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Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

• ommunist 8y ago
  Piezo sound recording app moved off from App Store successfully, if memory serves. Why can Telegram not run its own update servers?
• laveur 8y ago
  From all the articles I have read about this Telegram seems to offer no evidence to supports its case. Further more it claims its only iOS, and not macOS. And I personally have gotten at least several updates for at least the mac version over the past month.
  • laveur 8y ago
    IF they really are not letting them update I would at least expect a rejection letter from Apple as evidence.
    • erikb 8y ago
      Why? If they make it so obvious of course there will be outrage. What everybody with some brains would actually do is slow down the approval process and really look for all kinds of unimportant small details that the update doesn't fulfill "yet".
      • JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        So why is Signal updating?
        • lern_too_spel 8y ago
          Russia hasn't banned Signal, has it?
          • skorbenko 8y ago
            Russia has not banned Signal yet. A possible reason may be that a) Telegram is still way more popular b) Telegram was (and still is) a major networking service for the Russian opposition
        • derefr 8y ago
          Because the People of Interest to Russia happen to use Telegram, not Signal.
          • JumpCrisscross 8y ago
            Why is it easier to assume Russia forced Apple to block Telegram worldwide, a privilege Apple haven't even given China, than that there is another reason for the delay?
        • NullPrefix 8y ago
          Signal is not that popular.
      • djrogers 8y ago
        Why? That still makes no sense - banning updates globally is not even what Russia wants, let alone a reasonable goal.
        • erikb 8y ago
          You don't have to be strongly against something just because it's not as important to you. Telegram is a chat that has a huge number of security aware users. If they can't update, no matter the reason, the users need to go somewhere else. That doesn't necessarily mean that they would switch from Apple to Android, though. So the price for Apple might be small. So for Apple that is either a good way to get rid of an unwanted app, or a way to do a favor for a competitor, or a way to put pressure on Telegram developers to do something that the devs haven't done yet for some reason (e.g. give access to user data). Now I'm not saying that Apple does anything like that. It couldn't be proven by simple people like us anyways. I'm just providing possible explanations for what's maybe going on and why it might happen. It is for instance just as possible that Telegram is not updating themselves, because they want to achieve some kind of hidden agenda, e.g. in a subgroup of people they care about users would very much be willing to switch phones just to stay with their secure chat app and they might have a better deal with Google than they have with Apple. Nothing can be said for sure without insider information.
  • Bud 8y ago
    I keep seeing a lot of iffy reporting on this. Has anyone actually run this down and done a solid article on it?
    • Semirhage 8y ago
      Read the comments here, and it seems like Telegram is being pretty shrewd from PR perspective, since everyone is willing to blame Russia and Apple. Admittedly Russia is a deservedly easy target, and Apple has some vocal critics. If enough people want to believe the accusation, and are willing to at face value (and that seems to be the case here at least) then it’s already “mission accomplished” for Telegram.
  • askvictor 8y ago
    On a Mac you have the option of downloading and installing the app directly from the Internet rather than from the app store. On iOS you don't, so there is a clear difference.
    • bouvin 8y ago
      My macOS Telegram updated, from the AppStore, 2018-05-31.
      • askvictor 8y ago
        My point is that there is no point in blocking any updates on the MacOS appstore, as it can just be side-loaded.
• Angostura 8y ago
  Is Signal reporting any issues?
  • giodamelio 8y ago
    Signal is down for me right now. I am also seeing lot's of people mentioning the same thing on Twitter.
• dang 8y ago
  Discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17195072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17195072. Edit: actually that article contains much less information and the discussion is correspondingly less substantive, so I've taken the 'dupe' marker off the current post. Carry on.
• cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
  I'm surprised that nobody is talking about how Telegram raised pre-ICO of billions of dollars even when it was obvious that this type of censorship will be possible. Mobile apps should not do ICO, period. It's irresponsible for someone to try stealing uneducated people's money while promising something that's impossible to achieve. Realistically speaking there are only two players in the market: Google and Apple, both of which will happily comply with governments and regulators since they have no business in allowing gray area businesses, and that's a good thing. However when you raise ICO, you're basically promising the censorship resistant future while fully knowing that it's impossible to achieve what you promised because your app is built on top of these centralized platforms. This is on a completely different level in terms of scam factor when compared to naive idiots promising things like "putting grass-fed cows on the blockchain", because literally it's impossible to build a censorship-resistant, decentralized mobile app and they are the ones who know this the best. I point this out because it looks as though all the press coverage seem to be focused on how Russia and Apple is censoring Telegram and Telegram is the victim, when Russia and Apple did nothing different from what they used to do. Russia has always been this way, and Apple has always tried its best to fight for user privacy but did make compromises when they really had to. It's great that Apple is doing its best to fight for user privacy but to be frank, Apple shouldn't be the one to blame here. It's Telegram who decided to promote itself as a "censorship resistant decentralized blockchain application" to raise billions of dollars, and they got to this position because of this stance they had to take in order to raise the money. The only losers in this case are the idiots who invested in Telegram's ICO.
