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Germany doesn't rule out closing Telegram – interior minister

86 points by dsnr 5y ago

ryanar 5y ago
Germany banned Wolfenstein 3D when it came out in the 90s. What happened? Wolfenstein became one of the most viral games in Germany. If people want to get Telegram in Germany, they will one way or another.
- hnbad 5y ago
  Wolfenstein became "viral" because there was no legal way to obtain a copy and peer-to-peer spread is by definition "viral". I'd wager Wolfenstein significantly underperformed both in sales and number of players compared to if it had been commercially available. Remember that this was pre-WWW, also PC gaming was much more of a technologically literate hobbyist space and copying floppies was fairly straightforward. Most Android users probably don't sideload apps at the moment. Telegram is a vital communication tool for the Querdenker (antivax) movement as well as far-right extremist groups. Extremely motivated extremists will surely jump to another platform, but censorship is amazingly effective at hindering recruitment and keeping out the "normies". FWIW the ban of Wolfenstein was informed by an understanding of games as pure entertainment for kids in the vein of Tetris, Pacman or Space Invaders. "We put swastikas and nazis in this video game" was a legitimately horrifying prospect at the time. If modern Wolfenstein games insisted on not modifying the releases for Germany, they would likely initially be banned but be able to overturn this ban once and for all given we now understand games as a narrative medium like film and nobody ever had to worry about removing the nazis from the Indiana Jones movies.
sebow 5y ago
Good luck to Germany in this futile approach.Also, what happened to WhatsApp,Wickr, or even Facebook?Those have been aswell used in terrorist attacks years ago when the crisis hit Germany, UK, and France more than the rest of the continent.Suddenly they're not a problem at all, we only need to ban something when it's going against the current narrative.
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
Maybe they could license the Great Firewall from China, they have many years of experience with that kind of thing. While they are at it, they could look into other fancy tech from China, for example video surveillance that checks if people conform to Corona rules. After all, why not - China seems to be so successful, what could go wrong?
- mantas 5y ago
  Nothing goes wrong in China, comrade.
- emteycz 5y ago
  They are already working on making EU do that.
- bpmayer 5y ago
  Great idea!
mantas 5y ago
Send dissent back to kitchens.
uniqueuid 5y ago
This will be interesting. Some background for the discussion: - Germany has a different take on freedom of speech from the US. There are things that you cannot say (holocaust denial, inciting racial violence). We can argue about this, but it's deeply ingrained in the legal system and unrealistic to change - Germany has a special law regulating responsibilities and content moderation in social media (NetzDG, think section 230 but wider). This law - among other things - mandates content moderation and cooperation with law enforcement - A key point in the debate surrounding Telegram is the question of whether or not it is a "platform", that is an open social network. Telegram argues that it's a messenger, but in practice, there are many open and public groups used for public debates. So Germany argues that it should be regulated in accordance with the NetzDG, which Telegram denies. - Recently, there have been a number of death threats and criminal conspiracies which were orchestrated via Telegram; on top, a huge chunk of covid deniers and co are active in this space. - Telegram so far has not cooperated at all (in contrast with other social platforms, even TikTok). So in essence, this is currently a battle about the German government saying: Look here, you got a bunch of criminals and terrorists (literally, with weapons) on your platform, you need to do something about it. [edit] Here is a report on the assassination plot and subsequent raids: https://www.euronews.com/2021/12/15/german-police-launch-raids-in-dresden-over-alleged-anti-vax-death-threats-to-governor https://www.euronews.com/2021/12/15/german-police-launch-rai...
- akho 5y ago
  > the German government saying: Look here, you got a bunch of criminals and terrorists (literally, with weapons) on your platform, you need to do something about it. This sounds like a police matter, and should be a question that is asked to, not by, the government. Not that any government understands that…
  - sascha_sl 5y ago
    Unfortunately, it turns out that it is not too rare that these people doing something in between prepping and planned terrorism are police or military.
  - Milner08 5y ago
kybernetyk 5y ago
yeah, that's going to work. just like outlawing porn sites that wouldn't use a german age verification system ;)
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
  iPhone users have no sideloading capabilities and for androids you need to be at least a bit tech savvy. speaking only for mobile access if telegram gets dropped from the app stores it would shrink the user base.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - BurningPenguin 5y ago
    It is possible for iPhone. But as you say, you need to be tech savvy for that.
iqanq 5y ago
