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Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

estranhosidade 5y ago
The article is written in German, but with a Google Translate you can understand the just of it. Apparently Telegram added a new blocking system based on phone numbers, sorta a geo-blocking thing, and people with German phone numbers registered on their Telegram accounts aren't able to access those blocked channels. Also, unlike the previous block this one applies even to the users who are using the app downloaded directly from Telegram site and not the iOS/Google Play version. The blocking happens after German minister of interior had a meeting with Telegram directors a few days ago.
- doowop 5y ago
  The headline of your post is very misleading since the linked articles headline translates to “Telegram blocks(!) channels”, not cencors. By mistranslating this to “censoring” you are using the language of those who are actively distributing fake news. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I hope that you’ll correct the title of the post.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  I never used Telegram. How do channels work? Does Telegram has that kind of visibility into what is happening in them?
  - pepesza 5y ago
    Telegram does not have any meaningful e2e encryption (apart from 1-1 on-demand stuff nobody uses). So yes, everything is visible to Telegram.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      "(apart from 1-1 on-demand stuff nobody uses). " It gets used. Because this secret chat does not save its history, it leaves no trace on the devive. So people who want to cheat on their partner, but know that their partner checks their mobile at times even installed telegram because of this feature (and they do not know what e2e means). Surprisingly many people have this motivation. So many, that I know of persons who got problems with installing telegram, because their partner assumed - it was for this reason.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      I don’t quite understand what the point of telegram is then? Is the only benefit it isn’t owned by Facebook?
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        There is no point in end to end encryption in public channels, so this specific criticism is not valid.
      - jeroenhd 5y ago
        > I don’t quite understand what the point of telegram is then? It's UX is far superior to any cross-platform competitor. On top of that, its client is open source and the servers have easy and free bot APIs. It also has channels, which broadcast your messages to followers and many secure competitors don't have such functionality. It's not encrypted, but as it turns out most people don't really care about that in practice. If they would, texting wouldn't be popular in places like the USA. That's probably why people go to Telegram instead of Signal, ease of use is more important than privacy for most, especially in group chats that are generally about what's for dinner.
      - theshrike79 5y ago
        Having E2EE in a large Telegram channel would be like having an E2EE Facebook group, subreddit or even a web forum. If something leaks, it's through users, not through someone listening in or MITMing the communication.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    Telegram has, as far as I know, no revenue model at all so they most likely are mining the heck out of the users and what they post.
    - tazjin 5y ago
      Telegram has ads as of a few months ago, because Durov can't personally fund it anymore at its current size. https://promote.telegram.org/ https://promote.telegram.org/
      - JaimeThompson 5y ago
        I haven't seen a single ad at all for some reason in the multiple groups I am in.
        frollo 5y ago
        At the moment, ads are only displayed in public channels with at least 1.000 users, so they are still pretty rare to come by (like, I use Telegram regularly and only see them every other day). Plus, I've heard that some clients aren't supporting them yet (even if Telegram's stance is that every client should), so maybe you'll never see them.
  - estranhosidade 5y ago
    As far as I understand: many people use Telegram channels as a sort of Twitter-like social media, since you can set the channel to publicly available and anyone with app can read what you wrote, and even interact with you through, like voting through giving your post an emoji or commenting on it (if you enabled comments).
  - frollo 5y ago
    Channels are extremely public, in the sense that you can access them even without installing telegram [1] and there are websites which can generate RSS feeds for all the posts of a channel or things like that [2]. So this is not exactly a private conversation we're talking about, more like the printing of broadsheets to be nailed to every other house's wall. [1] For example, this is a post in Telegram's own public channel https://t.me/telegram/167 https://t.me/telegram/167 [2] For example, this two: https://tg.i-c-a.su/ https://tg.i-c-a.su/ and https://rss.app/rss-feed/create-Telegram-rss-feed https://rss.app/rss-feed/create-Telegram-rss-feed
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Probably makes sense. I'm not super familiar with Telegram, but to know a channel is doing stuff that's against German law probably means that someone with access to the channel reported it to authorities. Germany is also one of those countries that blanket bans particular groups/parties in general, which the US didn't really do until after 9/11. Banning a group chat isn't much different.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > Probably makes sense. I'm not super familiar with Telegram, but to know a channel is doing stuff that's against German law probably means that someone with access to the channel reported it to authorities. Avocadolf's channels are public, you could access them on the Telegram web UI even without an account. The German government has tried to get the channel shut down for months now, after Hildmann fled the country and engaged in Holocaust denial (which is a crime here). The problem is that unlike all other major social networks, Telegram refuses to comply with German laws (in particular the NetzDG) and has refused to name a contact person for the authorities so that egregious violations could be stopped. I read an article that claimed the only form of contact between German authorities and Telegram used to be a bilateral anti-terror coordination with the US FBI, which makes sense given the common problem of radical Islamist terrorism.