  • scosman 8y ago
    "you're basically promising the censorship resistant future" where did telegram say anything remotely like that? They did an ICO for a utility coin. They have been honest about being centralized. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you're putting words in their mouth and accusing them of theft for not meeting your fabricated expectations.
    • cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
      ICO is short for Initial Coin Offering. And the coin is cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are only valuable when they are not censorable. This is why there's a controversy around coins like XRP (from Ripple) because most of the coins are owned by Ripple and their architecture is designed in a way that they can very well censor transactions. But even Ripple pales in comparison to something like Telegram, because Telegram is a mobile chat app, which is as centralized as you can get. Not only does it depend on iOS and Android, but also all push notifications must go through APN (Apple Push Notification) or FCM(Google Messaging). In fact, messaging apps are arguably the most centralized apps out there because of these features. And this is why it's so easy to censor these apps. So if your app can easily be censored, and if your coin is useless if your users can't use the app, what else do you think they were claiming?
• JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  This is presently an accusation by Telegram, nothing more. Sample of reasons why Apple may be doing whatever they are doing: 1) Telegram is prevalently used by Syrian fighters [1]. (Why they chose Telegram over Signal beats me.) As the Syrian conflict winds down, these fighters are returning home. That creates a security imperative for many governments, including in the EU. 2) Telegram recently ran an ICO that, at the very least, probably runs afoul of American securities law. 3) All of the reasons any app gets held up in review that are not "the Russian government pressured Apple." TL; DR We have no evidence this is because of Russian meddling. [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/isis-telegram-app_us_59259254e4b0ec129d3136d5 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/isis-telegram-app_us_59...
  • anderber 8y ago
    All this points to me is the risks of owning a phone whose only way to add apps is to go through one company's own discretion. Unlike in Android where you can easily install apps from other app stores or just download the file.
    • jonknee 8y ago
      Installing apps outside an app store also introduces other risks, it's not exactly one better than the other. Personally I'd love to sideload apps, but seeing how big of a mess that was on desktops leads me to believe most users are better served by a gatekeeper.
      • kbenson 8y ago
        > most users are better served by a gatekeeper. I think the point is that Android's marketplace functions as a gatekeeper. Apple's marketplace functions as a prison warden. The difference is whether you on the inside are allowed to make exceptions for who can come through, or even pass through yourself. If you have no control, what you've been told is a protective wall is actually restraining wall. That said, as to your original point, perhaps some people do need their devices imprisoned for the benefit of the rest of us. I'm not sure I believe that, but I will readily admit that a vast number of people are either unable or unwilling to detect and rectify the problem of their digital devices being hacked, and that ends up affecting us all.
• Shank 8y ago
  Honestly, I don't understand why there are still details missing from this story. Durov is willing to share that Telegram hasn't been able to ship updates, but not the full reason. Have they been actively rejected (and thus, provided a rejection reason)? Or have Apple just stopped approving their updates silently? If it's the former, I don't know what app store guideline says "well, Telegram is banned in Russia, and so no more updates." If it's the latter, then I can understand the frustration -- but we don't know which it is. This nuance is important. For all we know, the answer is the former, and the app store rejection reasons are for completely unrelated issues. But as per usual, we don't know the full story.
  • duskwuff 8y ago
    I've certainly never heard of Apple rejecting an app update without giving a reason. I'd agree that it feels like there's something that Durov isn't telling us here.
    • zapt02 8y ago
      Apple often cites entire paragraphs from their TOS as reason for app rejection without giving specific reasons.
  • sigmar 8y ago
    Perhaps he added more domain fronting? And apple is trying to decide on their position of that technique?
  • zzzcpan 8y ago
    I'm sure you understand that Apple can always find some excuse to disable updates for "unrelated" reasons. It's never going to be an honest reason, they can never give political reasoning publicly. Telegram is right to call them out on it, they should have done it earlier. But I guess they were hoping for Apple to re-enable updates and didn't want to make the gatekeeper look bad.