On an unrelated note - Telegram is already heavily censored on iPhones because of app store policies and the team refuses to put out an uncensored IPA file that we can sideload to our phones. If someone from the team reads this (I doubt it, since they are very disconnected from western media) please consider it. You already do it for Android!
- throwawayacc2 5y ago
  Out of curiosity what do you mean by censored? Are there groups that cannot be listed on the iphone app?
  - iqanq 5y ago
    Exactly, channels, groups, and bots.
    - throwawayacc2 5y ago
      Interesting I had no idea. So, there’s groups that would work on the web client presumably but not the app. What happens if you join that group using your browser and attempt to see it in the app?
      - iqanq 5y ago
        When you tap on the group, instead of the contents, you see a message like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Telegram_Messenger_for_iOS_blocks_pornographic_content.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Telegram... The exact message you see is "Unfortunately, this channel couldn't be displayed on your device.". It doesn't say anything about the app store because apple policies don't allow apps to say that contents are censored because of apple guidelines.
        throwawayacc2 5y ago
        Holy shit! This is crazy!
estranhosidade 5y ago
We are also having this discussion here in Brazil, some supreme court minister is all fussy and triggered because telegram doesn't bans ""misinformation"" and ""hate speech"".
- elforce002 5y ago
  What about whatsapp?
odiroot 5y ago
The collective panic and Luddism about Telegram in Germany is really scary. I watch Tagesschau (probably most respected news show) every evening. Any time Telegram is mentioned it's always being attacked, as if it's only purpose was to enable crime and terrorism.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  > Tagesschau Can you give me a date to look for an example in? I haven't see that yet.
  - bijant 5y ago
    https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/funk/todesdrohungen-telegram-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/funk/todesdrohungen-t... „In Germany, alleged individual cases of calls for killing from the lateral thinker scene have been discussed for days. Research now shows that there have been calls to kill every day since mid-November.“ https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/telegram-verfassungsschutz-corona-leugner-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/telegram-verfassungsschutz-... „Radicalized Corona Deniers What can the state do about Telegram? Corona deniers use the Telegram messenger service to let their fantasies of violence run free. The state wants to take action against it. The new interior minister is facing a mammoth task.“ https://www.tagesschau.de/regional/nordrheinwestfalen/wdr-story-44973.html https://www.tagesschau.de/regional/nordrheinwestfalen/wdr-st... „North Rhine-Westphalia State security investigates corona demos: anti-Semitism in Telegram chats At a demonstration against the Corona measures in Kamp-Lintfort, a participant is said to have shown the Hitler salute on Tuesday. The Duisburg State Security is now investigating. The Duisburg State Security is investigating in the vicinity of the demonstrators who demonstrate as self-proclaimed "walkers" against the corona policy. The allegations are massive: It is about anti-Semitic hate speech. The focus is on chat groups that run via the "Telegram" service. The demonstrations are planned there.“ https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/br-recherche/querdenker-bundeswehrsoldaten-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/br-recherche/querdenk... „MAD is investigating two other soldiers Investigations are currently underway against at least two other Bundeswehr soldiers because they made radical statements against corona measures. Research by BR and tagesschau.de revealed this . One should pay close attention to the choice of words, according to a mountain hunter in a more than seven-minute voice message published on the Telegram messenger platform in December last year. The Bundeswehr is a "company" in which everything is done to "destroy us patriots who are trapped in the Bundeswehr". What is meant is the obligation to enforce corona vaccinations for soldiers.“
progx 5y ago
- wongarsu 5y ago
  You mean people who organize protests without permit (because they don't like the mandates for masks and minimum separation that would come with the permit), and when confronted with police claim they are just a couple hundred people who happen to be on a walk at the same time by pure coincidence.
  - orbifold 5y ago
    I wouldn’t have a problem with it if it was just that. Police here deserve to be stress tested and in principle you can spontaneously declare something to be an assembly by naming someone the assembly leader. The issue is their message and the right wing / nazis that they are walking among them.
    - fileeditview 5y ago
      It's not a problem who is walking among them or what their message is. Anyone has the right to express his opinion. I am getting really sick of hearing this argument. No there is nothing in the constitution that would forbid you to protest peacefully alongside whoever. Also the message you are allowed to voice is not defined by you or some politician. If you have a problem with some of the protestants you can voice your concerns. But stop judging everybody participating.
      - orbifold 5y ago