    - Justsignedup 5y ago
      The challenge with Telegram is that it has server costs, but it has no income cash flow. They're experimenting. But overall its 100% investment money. And so if they cannot be tried criminally, there's no business loss if they can't take German cash. This is obviously an issue with Facebook who cares about cash quite a bit, or Reddit, or whatever. But not Telegram. So yeah. My guess is that at this point Germany is saying that this could fall into the criminal side of things, at which point Telegram would care.
      - tpoacher 5y ago
        I need a huge fact-check on this, but I seem to remember that while the "no cash flow" statement is trivially true, in practice isn't the investment capital already enough to cover several decades of funding?
- t0bia_s 5y ago
  Another reason to use Element (Matrix), where phone number is not required.
  - Arnt 5y ago
    Does Matrix have groups like Telegram's? I thought Matrix was just a messenger app.
    - ls15 5y ago
      Matrix has "rooms".
      - Arnt 5y ago
        Do rooms work like a blog/feeds/readers? I thought they were more like Signal's groups.
        ls15 5y ago
        I think threaded discussions are planned, but so far it is only for linear discussions.
        Arnt 5y ago
        That's very different from the relevant Telegram groups. Those function more like a blog on the web — non-subscribers can search for them, only the group's owner(s) can post, and everyone else can just read. And they work for very large audiences, 100k readers is no problem.
        ls15 5y ago
        I see. With matrix rooms it is possible to set permissions in a way that only the owner can send messages in that room. There are also large(-ish) rooms, such as #/room/#matrix:matrix.org with > 30k users, but I think threaded discussions would allow for a functionality that resembles a blog where subscribers can comment on articles. And there is a preview functionality that technically allows users to read public rooms without being subscribed. Of course Telegram is quite a bit more polished and fun to use than element or other matrix clients so far.
- kyberias 5y ago
  Gist of it.
- viktorcode 5y ago
  Telegram blocked calls to violence before, so technically it's nothing new.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Well telegram has to abide by German law, otherwise authorities will seize all their assets in Germany (and maybe even Europe?) and shut them down and sue them international court for ignoring the will of a Nation. I don't think Telegram had much choice in the matter. Thanks for the summary.
GamerUncle 5y ago
As always German laws are a mess and they want to bend freedom. Anyway change to signal it was always the superior option.
- mccorrinall 5y ago
  Does signal have one-to-many communication? (like telegram channels)
  - i67vw3 5y ago
    Signal has groups, telegram has groups and channels. Signal has normal groups like WhatsApp, where you configure the settings so that only admins can send messages, then it might slightly become like telegram channels. Telegram is probably the only tech in world, which has this unique mechanism of communicating. Cloud backup, groups/channels, anonymous usernames, e2e encryption feature (1 to 1, not by default), censorship resistance more than other messaging/social media companies, all bundled together.
  - Canada 5y ago
    Not in a way that achieves the same purpose as Telegram. Telegram is like Twitter, which is well suited for interaction with people you don't know. No wasted effort on security since everyone is speaking in public anyway. Signal groups are poor at that. The work required to encrypt messages increases with group members. People don't want to show their phone numbers in large public groups, and Signal also lacks the group admin/moderation options necessary to handle many hundreds or thousands of members.
    - mccorrinall 5y ago
      Then I don't think that Signal is a viable alternative in this case. Atilla Hildemann used his channel as a one-to-many broadcast. He doesn't want a group chat.
- fsflover 5y ago
  Signal is just another centralized walled garden. Expect the same happening there.
jevoten 5y ago
Avoid censorship with this one weird trick: Print the information in a book, and put it in a library, or even on a school curriculum, if you can. If anyone tries to remove the book, then we are back to the dark ages of book banning or even burning. You know who else burned books, right? On the other hand, if the book is prevented from being published or stocked in the first place, if school or public libraries simply refuse to carry it, teachers don't assign it, or if the information is not in book form, nobody cares.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Germany bans things like Holocaust denial and certain things about far right political parties. It’s not the American way but I’m quite ok with Germany doing this.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
  - YEwSdObPQT 5y ago
    > It’s not the American way but I’m quite ok with Germany doing this. Why? Germany has literally criminalised thinking the wrong things and denies people to associate freely based on the things that they happen to think. It doesn't stop those people thinking those things and it doesn't stop people from associating with each other.
    - brazzy 5y ago