  • taurath 8y ago
    The certification process tends to only look for things that are Bad for Apple or Google, as almost anyone who's tried getting a big app update certified. Meanwhile, 1000 iterations of shareware calculators that you have to pay $4 to unlock the number 9 are accepted frequently. There's so many clearly crap apps out there that don't get a second look.
• sebleon 8y ago
  This is likely a false accusation. If Apple acquiesced to Russia’s demands, Apple would have: 1) removed Telegram from the App Store in Russia, and 2) prevented Telegram from using the Apple Push Notification Service to distribute non-blocked IP addresses to clients. More likely, updates are being rejected for another infraction. Telegram should publish the App Store reviewer’s criticisms publicly, and provide more context before making public denouncements.
  • wetpaws 8y ago
    Knowing Apple I would be very surprised that it is a false accusation.
    • sebleon 8y ago
      Interesting, you don’t think this is an odd punishment if this was about Russia?
  • majidazimi 8y ago
    > More likely, updates are being rejected for another infraction. Telegram should publish the App Store reviewer’s criticisms publicly, and provide more context before making public denouncements. Well, that's one of Durov's powerful weapons. Cry in public and blame others, while he is the one who messed it up.
  • vhbit 8y ago
    Or Apple not decided yet how to proceed and is buying some time.
  • codedokode 8y ago
    Telegram is now implementing new sponsored Telegram proxies. This is a well designed system that motivates individuals and channel owners to provide proxies in exchange for promotion. So blocking updates prevents it from working and making Telegram less vulnerable.
• jfornear 8y ago
  If anyone here is interested, I started on a new project called Chatdog (https://chat.dog https://chat.dog) to create an alternative to Telegram, et al. Telegram forces you to download their app and provide your phone number to join a room. Chatdog doesn’t require any personal data and can even be used anonymously!
  • ryanlol 8y ago
    So, like Telegram but without false promises of security? Awesome!
  • egeozcan 8y ago
    But you require scripts from a lot of 3rd parties, which may or may not respect my privacy. Maybe consider using a CDN or hosting necessary scripts on your server?
    • jfornear 8y ago
      All scripts are on Cloudfront except for when someone shares a YouTube video or Twitter tweet. Google Analytics and Typekit are the only third-party scripts that are always loaded. I do need to add UI to allow users to disable these.
      • hundchenkatze 8y ago
        I had to accept a script from platform.twitter.com before I could close the SignIn/Register modal. Here's a short gif. https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/HelplessAlienatedClownanemonefish https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/HelplessAlienatedClownanemone... The app looks great though :)
        • jfornear 8y ago
          Thanks for reporting this! Yes, apparently the Twitter script is always loaded also. I need to add logic to only load it when needed.
  • 8y ago
• eganist 8y ago
  I'd given this challenge some thought in the recent past, specifically the challenge that the big app store owners are each generally susceptible to coercion by large nation-state actors in spite of being multinationally distributed. There was a project I was involved in rather heavily (cyph // resulted in a pair of neat conference talks) where we'd accounted for the risks of apps being banned by making the entire application operate exclusively in a web context. To at least somewhat mitigate the related risks stemming from having to trust the cryptographic logic delivered by a web server every time you use the service, trust-on-first-use was achieved by mangling the living daylights out of HPKP in tandem with service workers in order to persist barebones codesigning logic used for validating cryptographic packages delivered from the web service. Alas... All of this is to say that there have been multiple parties involved in addressing this challenge, each one thinking from novel angles in an effort to mitigate the risks posed by the threat of sanctions against secure messaging. As it stands, it appears there's now a rather glaring weakness: if a nation-state decides as much, they can just twist the arms of the walled gardens supporting your secure messaging client in order to: 1) deny access generally, reducing or eliminating the growth of the target space and improving target acquisition, 2) persist known vulnerabilities just long enough to exploit against a target. Telegram has been criticized again and again for their security hygiene and for their architectural decisions. Signal's seen some of that heat quite recently, and I raise both of these because they speak pretty strongly to the bullets above: there's a chance we're seeing a live demonstration by a preeminent world power against one of the few tools dissidents are using to literally stay alive. If this demonstration succeeds without any sort of significant blowback (in the form of corporate or popular resistance or some other subversion or mitigation of the attack), there's nothing to stop any other major party from trying it, regardless of whether they're a nation-state. --- Anyway, I'm keen on a deeper discussion here. Maybe the tinfoil hat's been a bit corrosive to my brain; counter-arguments are welcomed.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • lifeisstillgood 8y ago
    I guess my brain is too small to grok this all in one go but are you saying that Russia is applying pressure to Apple (what pressure?) that prevents Apple App Stores in all countries from accepting a new update of Telegram I don't get this - why is Telegram not releasing updates in a UK or Japanese region? What pressure (besides the local russian court system) is being applied here --- In general yes I expect that app stores are the / a weak point in mobile encryption messaging, but it is only at the level of major player threat model. These things are good enough for use against all but a State level actor targeting you specifically (at which point leaving the country is probably good, if tardy, advice)
• driverdan 8y ago
  This is why I will never own an Apple phone. No one should have the power to decide what can and can't be installed on your devices.