        I judge them very harshly, they deserve no respect or sympathy. It should never be acceptable to walk with people that minimise the holocaust or talk openly about how they had talks with former army members of armed insurrection in their telegram channels (there are screenshots to prove that). They chose "Reichsprogrom Nacht" of all days to do a candle procession through Heidelberg for instance, with known Neo-Nazis in their ranks. But yeah they should be free to continue to self-incriminate themselves on Telegram and elsewhere. It is not like they are some kind of sophisticated state level threat.
uniqueuid 5y ago
Ok, a lot of the points raised here come up all the time; maybe it helps if I summarize some more of them: - Argument: States cannot ban/close platforms - sure they can, as soon as you kick an app off the app store it's over for most of the users. That's a severe step though, and could be legally contested; my personal opinion is that it's realistic a court could deem a complete shutdown unconstitutional. - Argument: This is censorship - not really, censorship in the German legal context means pre-control of messages before dissemination. The deal here is about implementing measures to follow German laws. Of course, in a wider sense, this is some sort of censorship mechanism which has some technical similarity with other infrastructures such as those in china. But that's the tradeoff in Germany - it's restricting free speech to protect pro-democratic elements. Whether that works or not is going to be an important question in the next years.
- tux3 5y ago
  >This is censorship - not really, censorship in the German legal context [...] Censorship, and the legal concept of censorship, are such very different things that using one as the response to the other is silly! The local lawmaker's definition of censorship in a legal context, when transposed in a non-legal discussion, is just one country's opinion, not an authoritative answer to whether something is censorship.
  - brazzy 5y ago
    What is the authoritative answer then?
  - uniqueuid 5y ago
    I'm not sure I follow - the definition of censorship is in some way the most important question here. It's absolutely vital to understand that prohibiting some speech has been a core feature of Germany's democracy since 1945. At the same time, the public use of the word "censorship" has diluted so much (especially online) that it's hardly useful. So I'd argue that it totally makes sense to try and define what we're talking about, and how and why the state intervenes.
EGreg 5y ago
Another example of how centralized messengers are more vulnerable than decentralized, end-to-end encrypted networks, where anyone can run a client. To clarify how regular people could get access to a client… any https website could host a front end widget, for instance. Easy delivery via web browser (which is general-purpose enough that it can’t ban all possible widgets and hard to ban).
throw8932894 5y ago
Where is antifa when you need them :)
VLM 5y ago
"I want to ban the other guy's political speech" is business as usual for centuries even in the "free" west. Whats new is "I want to band all criticism of my religion", that aspect is new for the "free" west.
- lampe3 5y ago
  So leaking addresses of politicians you don't like and calling on your day by day getting more aggressive and extreme far right telegram group is okay for you?
  - disgu 5y ago
    This is just another version of the "so you don't care about the children?" argument.
  - wreath 5y ago
    and do you think if the stupid government shuts off Telegram, these groups will cease their activity and change their minds?
oleg_antonyan 5y ago
They tried to block it in Russia in 2018. And failed miserably. Blocking entire subnets, millions of IP addresses on AWS, DigitalOcean and other providers, but Telegram servers can hope between different instances, so it ended up as wack-a-moll where thousands of innocents sites were blocked including some government-related services, banks, payment processing, my little startup project hosted on DO, but not Telegram
- vetinari 5y ago
  In 2018, domain fronting was a thing. Since then, it became more difficult, as the cloud providers prohibited it. However, to compensate, there's now encrypted SNI, so the situation is returning back to the 2018 one.
323 5y ago
Not just Germany, a lot of very respectable publications are worried about Telegram: > White supremacists openly organize racist violence on Telegram, report finds https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/white-supremacists-telegram-racism-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/white-supremacists-t... > Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot? Telegram and Signal, the encrypted services that keep conversations confidential, are increasingly popular. Our tech columnists discuss whether this could get ugly. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/telegram-signal-misinformation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/t... > A report this week found that the messaging app had emerged as a central hub for several conspiracy movements espousing antisemitic tropes and memes, including QAnon, as well as others on the extreme right promoting violence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-telegram-chat-apps/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-... > Far-right groups move online conversations from social media to chat apps — and out of view of law enforcement https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/telegram-warned-of-nurturing-subculture-deifying-terrorists https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/telegram-war... > In collaboration with anti-fascist research group the White Rose Society, the Guardian has tracked McLean’s activity through the rabbit warren of largely unregulated Telegram groups and found that he describes a vastly different version of his intentions. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where-freedom-meets-the-far-right-the-hate-messages-infiltrating-australian-anti-lockdown-protests https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where... > Why right-wing extremists’ favorite new platform is so dangerous. Telegram’s lax content moderation and encrypted chats make it a convenient tool for extremists. https://www.vox.com/recode/22238755/telegram-messaging-social-media-extremists https://www.vox.com/recode/22238755/telegram-messaging-socia...
- larryflint 5y ago
- 0x_rs 5y ago
  But none of the links you provided make an argument against Telegram itself, and you wouldn't find one anywhere. Encryption is free, and so is the ability to use any platform or communication method. It's pointless to argue against "lax content moderation", or "trendy radicalization platform of the month".. but I would expect no less from a website such as Vox. Perhaps those complaining currently about it in Germany may consider spending their time more wisely tackling the societal issues that cause such phenomena?
hamilyon2 5y ago
Does Apple comply is some judge rules that telegram app should be deleted from devices? Does Germany have legal and technical means to block the web version, web.telegram.org ?
taubek 5y ago
You shutdown one app, people move to another one. I don't see how could this work.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  This is how it works: The Government will shut down the apps that refuse to cooperate with the state until either they start to cooperate, or people migrate to the ones who already do cooperate with the state. Simple. Either way, the state wins, since not all chat apps are self-righteous enough to say no to a lucrative market on principle of refusing to cooperate with a nation state. They learned that from watching companies bend over backwards for the Chinese market.
hnbad 5y ago
This doesn't clarify what "shutdown" means. The last thing I heard was pressuring Google to remove it from the Play Store in Germany but this sounds like it could also mean a DNS block (which notably doesn't prevent traffic to the IP addresses).
blackbear_ 5y ago
Great, what am I gonna use on the pinephone now?!
amelius 5y ago
Makes sense. After closing down their nuclear plants, Germany is now completely dependent on Russian gas. They don't want to be dependent on Russian telecom as well.
dntRa 5y ago
This should remind people that the SPD ("Social" Democrats) is an authoritarian party that is nicknamed "the traitor party" for repeatedly backstabbing its voters. Schroeder has destroyed the welfare state, increased reliance on Russia's natural gas and got a job at Gazprom after he retired from politics. I'm sure that Putin will be very glad to shut down Telegram as well. Same as in the U.S., liberals in Germany are very happy to spread COVID-19 misinformation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/08/sotomayors-false-claim-that-over-100000-children-are-serious-condition-with-covid/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/08/sotomayor...
bpmayer 5y ago
Let's ban the good old mail service. There are many nasty and unpleasant people who use paper.
TacticalCoder 5y ago
550 MAU and growing fast. 7th most download iOS and Android app. All the "But WhatsApp, there's nothing to do vs FB, they are too powerful" have to admit Telegram is quite the success story.
mschuster91 5y ago
German here. While I do agree with her that something must be done about Telegram given that criminal activity including Holocaust denial and plotting murder of governors [1] can go on there without any moderation while requests for providing IP addresses and other user data are being routinely ignored by the service, she is falling into the same trap as many interior politicians do and thinks that the solution is primarily to put pressure on Telegram. It would be better to put police pressure on the ringleaders and participators of such Telegram channels. They are often enough known by clear name and march on the streets so they can be arrested there, but that requires actual effort from a police force that is already under suspicion of far-right infiltration. [1]: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/kretschmer-drohung-razzia-103.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/kretschmer-drohung-razzia-1...
beardedman 5y ago
You've had censorship in Germany for a very long time now, but I don't think people like to think of it as censorship. You (literally) can land up in jail for verbalising certain things. IMO, the scary part is how positively people view this, like it's a feature (and then proceed to talk about the CCP or Russia like they are stuck in the mid 1500's).
- foepys 5y ago
  > You (literally) can land up in jail for verbalising certain things. Go to the US, go to a police officer, and just tell them you want to kill the President. Watch what happens. There is no such thing as absolute free speech, even in the US.
  - beardedman 5y ago
    Do not confuse threatening bodily harm to a person with free speech - they are very different.