      > Germany has literally criminalised thinking the wrong things, and denies people to associate freely based on the things that they happen to think. Yeah, like "all jews should be killed". Good thing. > It doesn't stop those people thinking those things and it doesn't stop people from associating with each other. It prevents such things from being normalized and makes it harder for them to be put in action. Yeah, I know what you learned in school that this is worse than actual mass murder, and that everyone should be allowed to advocate for mass murder so that they can be disputed in the "marketplace of ideas". In reality, what you get is echo chambers that lead people to believe that they're part of a majority who thinks that mass murder (of the right groups, of course) is good, and then some of them start to think that it's up to them to just go and do it. In reality, criminalizing thinking certain clearly defined wrong things protects the freedom of everyone.
VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
Why do the German people allow their government to do this kind of stuff? Do they want it?
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
  The stuff we are talking about is unconstitional in Germany so I guess yes we want it.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    To play devils advocate, both the constitutions of Germany and Japan were written by the United States and the other Allied Powers. We made sure to include restrictions that would otherwise not have had high enough citizen support to make it into an organically drafted constitution.
    - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
      Yeah, I know we are just the Germany GmBH. What an idiotic statement.
- GameOfFrowns 5y ago
- colechristensen 5y ago
  A lot of it is about banning Nazis. What do you think?
  - thgaFa 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
      No we are talking about real Nazis the stuff we are talking about is unconstitutional in Germany.
GameOfFrowns 5y ago
Telegram was lauded by our (Germany's) public broadcasting channels as an important tool for protesters to organize against the current regime in Belarus. They apparently do not like when it happens at home too.
- ausbah 5y ago
  there's protesting then there's Neo-Nazis protesting, I don't think Germany tolerates the latter
EGreg 5y ago
This is what happens when you have a centralized software. Germany can just get the app removed from app stores: https://voi.id/en/technology/114013/senior-german-official-asks-telegram-to-be-removed-from-app-store-and-play-store-accused-of-protecting-extremis https://voi.id/en/technology/114013/senior-german-official-a... And this is true of other centralized software: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/18/the-freest-platform-on-the-web https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/18/the-freest-platform-...
- sva_ 5y ago
  Hmm, but if your app was decentralized, they could still remove it from the app stores? Which would effectively prevent 95% of people from using it, probably.
  - EGreg 5y ago
    No, decentralized distribution is achieved for example when you have widgets hosted on many sites, which all have https so you're not sure what they're hosting for private visitors unless you create an account. It's hard to ban all those sites. Telegram actually has such widgets, but they prefer to rely on everyone downloading their main app. Moxie also complains that decentralized stuff is slow to change.
xfalcox 5y ago
Brazil supreme court is toying with the idea of banning Telegram before this years presidential election, as they were ignored by the Telegram team. I wonder if Telegram will adopt the same thing they did in Germany here in Brazil to prevent the ban...
kmeisthax 5y ago
Can't read German, but I'm going to assume the channels in question are full of neo-Nazis. If that's the case then this isn't anything particularly new; Germany's constitution explicitly denies freedom of speech to Nazis. I don't find this particularly objectionable on it's own; Nazis and neo-Nazis never believed in free speech to begin with. However, we should still remain wary of false positives or scope creep beyond this narrow carve-out.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "Germany's constitution explicitly denies freedom of speech to Nazis." Not exactly like this. You are allowed to speak your mind as a Nazi. You may say you are a Nazi and also say why you think they are superior etc. blablabla. You are not allowed, to wear certain symbols of NS times (swastika and co) and you are not allowed to deny that the holocaust happened and to glorify certain SS organisations.
  - sascha_sl 5y ago
    While it is not the constitution, but the criminal code, being a nazi without at least a basic veil of decency will get you jailed for publicly voicing your beliefs: Whosoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace: incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning an aforementioned group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population, or defaming segments of the population, shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years. (§ 130 StGB Volksverhetzung) What you were referencing is §86 and §86a StGB.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      Well, in theory you can also go to jail, for saying you think the catholic church is a organisation of criminal pedophiles. (blasphemie paragraph) Does not happen in reality, though. There are Nazis in jail though for denying the holocaust (Horst Mahler) and for trying to incite violence (Landser). Not for expressing their nazi ideology, but for direct calls for murder.
sascha_sl 5y ago
Telegram is not "violating local laws". They are simply violating local laws.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Freedom is contagious. Can't have too much of that free thinking going on.
anthk 5y ago
Ah, yes, "censoring" neonazis. Eh no. The US would do the same with a Telegram/Snapchat group hosting AlQaeda supporters.
- xtracto 5y ago
  Right, wasn't an app called Parler banned just for giving a voice to right-wing people in the USA?
  - anthk 5y ago