  • jonny_eh 8y ago
    So you've never owned a game console either?
    • dingo_bat 8y ago
      That's not very far fetched.
    • Qwertie 8y ago
      Many don't for that exact reason. Restrictions is one of the main arguments for pc gaming.
    • driverdan 8y ago
      The last console I owned was a PS2, which could run Linux. No reason to own a console anyway, PCs are such a better game platform.
• mnm1 8y ago
  What else do people expect from a closed ecosystem? Vendor bowing down to disreputable nation-states' requests. Check. Out of date apps with vulnerabilities. Check. Impossible to verify security of said system or apps. Check. Complete opaqueness from the vendor. Check. And this is from a vendor that supposedly values both security and privacy ... not that any others are any better.
• masonlee 8y ago
  Does this dispute imply that Apple backdoors its own iMessage end-to-end encryption on states' request?
  • amatecha 8y ago
    It's entirely possible, I'd speculate. I once called Apple tech support for help with my iPhone. So they could see what was going on right on my phone, they were able to remotely request a "screen sharing" session, which I had to click "Allow" on a dialog on my phone to approve. One can imagine that such an approval dialog is not actually required in a technical sense, and _theoretically_ a screen share could be remotely started without any such dialog/notification.
    • robotkdick 8y ago
      While true they can access a phone based on the user opting in, there's likely a high degree of "security" around how and when this can occur including the necessity of a user opting in. Tim Cook has taken a very public stance on privacy and the addition of police-unfriendly encryption of data. So, there's much to lose if news were to come out undermining that position. He probably would not be going so far out on a limb personally if the reality of the privacy/security/encryption were just for PR. His integrity is dependent on that position being true. Slowing things down for political purposes in entirely another matter, and well within the realm of probability.
      • Moter8 8y ago
        I know this is not really on topic, but forensic companies like Cellebrite can unlock/get the data from almost any iOS Device. Remember, those were the guys that unlocked the San Bernardino iPhone. Android full encryptions are harder/impossible for them, a Cellebrite person told me half a year ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d... https://www.cellebrite.com/en/products/ufed-ultimate/ https://www.cellebrite.com/en/products/ufed-ultimate/
• amatecha 8y ago
  "Russia banned Telegram on its territory in April because we refused to provide decryption keys for all our users’ communications to Russia’s security agencies" Why does Telegram have decryption keys for all their users' communications (or do they)?
  • readams 8y ago
    For private chats Telegram uses end-to-end encryption and they cannot read the chats. Of course, they control the clients though, so they could update their clients to also send the chats to Russian intelligence and it would be hard for anyone to notice.
    • amatecha 8y ago
      Yeah, I thought it's supposed to be e2e-encrypted, so I was confused by this statement. I guess it make sense if he means they refused to add a backdoor like you say.
    • verroq 8y ago
      Telegram isn't E2E encrypted by default. You need to choose an "encrypted" chat. They have been criticised over this for many years now.
      • readams 8y ago
        Yes I would think intelligence agencies should prefer Telegram over other encrypted chat providers since there's at least this possibility of leaking.
        • csomar 8y ago
          Maybe this will have the unintended consequence of moving users to a more secure and censorship-resistant alternative.
      • coolspot 8y ago
        Also desktop telegram client doesn't have e2e, only mobile one.
• zapita 8y ago
  Presumably Telegram doesn't know for sure why Apple is blocking updates... They are most likely getting stonewalled, with Apple not responding to any of their requests for information. Telegram suspects that Apple is trying to appease Russian censors while keeping a low profile and plausible deniability. Perhaps Apple is buying time and showing goodwill to Russia while they negotiate a deal - who knows? Acting on their suspicion, Telegram makes this announcement, putting pressure on Apple to unblock updates, or at least to stop stonewalling them. It's a clever use of PR as a tactical weapon. And assuming that Apple was indeed stonewalling Telegram (extremely likely knowing Apple), I think it's perfectly justified.
