have right to privacy, how would you get them convicted in the first place ? Also, you really got it 100% backwards. Convicted criminals have right to privacy after they are convicted, because we don't assume they will commit new crimes. Everybody is presumed innocent until proven otherwise. We must have new evidence that convicted criminals are commiting crimes to start a new wiretap.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

lordnacho 11y ago

Would it be possible to get the messages if FB/WhatsApp decided to do so? I heard they started doing end-to-end encryption, with the keys only on the user's phone. Also, if you've designed a system like this, could you also design one where you'd be unable to comply with the shutdown order? I suppose one of the Bitcoin related message services would be like that.

plusquamperfekt 11y ago

http://l.aunch.us/hjhZc http://l.aunch.us/hjhZc

Grazester 11y ago

So what does this tell us about Telegram? Are they willing and able to provide the authorities with the relevant info should a request such as the one made to whatsapp be made to them?

Dolores12 11y ago

So facebook\whatsapp is criminal in Brasil because they broke the law.

jdahlin 11y ago

I'm sure that the phone operators were very happy to comply to ban, they hate WhatsApp. When WhatsApp first got popular here it ended their very lucrative business of SMS and more recently they introduced VOIP calls which considerably cheaper than normal phone calls, especially long distance. Three of the major phone operators (Vivo, Claro, TIM) implemented the ban, while the fourth (Oi), did not. The CEO of Vivo, one of the major phone operators, came out a couple of months ago saying that WhatsApp is "piracy", since they are not affected by the same regulations as the normal phone operator.[1] [1]: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2015/08/1666187-whatsapp-e-pirataria-pura-afirma-presidente-da-vivo.shtml http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2015/08/1666187-whatsap... (portuguese)

dheera 11y ago

I miss the days of ICQ, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Zephyr, Gtalk, Facebook's XMPP, and all those other messengers. They had relatively open or decipherable protocols, and on almost all OSes there were at least a couple decent applications that allowed you to login to all messaging services using a single piece of software. I could even write gateways and plugins to use NLP and autoreply, encrypt messages, and all kinds of other awesome things which I can't do anymore. It seems like we've taken a step back in technology.

CaptSpify 11y ago
Me too. A lot of those open standards still exist, but everyone has walled off their garden. It's infuriating. I don't mind using whatever protocol my contactee wants, but I'm not going to install 10 different messaging apps with various permissions just to communicate with them. Inter-connectivity is the name of the game, not exclusiveness.

kamilszybalski 11y ago

Wow. Merry Christmas indeed.

soneca 11y ago

A superior ranked judge ('desembargador') just revoked the ban. And said (my translation): "In face of the constitutional principles, it does not seem reasonable that millions of users are affected in result of the company (whatsapp) inertia" In portuguese: """em face dos princípios constitucionais, não se mostra razoável que milhões de usuários sejam afetados em decorrência da inércia da empresa" The judge also said that a fine would be more appropriate. source (in portuguese): http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2015/12/whatsapp-justica-concede-liminar-para-restabelecer-aplicativo-no-brasil.html http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2015/12/whatsapp-just...

hidingfromherd 11y ago

Perhaps I'm being hard-headed here, but I don't understand the need to debate secure communications here, beyond the benefit of opening doubt in the minds of those ignorant of the underlying physical process. This boils down to the fact (for me, and by proxy, my community) that I (and by proxy, my community) will not use insecure communication because someone or someones wants me to do so. Shake your fist, rattle your sabres, put me in your sights, it will not change my (and by proxy, my community's) resolve. And if I (and by proxy, my community) is to be prosecuted for using secure channels, then I (and by proxy, my community) will resort to steganography. Exact circumstances aside, there's no getting around the effects of a dedicated mind and an overwhelming power (of math) on my communications' transit. The only means by which a paternal element can mediate the policies of my interactions would be to mediate the interface by which I (and by proxy, my community) communicate (in this case -- electronic/digital computer<->human), and enforce this with vigilant, and economically costly violence. This matter-of-factness is similar to that in traffic stop interactions. I'm not happy that men with guns can systematically stop my transit, search my belongings, and steal my assets (at least in Texas), with ex post facto logic applied to the inherent justice, and I have no way of stopping this. The exact circumstances aside, there's no getting around the effects of a dedicated mind and an overwhelming power on my transit. So I work around it, I try not to get stopped, and I deal with it when I do get stopped. I don't shake my fist or pout, beyond for the benefit of opening doubt in the minds of those ignorant of the underlying physical process.