    "Right wing". Nazis, not just plain conservatives.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
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frankfrankfrank 5y ago
This is clearly a bait and switch. If illegal actions are being perpetrated (e.g., death threats) then prosecute them. What this is all about is incremental conditioning towards normalizing censorship for "local law" violations … the same kinds of wanton "laws" conjured up by all the dictatorial regimes that all the western societies are quickly drifting towards. The German government has even tried attacking Gab, and regardless of what you may think of Gab, it is not a good thing if you do not want to find yourself one day having overslept living in a totalitarian regime. Just consider the implications of a foreign government taking action against a US website, wholly based in the USA, because it does not like things on the website that are no only legal in the USA, protected by the fundamental rights and laws of the land (Constitution), and are in line with all principles of human rights. It would be evil and unethical for the USA to, e.g., use the US government to attack a French website for disparaging things about the USA or even just negatively discussing actions and behaviors of Americans, just as much as it would be evil for anyone else to do that. We are entering a really dangerous situation where people are sleepwalking into supporting authoritarianisms, simply because they are conditioned to think they are part of the in-group. But that never lasts once the trap doors are slammed shut. You either support freedom, free speech, and human rights or you don't; there is no freedom and human rights light.
- zaarn 5y ago
  >This is clearly a bait and switch. If illegal actions are being perpetrated (e.g., death threats) then prosecute them. They are. The operators of the channel have an open arrest warrant for inciting hatred, denying the holocaust and death threats against public and private persons. > wholly based in the USA because it does not like things on the website that are no only legal in the USA, protected by the fundamental rights and laws of the land, and are in line with all principles of human rights. That changes when the "wholly USA" website is being used by German citizens, who are under jurisdiction. >It would be evil and unethical for the USA to, e.g., use the US government to attack a French website for disparaging things about the USA I's not about "disparaging things about the <country>", it's about running a website or service and not reacting to the fact that actual nazis are using the service. (You know with the eugenics and everything!) If you think stopping nazis is authoritarianism, then you'd be the same kind of person that lets authoritarianism bootstamp all over them in the name of freedom. (Paradox of Tolerance)
dang 5y ago
We have deep respect for German and other languages, but HN is an English-language site, so posts here need to be in English. That may require waiting until a good English-language article appears, but the more significant the topic is, the more (and sooner) this is likely to happen. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20english%20language%20site&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- 2-718-281-828 5y ago
  Das ist jetzt unsere Seite.
- stereoradonc 5y ago
  Use Vivaldi for auto-translate!
  - 2-718-281-828 5y ago
    Or rather Vivaldolf ... (just kidding, just kidding!)
- amai 5y ago
  Incidentally the German company DeepL is not only widely known for offering the best machine translation quality, but they also offer a plugin to translate websites: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/deepl-translate-beta-vers/cofdbpoegempjloogbagkncekinflcnj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/deepl-translate-be... Wunderbar!
- fulafel 5y ago
  This seems like an outdated policy now that people use machine translation to read foreign language sites as normal part of their web browsing flow.
cultofmetatron 5y ago
If they are holocaust deniers, As much as I love free speech, I can understand where the german government is coming from. we can't allow THAT to ever happen again. This will probably get flagged or downvoted to oblivion but meanwhile, no one bats an eye at the worldwide brushing under the rug of the Palestinian Apartheid.
throwaway2037 5y ago
My comment will appear abstract compared to the vast majority of free speech-related comments. I read the article translated into English: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&u=https://netzpolitik.org/2022/nach-gespraechen-mit-bundesregierung-telegram-sperrt-erstmals-kanaele-in-deutschland-wegen-lokalen-gesetzesverstoessen/&client=webapp https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&u=h... Then, I went to read this person's Wiki page:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_Hildmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_Hildmann He sounds like a reasonable person until 2015. I am not a psychiatrist, but this person sounds like they are descending into serious mental illness. How else do you go from a health food public persona... publish multiple cookbooks on the matter, the descend into some kind of 1980s "crazy person" talking about Holocaust denial, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, etc.? This person needs help from mental health professionals. Plain and simple. Please do not read this post as someone apologising for anti-semitic comments -- directly or indirectly. No, I reject (200%!) anti-semitic comments from _mentally healthy people_. This person has gone "over the edge"! Does anyone else feel the same as me? I hope his family can get him help. He should go back to healthy cookbooks and forget about all the crazy conspiracy theories...
deleted 5y ago
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amai 5y ago
The article also notes: The channels are only blocked, if you have a German phone number. If you have an Austrian phone number you can still read them.