  • eridius 8y ago
    Your assumptions are probably wrong. Most likely Telegram does know why they're being blocked, they just aren't saying because they want people to assume malfeasance on Apple's part and they're hoping bad PR will convince Apple to approve whatever it is that they're currently rejecting.
    • zapita 8y ago
      You might be right... I think it's fair to say we're both guessing. To me it just doesn't seem logical to resort to such a "nuclear option" over a review disagreement, instead of just complying, negotiating, or at least working around the problem in a creative technical way. It's not like Telegram is changing in some fundamental way since the last review... What could Apple be telling Telegram that is such a massive showstopper?
      • eridius 8y ago
        A lot of companies do tend to reach for the "nuclear option" of crying to the press when getting rejected even though they haven't yet gone through all the steps of trying to resolve the issue privately. > What could Apple be telling Telegram that is such a massive showstopper? Good question. I don't know. There are a lot of possibilities here and it's impossible for us to know what without Telegram telling us the actual rejection reason.
• thotaway 8y ago
  Theory 1: It’s because Russia, a market with a very small iOS user base, can pressure Apple into doing what it wants. Theory 2: It’s because Telegram raised more than a billion dollars for a virtual currency that does an end-run around Apple’s in-app payments. Based on Apple’s past actions, which one is more likely?
  • dannyw 8y ago
    The ICO didn't mention anything about doing an end-run around IAPs, and even so, such functionality isn't integrated in the app. How can Apple justify penalising something not in an app? Why is the Kindle app still up, despite the fact that Kindle ebooks don't go through IAP?
• veidr 8y ago
  This is a fundamental problem with the single DRM-enforced app store model that Apple innovated, and which has been widely copied and lauded. Once you implement that, you have to toady up to whatever governments exist, including oppressive/murderous regimes, to be in their markets. If your ecosystem is just console video games, say, it's not that big of a deal; you have to either censor some games or don't enter certain countries at all. Might be unfortunate, but its not a fundamental human rights issue. But if your ecosystem is about general-purpose apps and communication tools, you become complicit to some degree in all sorts of vile shit; oppression and forced relocation of minorities (China), mass murder of gay people (Russia), etc. There's no way around this for Apple; they have to cave to government demands or risk being forced out of the Russian market. That wasn't inevitable, though; it's a side effect of the model they chose.
  • sandov 8y ago
    This is why we must eradicate proprietary software from our general purpose computers, because computers are the single most powerful weapon we have for freedom and self-improvement. It doesn't matter too much if your videogame console is closed source, but it matters a lot if the software you use to read books, to write, to communicate with people is closed source. Apple isn't going to do it, Google isn't going to do it. We must do it.
    • Scene_Cast2 8y ago
      There are three ways of slicing the problem: the technical capability of loading whatever apps you want, the legal ability to do so, and the ecosystem / game theoretical (is it a reasonable way of doing things - e.g. living without gapps is possible but very hard in practice). Back when Stallman outlined the distinction between proprietary vs open, he meant all of the above in spirit, but never really addressed the hosting and server-side side of things. I think it's currently still a weak spot in his philosophy. Open-source software doesn't truly solve the server-side if your phone has a hardcoded "ax.itunes.apple.com" - in theory, you could modify & recompile & host your own, but it wouldn't be a first-class-citizen thing. Also, consider e.g. if Apple's stack was open but highly customized - you needed a team of engineers and a swath of servers to simply get a clone up and running. Again, not impossible, but I don't think open-source is only a part of the solution.
• ezoe 8y ago
  If they seriously believe that protecting customers security is important, they shall not encourage their user to use Apple products. Android is also bad for this.
