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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 poss

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?
  - tylerlastovich 8y ago
    I am willing to bet that you haven't read the Telegram white paper. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ucUeKg_NiR8RxNAonb8Q55jZha03WC0O/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ucUeKg_NiR8RxNAonb8Q55jZha0...) They didn't raise all that money to build out their chat app. They are looking to make a digital currency that can handle volume and is practical for day-to-day purchases, compared to the primarily speculatory coins that exist right now. The $1.7B they raised came from 175 accredited investors that purchased the entire supply of utility tokens in the pre-sale.
- vhbit 8y ago
  > They did an ICO for a utility coin. One of the major selling points of that utility coin was that it'll be automatically available for 200M active users of Telegram. Frictionless entry point into coins is a huge step forward.
taurath 8y ago
> 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. I don't really consider that a good thing. Having government controlled gatekeepers that take 20-30% off of every app with platform lock-in is not a great thing. We rail constantly about FBI/NSA enforced backdoors, especially people in Europe that are potentially having all their data harvested.
- cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
  I'm on the same page with you. I guess i should rephrase. I said "That's a good thing" from Apple and Google's point of view. They are public companies with shareholders who don't want them to contribute to potentially illegal behaviors. So it's a "good thing" for them to have the companies comply with the governments. But this phenomenon itself is not a good thing, so I do think decentralized projects should fix this problem. But centralized companies should not advertise themselves as being able to tackle this type of problem because it's not possible. This brings us back to the original issue I pointed out. Telegram knows Very very well that they have this issue. Ask anyone who has built a mobile app if building a decentralized ecosystem on top of Apple appstore is possible and they would laugh at you. But Telegram did. And they raised billions of dollars for that false vision which they knew was impossible to achieve as a centralized organization with a product that depends on a centralized platform.
  - taurath 8y ago
    It certainly represents a sea change where the "leaders" in tech are now basically gatekeepers to new technology's viability. Thats been the case for a while, but now the players are the ones who were built on the relative freedom of the internet. It could absolutely just shut the whole distributed platform thing down, but the demand will still be there I think, so eventually new platforms could come take its place. Thats of little solace to ICO investors nowadays of course, because it could delay the rollout by a decade or more.
Jyaif 8y ago
You can side-load apps on Android. I'm afraid this makes your rant false.
- filleduchaos 8y ago
  There's a lot more to centralization than where you can install apps from.
madeofpalk 8y ago
> Mobile apps should not do ICO, period. really, should anyone?
ex3ndr 8y ago
Wat? ICO was private and only accredited investors was allowed.

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?
- tylerlastovich 8y ago
  I am willing to bet that you haven't read the Telegram white paper. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ucUeKg_NiR8RxNAonb8Q55jZha03WC0O/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ucUeKg_NiR8RxNAonb8Q55jZha0...) They didn't raise all that money to build out their chat app. They are looking to make a digital currency that can handle volume and is practical for day-to-day purchases, compared to the primarily speculatory coins that exist right now. The $1.7B they raised came from 175 accredited investors that purchased the entire supply of utility tokens in the pre-sale.
vhbit 8y ago
> They did an ICO for a utility coin. One of the major selling points of that utility coin was that it'll be automatically available for 200M active users of Telegram. Frictionless entry point into coins is a huge step forward.

taurath 8y ago

> 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. I don't really consider that a good thing. Having government controlled gatekeepers that take 20-30% off of every app with platform lock-in is not a great thing. We rail constantly about FBI/NSA enforced backdoors, especially people in Europe that are potentially having all their data harvested.

cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
I'm on the same page with you. I guess i should rephrase. I said "That's a good thing" from Apple and Google's point of view. They are public companies with shareholders who don't want them to contribute to potentially illegal behaviors. So it's a "good thing" for them to have the companies comply with the governments. But this phenomenon itself is not a good thing, so I do think decentralized projects should fix this problem. But centralized companies should not advertise themselves as being able to tackle this type of problem because it's not possible. This brings us back to the original issue I pointed out. Telegram knows Very very well that they have this issue. Ask anyone who has built a mobile app if building a decentralized ecosystem on top of Apple appstore is possible and they would laugh at you. But Telegram did. And they raised billions of dollars for that false vision which they knew was impossible to achieve as a centralized organization with a product that depends on a centralized platform.
- taurath 8y ago
  It certainly represents a sea change where the "leaders" in tech are now basically gatekeepers to new technology's viability. Thats been the case for a while, but now the players are the ones who were built on the relative freedom of the internet. It could absolutely just shut the whole distributed platform thing down, but the demand will still be there I think, so eventually new platforms could come take its place. Thats of little solace to ICO investors nowadays of course, because it could delay the rollout by a decade or more.

Jyaif 8y ago

You can side-load apps on Android. I'm afraid this makes your rant false.

filleduchaos 8y ago
There's a lot more to centralization than where you can install apps from.

madeofpalk 8y ago

> Mobile apps should not do ICO, period. really, should anyone?

ex3ndr 8y ago

Wat? ICO was private and only accredited investors was allowed.