The article is written in German, but with a Google Translate you can understand the just of it. Apparently Telegram added a new blocking system based on phone numbers, sorta a geo-blocking thing, and people with German phone numbers registered on their Telegram accounts aren't able to access those blocked channels. Also, unlike the previous block this one applies even to the users who are using the app downloaded directly from Telegram site and not the iOS/Google Play version. The blocking happens after German minister of interior had a meeting with Telegram directors a few days ago.

doowop 5y ago
The headline of your post is very misleading since the linked articles headline translates to “Telegram blocks(!) channels”, not cencors. By mistranslating this to “censoring” you are using the language of those who are actively distributing fake news. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I hope that you’ll correct the title of the post.
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I never used Telegram. How do channels work? Does Telegram has that kind of visibility into what is happening in them?
- pepesza 5y ago
  Telegram does not have any meaningful e2e encryption (apart from 1-1 on-demand stuff nobody uses). So yes, everything is visible to Telegram.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "(apart from 1-1 on-demand stuff nobody uses). " It gets used. Because this secret chat does not save its history, it leaves no trace on the devive. So people who want to cheat on their partner, but know that their partner checks their mobile at times even installed telegram because of this feature (and they do not know what e2e means). Surprisingly many people have this motivation. So many, that I know of persons who got problems with installing telegram, because their partner assumed - it was for this reason.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I don’t quite understand what the point of telegram is then? Is the only benefit it isn’t owned by Facebook?
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      There is no point in end to end encryption in public channels, so this specific criticism is not valid.
    - jeroenhd 5y ago
      > I don’t quite understand what the point of telegram is then? It's UX is far superior to any cross-platform competitor. On top of that, its client is open source and the servers have easy and free bot APIs. It also has channels, which broadcast your messages to followers and many secure competitors don't have such functionality. It's not encrypted, but as it turns out most people don't really care about that in practice. If they would, texting wouldn't be popular in places like the USA. That's probably why people go to Telegram instead of Signal, ease of use is more important than privacy for most, especially in group chats that are generally about what's for dinner.
    - theshrike79 5y ago
      Having E2EE in a large Telegram channel would be like having an E2EE Facebook group, subreddit or even a web forum. If something leaks, it's through users, not through someone listening in or MITMing the communication.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  Telegram has, as far as I know, no revenue model at all so they most likely are mining the heck out of the users and what they post.
  - tazjin 5y ago
    Telegram has ads as of a few months ago, because Durov can't personally fund it anymore at its current size. https://promote.telegram.org/ https://promote.telegram.org/
    - JaimeThompson 5y ago
      I haven't seen a single ad at all for some reason in the multiple groups I am in.
      - frollo 5y ago
        At the moment, ads are only displayed in public channels with at least 1.000 users, so they are still pretty rare to come by (like, I use Telegram regularly and only see them every other day). Plus, I've heard that some clients aren't supporting them yet (even if Telegram's stance is that every client should), so maybe you'll never see them.
- estranhosidade 5y ago
  As far as I understand: many people use Telegram channels as a sort of Twitter-like social media, since you can set the channel to publicly available and anyone with app can read what you wrote, and even interact with you through, like voting through giving your post an emoji or commenting on it (if you enabled comments).
- frollo 5y ago
  Channels are extremely public, in the sense that you can access them even without installing telegram [1] and there are websites which can generate RSS feeds for all the posts of a channel or things like that [2]. So this is not exactly a private conversation we're talking about, more like the printing of broadsheets to be nailed to every other house's wall. [1] For example, this is a post in Telegram's own public channel https://t.me/telegram/167 https://t.me/telegram/167 [2] For example, this two: https://tg.i-c-a.su/ https://tg.i-c-a.su/ and https://rss.app/rss-feed/create-Telegram-rss-feed https://rss.app/rss-feed/create-Telegram-rss-feed
pessimizer 5y ago
Probably makes sense. I'm not super familiar with Telegram, but to know a channel is doing stuff that's against German law probably means that someone with access to the channel reported it to authorities. Germany is also one of those countries that blanket bans particular groups/parties in general, which the US didn't really do until after 9/11. Banning a group chat isn't much different.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > Probably makes sense. I'm not super familiar with Telegram, but to know a channel is doing stuff that's against German law probably means that someone with access to the channel reported it to authorities. Avocadolf's channels are public, you could access them on the Telegram web UI even without an account. The German government has tried to get the channel shut down for months now, after Hildmann fled the country and engaged in Holocaust denial (which is a crime here). The problem is that unlike all other major social networks, Telegram refuses to comply with German laws (in particular the NetzDG) and has refused to name a contact person for the authorities so that egregious violations could be stopped. I read an article that claimed the only form of contact between German authorities and Telegram used to be a bilateral anti-terror coordination with the US FBI, which makes sense given the common problem of radical Islamist terrorism.
  - Justsignedup 5y ago
    The challenge with Telegram is that it has server costs, but it has no income cash flow. They're experimenting. But overall its 100% investment money. And so if they cannot be tried criminally, there's no business loss if they can't take German cash. This is obviously an issue with Facebook who cares about cash quite a bit, or Reddit, or whatever. But not Telegram. So yeah. My guess is that at this point Germany is saying that this could fall into the criminal side of things, at which point Telegram would care.
    - tpoacher 5y ago
      I need a huge fact-check on this, but I seem to remember that while the "no cash flow" statement is trivially true, in practice isn't the investment capital already enough to cover several decades of funding?
t0bia_s 5y ago
Another reason to use Element (Matrix), where phone number is not required.
- Arnt 5y ago
  Does Matrix have groups like Telegram's? I thought Matrix was just a messenger app.
  - ls15 5y ago
    Matrix has "rooms".
    - Arnt 5y ago
      Do rooms work like a blog/feeds/readers? I thought they were more like Signal's groups.
      - ls15 5y ago
        I think threaded discussions are planned, but so far it is only for linear discussions.
        Arnt 5y ago
        That's very different from the relevant Telegram groups. Those function more like a blog on the web — non-subscribers can search for them, only the group's owner(s) can post, and everyone else can just read. And they work for very large audiences, 100k readers is no problem.
        ls15 5y ago
        I see. With matrix rooms it is possible to set permissions in a way that only the owner can send messages in that room. There are also large(-ish) rooms, such as #/room/#matrix:matrix.org with > 30k users, but I think threaded discussions would allow for a functionality that resembles a blog where subscribers can comment on articles. And there is a preview functionality that technically allows users to read public rooms without being subscribed. Of course Telegram is quite a bit more polished and fun to use than element or other matrix clients so far.
kyberias 5y ago
Gist of it.
viktorcode 5y ago
Telegram blocked calls to violence before, so technically it's nothing new.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Well telegram has to abide by German law, otherwise authorities will seize all their assets in Germany (and maybe even Europe?) and shut them down and sue them international court for ignoring the will of a Nation. I don't think Telegram had much choice in the matter. Thanks for the summary.