• jenga22 8y ago
  Apple has now entered dangerous territory. Over the last month they seem to have banned apps because some government out there didn't like that app. To make matters worse, those very same governments weren't happy with the app being removed from their regional app store but they demanded it removed from all app stores. The VPN issue was a wake up call for a lot of developers. These apps were on the app store for years and because China didn't like these apps one morning, they banned it and referred to some arbitrary clause in the app store TOS. The thing is this script has played out before. Twitter also had a vibrant ecosystem of third party developers. Those developers made Twitter into a billion dollar company. Then one morning, they decided certain classes of apps were not okay. This back and forth went on for months until there were barely any apps left. Twitter eventua The same thing is happening with Apple. Several founders I've spoken to, all with big exits in the past, refuse to write apps first for Apple or Google because of the threat of getting "banned one morning". Worse, VCs are now getting nervous in investing in startups where the app is the fundamental foundation of the business. For any market to thrive, there needs to be transparency and stability. Just like Twitter, once developers are gone....they're gone. They won't come back and consumers will start wondering if the 1,000 dollar smartphone they purchased, with subpar apps, is really worth it.
  • aaronchall 8y ago
    "Twitter eventua" what? Purism's Librem 5 phone is funded and dev kits are only $400! https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ I'm a little excited about this company.
  • walrus01 8y ago
    Whilen I entirely agree with your point, I don't think that a comparison between the Apple and Twitter is suitable. One is a company that publishes an operating system, which is locked down and requires software installation through their Monopoly App Store ( which I find highly distasteful), the other one is a web-based social media thing. iOS as a product is in no way similar to twitter.
    • jenga22 8y ago
• floatingatoll 8y ago
  The App Store guidelines [5] indicate that, with regard to a single app, the app author (Telegram) "must comply with all legal requirements". Telegram agreed to this requirement when they published their latest update two months ago, and so Telegram – not Apple – is liable for illegality. Apple received a notice of illegality from Russia regarding Telegram, a third-party app. This notice was inappropriately delivered to Apple, who currently has no responsibility for Telegram. Telegram's compliance with Russian law is not Apple's problem unless a Russian court orders Apple to de-list Telegram. Until such an order occurs, Apple has no reason to de-list Telegram. Therefore, I believe that Apple did three things: [1] Apple temporarily suspended Telegram app updates worldwide after receiving a notice of illegality. [2] Apple immediately forwarded the notice of illegality to Telegram, without any assertion of validity. [3] Apple notified Telegram that they may resume updates by either declaring in writing to Apple that Telegram is legal in Russia or de-listing Telegram in Russia. And Telegram did no things: [4] Telegram has refused to declare in writing to Apple that Telegram is legal in Russia, and has refused to de-list Telegram in Russia. And Telegram, after two months of refusing to act on [3], is trying to pressure Apple into giving up on [3] using the "woe is me" GDPR excuse. [5] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#legal https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#leg...
  • codedokode 8y ago
    > "must comply with all legal requirements" Every country has its own legal requirements. As Telegram is a British company I assume it must comply only with British laws, right?
    • y_molodtsov 8y ago
      Tell that to GDPR. I’m pretty sure Apple meant the compliance with the regulations of the countries where the app is available.
    • floatingatoll 8y ago
      Telegram may absolutely ignore non-British laws and refuse to concern itself with them. Independent of laws, Apple may refuse Telegram access to the App Store if a guideline is not met.
• codedokode 8y ago
  Please note that Telegram is not a Russian company; it is registered in Great Britain. Russian government doesn't have any jurisdiction over it. Also, russian users are less than 10% of Telegram userbase. So now Apple is putting sanctions upon a British company just because Russia says so. This sets a dangerous precedent. What will we see tomorrow? China, Thailand, Iran and North Korea kicking apps they don't like out of App Store? Apple banning apps on political grounds?
  • veidr 8y ago
    Apple already does ban apps on political grounds, even pretty innocuous just-the-facts type apps: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just-banned-the-app-that-tracks-us-drone-strikes-again https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just... And yes, I think you are likely right: we will see apps banned at the behest of the Chinese government, given the size of their market. (North Korea, perhaps not.) Apple painted themselves into this corner when they decided to become the gatekeeper of what iPhone users are allowed to install.
    • y_molodtsov 8y ago
      We already see that, but it’s more subtle. They aren’t banning those apps worldwide, just delist them from their Chinese store.
• konart 8y ago
  At the same time alternative clients are getting their updates just fine (like Teleplus and Loopy).
  • saagarjha 8y ago
    There are a multitude of reason why this is the case. It might be that Telegram in particular did something that pissed Apple off, or that Apple is ignoring third-party clients.
• glhaynes 8y ago
  Tweet from Founder/CEO of Telegram: https://twitter.com/durov/status/1002653210245586944 https://twitter.com/durov/status/1002653210245586944 ("Thank you @Apple and @tim_cook for letting us deliver the latest version of @telegram to millions of users, despite the recent setbacks.")