86 points by dsnr 5y ago

Germany banned Wolfenstein 3D when it came out in the 90s. What happened? Wolfenstein became one of the most viral games in Germany. If people want to get Telegram in Germany, they will one way or another.

hnbad 5y ago
Wolfenstein became "viral" because there was no legal way to obtain a copy and peer-to-peer spread is by definition "viral". I'd wager Wolfenstein significantly underperformed both in sales and number of players compared to if it had been commercially available. Remember that this was pre-WWW, also PC gaming was much more of a technologically literate hobbyist space and copying floppies was fairly straightforward. Most Android users probably don't sideload apps at the moment. Telegram is a vital communication tool for the Querdenker (antivax) movement as well as far-right extremist groups. Extremely motivated extremists will surely jump to another platform, but censorship is amazingly effective at hindering recruitment and keeping out the "normies". FWIW the ban of Wolfenstein was informed by an understanding of games as pure entertainment for kids in the vein of Tetris, Pacman or Space Invaders. "We put swastikas and nazis in this video game" was a legitimately horrifying prospect at the time. If modern Wolfenstein games insisted on not modifying the releases for Germany, they would likely initially be banned but be able to overturn this ban once and for all given we now understand games as a narrative medium like film and nobody ever had to worry about removing the nazis from the Indiana Jones movies.

sebow 5y ago

Good luck to Germany in this futile approach.Also, what happened to WhatsApp,Wickr, or even Facebook?Those have been aswell used in terrorist attacks years ago when the crisis hit Germany, UK, and France more than the rest of the continent.Suddenly they're not a problem at all, we only need to ban something when it's going against the current narrative.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago

Maybe they could license the Great Firewall from China, they have many years of experience with that kind of thing. While they are at it, they could look into other fancy tech from China, for example video surveillance that checks if people conform to Corona rules. After all, why not - China seems to be so successful, what could go wrong?

mantas 5y ago
Nothing goes wrong in China, comrade.
emteycz 5y ago
They are already working on making EU do that.
bpmayer 5y ago
Great idea!

mantas 5y ago

Send dissent back to kitchens.

uniqueuid 5y ago

This will be interesting. Some background for the discussion: - Germany has a different take on freedom of speech from the US. There are things that you cannot say (holocaust denial, inciting racial violence). We can argue about this, but it's deeply ingrained in the legal system and unrealistic to change - Germany has a special law regulating responsibilities and content moderation in social media (NetzDG, think section 230 but wider). This law - among other things - mandates content moderation and cooperation with law enforcement - A key point in the debate surrounding Telegram is the question of whether or not it is a "platform", that is an open social network. Telegram argues that it's a messenger, but in practice, there are many open and public groups used for public debates. So Germany argues that it should be regulated in accordance with the NetzDG, which Telegram denies. - Recently, there have been a number of death threats and criminal conspiracies which were orchestrated via Telegram; on top, a huge chunk of covid deniers and co are active in this space. - Telegram so far has not cooperated at all (in contrast with other social platforms, even TikTok). So in essence, this is currently a battle about the German government saying: Look here, you got a bunch of criminals and terrorists (literally, with weapons) on your platform, you need to do something about it. [edit] Here is a report on the assassination plot and subsequent raids: https://www.euronews.com/2021/12/15/german-police-launch-raids-in-dresden-over-alleged-anti-vax-death-threats-to-governor https://www.euronews.com/2021/12/15/german-police-launch-rai...

akho 5y ago
> the German government saying: Look here, you got a bunch of criminals and terrorists (literally, with weapons) on your platform, you need to do something about it. This sounds like a police matter, and should be a question that is asked to, not by, the government. Not that any government understands that…
- sascha_sl 5y ago
  Unfortunately, it turns out that it is not too rare that these people doing something in between prepping and planned terrorism are police or military.
- Milner08 5y ago

kybernetyk 5y ago

yeah, that's going to work. just like outlawing porn sites that wouldn't use a german age verification system ;)

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
iPhone users have no sideloading capabilities and for androids you need to be at least a bit tech savvy. speaking only for mobile access if telegram gets dropped from the app stores it would shrink the user base.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- BurningPenguin 5y ago
  It is possible for iPhone. But as you say, you need to be tech savvy for that.