GamerUncle 5y ago

As always German laws are a mess and they want to bend freedom. Anyway change to signal it was always the superior option.

mccorrinall 5y ago
Does signal have one-to-many communication? (like telegram channels)
- i67vw3 5y ago
  Signal has groups, telegram has groups and channels. Signal has normal groups like WhatsApp, where you configure the settings so that only admins can send messages, then it might slightly become like telegram channels. Telegram is probably the only tech in world, which has this unique mechanism of communicating. Cloud backup, groups/channels, anonymous usernames, e2e encryption feature (1 to 1, not by default), censorship resistance more than other messaging/social media companies, all bundled together.
- Canada 5y ago
  Not in a way that achieves the same purpose as Telegram. Telegram is like Twitter, which is well suited for interaction with people you don't know. No wasted effort on security since everyone is speaking in public anyway. Signal groups are poor at that. The work required to encrypt messages increases with group members. People don't want to show their phone numbers in large public groups, and Signal also lacks the group admin/moderation options necessary to handle many hundreds or thousands of members.
  - mccorrinall 5y ago
    Then I don't think that Signal is a viable alternative in this case. Atilla Hildemann used his channel as a one-to-many broadcast. He doesn't want a group chat.
fsflover 5y ago
Signal is just another centralized walled garden. Expect the same happening there.

jevoten 5y ago

Avoid censorship with this one weird trick: Print the information in a book, and put it in a library, or even on a school curriculum, if you can. If anyone tries to remove the book, then we are back to the dark ages of book banning or even burning. You know who else burned books, right? On the other hand, if the book is prevented from being published or stocked in the first place, if school or public libraries simply refuse to carry it, teachers don't assign it, or if the information is not in book form, nobody cares.

deleted 5y ago
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colechristensen 5y ago
Germany bans things like Holocaust denial and certain things about far right political parties. It’s not the American way but I’m quite ok with Germany doing this.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
- YEwSdObPQT 5y ago
  > It’s not the American way but I’m quite ok with Germany doing this. Why? Germany has literally criminalised thinking the wrong things and denies people to associate freely based on the things that they happen to think. It doesn't stop those people thinking those things and it doesn't stop people from associating with each other.
  - brazzy 5y ago
    > Germany has literally criminalised thinking the wrong things, and denies people to associate freely based on the things that they happen to think. Yeah, like "all jews should be killed". Good thing. > It doesn't stop those people thinking those things and it doesn't stop people from associating with each other. It prevents such things from being normalized and makes it harder for them to be put in action. Yeah, I know what you learned in school that this is worse than actual mass murder, and that everyone should be allowed to advocate for mass murder so that they can be disputed in the "marketplace of ideas". In reality, what you get is echo chambers that lead people to believe that they're part of a majority who thinks that mass murder (of the right groups, of course) is good, and then some of them start to think that it's up to them to just go and do it. In reality, criminalizing thinking certain clearly defined wrong things protects the freedom of everyone.

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago

Why do the German people allow their government to do this kind of stuff? Do they want it?

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
The stuff we are talking about is unconstitional in Germany so I guess yes we want it.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  To play devils advocate, both the constitutions of Germany and Japan were written by the United States and the other Allied Powers. We made sure to include restrictions that would otherwise not have had high enough citizen support to make it into an organically drafted constitution.
  - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
    Yeah, I know we are just the Germany GmBH. What an idiotic statement.
GameOfFrowns 5y ago
colechristensen 5y ago
A lot of it is about banning Nazis. What do you think?
- thgaFa 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
    No we are talking about real Nazis the stuff we are talking about is unconstitutional in Germany.

GameOfFrowns 5y ago

Telegram was lauded by our (Germany's) public broadcasting channels as an important tool for protesters to organize against the current regime in Belarus. They apparently do not like when it happens at home too.

ausbah 5y ago
there's protesting then there's Neo-Nazis protesting, I don't think Germany tolerates the latter

EGreg 5y ago

This is what happens when you have a centralized software. Germany can just get the app removed from app stores: https://voi.id/en/technology/114013/senior-german-official-asks-telegram-to-be-removed-from-app-store-and-play-store-accused-of-protecting-extremis https://voi.id/en/technology/114013/senior-german-official-a... And this is true of other centralized software: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/18/the-freest-platform-on-the-web https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/18/the-freest-platform-...

sva_ 5y ago
Hmm, but if your app was decentralized, they could still remove it from the app stores? Which would effectively prevent 95% of people from using it, probably.
- EGreg 5y ago
  No, decentralized distribution is achieved for example when you have widgets hosted on many sites, which all have https so you're not sure what they're hosting for private visitors unless you create an account. It's hard to ban all those sites. Telegram actually has such widgets, but they prefer to rely on everyone downloading their main app. Moxie also complains that decentralized stuff is slow to change.

xfalcox 5y ago

Brazil supreme court is toying with the idea of banning Telegram before this years presidential election, as they were ignored by the Telegram team. I wonder if Telegram will adopt the same thing they did in Germany here in Brazil to prevent the ban...