iqanq 5y ago

On an unrelated note - Telegram is already heavily censored on iPhones because of app store policies and the team refuses to put out an uncensored IPA file that we can sideload to our phones. If someone from the team reads this (I doubt it, since they are very disconnected from western media) please consider it. You already do it for Android!

throwawayacc2 5y ago
Out of curiosity what do you mean by censored? Are there groups that cannot be listed on the iphone app?
- iqanq 5y ago
  Exactly, channels, groups, and bots.
  - throwawayacc2 5y ago
    Interesting I had no idea. So, there’s groups that would work on the web client presumably but not the app. What happens if you join that group using your browser and attempt to see it in the app?
    - iqanq 5y ago
      When you tap on the group, instead of the contents, you see a message like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Telegram_Messenger_for_iOS_blocks_pornographic_content.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Telegram... The exact message you see is "Unfortunately, this channel couldn't be displayed on your device.". It doesn't say anything about the app store because apple policies don't allow apps to say that contents are censored because of apple guidelines.
      - throwawayacc2 5y ago
        Holy shit! This is crazy!

estranhosidade 5y ago

We are also having this discussion here in Brazil, some supreme court minister is all fussy and triggered because telegram doesn't bans ""misinformation"" and ""hate speech"".

elforce002 5y ago
What about whatsapp?

odiroot 5y ago

The collective panic and Luddism about Telegram in Germany is really scary. I watch Tagesschau (probably most respected news show) every evening. Any time Telegram is mentioned it's always being attacked, as if it's only purpose was to enable crime and terrorism.

guerrilla 5y ago
> Tagesschau Can you give me a date to look for an example in? I haven't see that yet.
- bijant 5y ago
  https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/funk/todesdrohungen-telegram-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/funk/todesdrohungen-t... „In Germany, alleged individual cases of calls for killing from the lateral thinker scene have been discussed for days. Research now shows that there have been calls to kill every day since mid-November.“ https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/telegram-verfassungsschutz-corona-leugner-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/telegram-verfassungsschutz-... „Radicalized Corona Deniers What can the state do about Telegram? Corona deniers use the Telegram messenger service to let their fantasies of violence run free. The state wants to take action against it. The new interior minister is facing a mammoth task.“ https://www.tagesschau.de/regional/nordrheinwestfalen/wdr-story-44973.html https://www.tagesschau.de/regional/nordrheinwestfalen/wdr-st... „North Rhine-Westphalia State security investigates corona demos: anti-Semitism in Telegram chats At a demonstration against the Corona measures in Kamp-Lintfort, a participant is said to have shown the Hitler salute on Tuesday. The Duisburg State Security is now investigating. The Duisburg State Security is investigating in the vicinity of the demonstrators who demonstrate as self-proclaimed "walkers" against the corona policy. The allegations are massive: It is about anti-Semitic hate speech. The focus is on chat groups that run via the "Telegram" service. The demonstrations are planned there.“ https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/br-recherche/querdenker-bundeswehrsoldaten-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/br-recherche/querdenk... „MAD is investigating two other soldiers Investigations are currently underway against at least two other Bundeswehr soldiers because they made radical statements against corona measures. Research by BR and tagesschau.de revealed this . One should pay close attention to the choice of words, according to a mountain hunter in a more than seven-minute voice message published on the Telegram messenger platform in December last year. The Bundeswehr is a "company" in which everything is done to "destroy us patriots who are trapped in the Bundeswehr". What is meant is the obligation to enforce corona vaccinations for soldiers.“

progx 5y ago

wongarsu 5y ago
You mean people who organize protests without permit (because they don't like the mandates for masks and minimum separation that would come with the permit), and when confronted with police claim they are just a couple hundred people who happen to be on a walk at the same time by pure coincidence.
- orbifold 5y ago
  I wouldn’t have a problem with it if it was just that. Police here deserve to be stress tested and in principle you can spontaneously declare something to be an assembly by naming someone the assembly leader. The issue is their message and the right wing / nazis that they are walking among them.
  - fileeditview 5y ago
    It's not a problem who is walking among them or what their message is. Anyone has the right to express his opinion. I am getting really sick of hearing this argument. No there is nothing in the constitution that would forbid you to protest peacefully alongside whoever. Also the message you are allowed to voice is not defined by you or some politician. If you have a problem with some of the protestants you can voice your concerns. But stop judging everybody participating.
    - orbifold 5y ago
      I judge them very harshly, they deserve no respect or sympathy. It should never be acceptable to walk with people that minimise the holocaust or talk openly about how they had talks with former army members of armed insurrection in their telegram channels (there are screenshots to prove that). They chose "Reichsprogrom Nacht" of all days to do a candle procession through Heidelberg for instance, with known Neo-Nazis in their ranks. But yeah they should be free to continue to self-incriminate themselves on Telegram and elsewhere. It is not like they are some kind of sophisticated state level threat.

uniqueuid 5y ago

Ok, a lot of the points raised here come up all the time; maybe it helps if I summarize some more of them: - Argument: States cannot ban/close platforms - sure they can, as soon as you kick an app off the app store it's over for most of the users. That's a severe step though, and could be legally contested; my personal opinion is that it's realistic a court could deem a complete shutdown unconstitutional. - Argument: This is censorship - not really, censorship in the German legal context means pre-control of messages before dissemination. The deal here is about implementing measures to follow German laws. Of course, in a wider sense, this is some sort of censorship mechanism which has some technical similarity with other infrastructures such as those in china. But that's the tradeoff in Germany - it's restricting free speech to protect pro-democratic elements. Whether that works or not is going to be an important question in the next years.

tux3 5y ago
>This is censorship - not really, censorship in the German legal context [...] Censorship, and the legal concept of censorship, are such very different things that using one as the response to the other is silly! The local lawmaker's definition of censorship in a legal context, when transposed in a non-legal discussion, is just one country's opinion, not an authoritative answer to whether something is censorship.
- brazzy 5y ago
  What is the authoritative answer then?
- uniqueuid 5y ago
  I'm not sure I follow - the definition of censorship is in some way the most important question here. It's absolutely vital to understand that prohibiting some speech has been a core feature of Germany's democracy since 1945. At the same time, the public use of the word "censorship" has diluted so much (especially online) that it's hardly useful. So I'd argue that it totally makes sense to try and define what we're talking about, and how and why the state intervenes.

EGreg 5y ago

Another example of how centralized messengers are more vulnerable than decentralized, end-to-end encrypted networks, where anyone can run a client. To clarify how regular people could get access to a client… any https website could host a front end widget, for instance. Easy delivery via web browser (which is general-purpose enough that it can’t ban all possible widgets and hard to ban).

throw8932894 5y ago

Where is antifa when you need them :)

VLM 5y ago

"I want to ban the other guy's political speech" is business as usual for centuries even in the "free" west. Whats new is "I want to band all criticism of my religion", that aspect is new for the "free" west.

lampe3 5y ago
So leaking addresses of politicians you don't like and calling on your day by day getting more aggressive and extreme far right telegram group is okay for you?
- disgu 5y ago
  This is just another version of the "so you don't care about the children?" argument.
- wreath 5y ago
  and do you think if the stupid government shuts off Telegram, these groups will cease their activity and change their minds?

oleg_antonyan 5y ago

They tried to block it in Russia in 2018. And failed miserably. Blocking entire subnets, millions of IP addresses on AWS, DigitalOcean and other providers, but Telegram servers can hope between different instances, so it ended up as wack-a-moll where thousands of innocents sites were blocked including some government-related services, banks, payment processing, my little startup project hosted on DO, but not Telegram

vetinari 5y ago
In 2018, domain fronting was a thing. Since then, it became more difficult, as the cloud providers prohibited it. However, to compensate, there's now encrypted SNI, so the situation is returning back to the 2018 one.

323 5y ago

Not just Germany, a lot of very respectable publications are worried about Telegram: > White supremacists openly organize racist violence on Telegram, report finds https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/white-supremacists-telegram-racism-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/white-supremacists-t... > Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot? Telegram and Signal, the encrypted services that keep conversations confidential, are increasingly popular. Our tech columnists discuss whether this could get ugly. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/telegram-signal-misinformation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/t... > A report this week found that the messaging app had emerged as a central hub for several conspiracy movements espousing antisemitic tropes and memes, including QAnon, as well as others on the extreme right promoting violence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-telegram-chat-apps/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-... > Far-right groups move online conversations from social media to chat apps — and out of view of law enforcement https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/telegram-warned-of-nurturing-subculture-deifying-terrorists https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/telegram-war... > In collaboration with anti-fascist research group the White Rose Society, the Guardian has tracked McLean’s activity through the rabbit warren of largely unregulated Telegram groups and found that he describes a vastly different version of his intentions. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where-freedom-meets-the-far-right-the-hate-messages-infiltrating-australian-anti-lockdown-protests https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where... > Why right-wing extremists’ favorite new platform is so dangerous. Telegram’s lax content moderation and encrypted chats make it a convenient tool for extremists. https://www.vox.com/recode/22238755/telegram-messaging-social-media-extremists https://www.vox.com/recode/22238755/telegram-messaging-socia...

larryflint 5y ago
0x_rs 5y ago
But none of the links you provided make an argument against Telegram itself, and you wouldn't find one anywhere. Encryption is free, and so is the ability to use any platform or communication method. It's pointless to argue against "lax content moderation", or "trendy radicalization platform of the month".. but I would expect no less from a website such as Vox. Perhaps those complaining currently about it in Germany may consider spending their time more wisely tackling the societal issues that cause such phenomena?

hamilyon2 5y ago

Does Apple comply is some judge rules that telegram app should be deleted from devices? Does Germany have legal and technical means to block the web version, web.telegram.org ?

taubek 5y ago

You shutdown one app, people move to another one. I don't see how could this work.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
This is how it works: The Government will shut down the apps that refuse to cooperate with the state until either they start to cooperate, or people migrate to the ones who already do cooperate with the state. Simple. Either way, the state wins, since not all chat apps are self-righteous enough to say no to a lucrative market on principle of refusing to cooperate with a nation state. They learned that from watching companies bend over backwards for the Chinese market.

hnbad 5y ago

This doesn't clarify what "shutdown" means. The last thing I heard was pressuring Google to remove it from the Play Store in Germany but this sounds like it could also mean a DNS block (which notably doesn't prevent traffic to the IP addresses).

blackbear_ 5y ago

Great, what am I gonna use on the pinephone now?!

amelius 5y ago

Makes sense. After closing down their nuclear plants, Germany is now completely dependent on Russian gas. They don't want to be dependent on Russian telecom as well.

dntRa 5y ago

This should remind people that the SPD ("Social" Democrats) is an authoritarian party that is nicknamed "the traitor party" for repeatedly backstabbing its voters. Schroeder has destroyed the welfare state, increased reliance on Russia's natural gas and got a job at Gazprom after he retired from politics. I'm sure that Putin will be very glad to shut down Telegram as well. Same as in the U.S., liberals in Germany are very happy to spread COVID-19 misinformation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/08/sotomayors-false-claim-that-over-100000-children-are-serious-condition-with-covid/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/08/sotomayor...

bpmayer 5y ago

Let's ban the good old mail service. There are many nasty and unpleasant people who use paper.

TacticalCoder 5y ago

550 MAU and growing fast. 7th most download iOS and Android app. All the "But WhatsApp, there's nothing to do vs FB, they are too powerful" have to admit Telegram is quite the success story.

mschuster91 5y ago

German here. While I do agree with her that something must be done about Telegram given that criminal activity including Holocaust denial and plotting murder of governors [1] can go on there without any moderation while requests for providing IP addresses and other user data are being routinely ignored by the service, she is falling into the same trap as many interior politicians do and thinks that the solution is primarily to put pressure on Telegram. It would be better to put police pressure on the ringleaders and participators of such Telegram channels. They are often enough known by clear name and march on the streets so they can be arrested there, but that requires actual effort from a police force that is already under suspicion of far-right infiltration. [1]: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/kretschmer-drohung-razzia-103.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/kretschmer-drohung-razzia-1...

beardedman 5y ago

You've had censorship in Germany for a very long time now, but I don't think people like to think of it as censorship. You (literally) can land up in jail for verbalising certain things. IMO, the scary part is how positively people view this, like it's a feature (and then proceed to talk about the CCP or Russia like they are stuck in the mid 1500's).

foepys 5y ago
> You (literally) can land up in jail for verbalising certain things. Go to the US, go to a police officer, and just tell them you want to kill the President. Watch what happens. There is no such thing as absolute free speech, even in the US.
- beardedman 5y ago
  Do not confuse threatening bodily harm to a person with free speech - they are very different.