kmeisthax 5y ago

Can't read German, but I'm going to assume the channels in question are full of neo-Nazis. If that's the case then this isn't anything particularly new; Germany's constitution explicitly denies freedom of speech to Nazis. I don't find this particularly objectionable on it's own; Nazis and neo-Nazis never believed in free speech to begin with. However, we should still remain wary of false positives or scope creep beyond this narrow carve-out.

hutzlibu 5y ago
"Germany's constitution explicitly denies freedom of speech to Nazis." Not exactly like this. You are allowed to speak your mind as a Nazi. You may say you are a Nazi and also say why you think they are superior etc. blablabla. You are not allowed, to wear certain symbols of NS times (swastika and co) and you are not allowed to deny that the holocaust happened and to glorify certain SS organisations.
- sascha_sl 5y ago
  While it is not the constitution, but the criminal code, being a nazi without at least a basic veil of decency will get you jailed for publicly voicing your beliefs: Whosoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace: incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning an aforementioned group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population, or defaming segments of the population, shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years. (§ 130 StGB Volksverhetzung) What you were referencing is §86 and §86a StGB.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Well, in theory you can also go to jail, for saying you think the catholic church is a organisation of criminal pedophiles. (blasphemie paragraph) Does not happen in reality, though. There are Nazis in jail though for denying the holocaust (Horst Mahler) and for trying to incite violence (Landser). Not for expressing their nazi ideology, but for direct calls for murder.

sascha_sl 5y ago

Telegram is not "violating local laws". They are simply violating local laws.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Freedom is contagious. Can't have too much of that free thinking going on.

anthk 5y ago

Ah, yes, "censoring" neonazis. Eh no. The US would do the same with a Telegram/Snapchat group hosting AlQaeda supporters.

xtracto 5y ago
Right, wasn't an app called Parler banned just for giving a voice to right-wing people in the USA?
- anthk 5y ago
  "Right wing". Nazis, not just plain conservatives.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 5y ago

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frankfrankfrank 5y ago

This is clearly a bait and switch. If illegal actions are being perpetrated (e.g., death threats) then prosecute them. What this is all about is incremental conditioning towards normalizing censorship for "local law" violations … the same kinds of wanton "laws" conjured up by all the dictatorial regimes that all the western societies are quickly drifting towards. The German government has even tried attacking Gab, and regardless of what you may think of Gab, it is not a good thing if you do not want to find yourself one day having overslept living in a totalitarian regime. Just consider the implications of a foreign government taking action against a US website, wholly based in the USA, because it does not like things on the website that are no only legal in the USA, protected by the fundamental rights and laws of the land (Constitution), and are in line with all principles of human rights. It would be evil and unethical for the USA to, e.g., use the US government to attack a French website for disparaging things about the USA or even just negatively discussing actions and behaviors of Americans, just as much as it would be evil for anyone else to do that. We are entering a really dangerous situation where people are sleepwalking into supporting authoritarianisms, simply because they are conditioned to think they are part of the in-group. But that never lasts once the trap doors are slammed shut. You either support freedom, free speech, and human rights or you don't; there is no freedom and human rights light.

zaarn 5y ago
>This is clearly a bait and switch. If illegal actions are being perpetrated (e.g., death threats) then prosecute them. They are. The operators of the channel have an open arrest warrant for inciting hatred, denying the holocaust and death threats against public and private persons. > wholly based in the USA because it does not like things on the website that are no only legal in the USA, protected by the fundamental rights and laws of the land, and are in line with all principles of human rights. That changes when the "wholly USA" website is being used by German citizens, who are under jurisdiction. >It would be evil and unethical for the USA to, e.g., use the US government to attack a French website for disparaging things about the USA I's not about "disparaging things about the <country>", it's about running a website or service and not reacting to the fact that actual nazis are using the service. (You know with the eugenics and everything!) If you think stopping nazis is authoritarianism, then you'd be the same kind of person that lets authoritarianism bootstamp all over them in the name of freedom. (Paradox of Tolerance)

dang 5y ago

We have deep respect for German and other languages, but HN is an English-language site, so posts here need to be in English. That may require waiting until a good English-language article appears, but the more significant the topic is, the more (and sooner) this is likely to happen. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20english%20language%20site&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

2-718-281-828 5y ago
Das ist jetzt unsere Seite.
stereoradonc 5y ago
Use Vivaldi for auto-translate!
- 2-718-281-828 5y ago
  Or rather Vivaldolf ... (just kidding, just kidding!)
amai 5y ago
Incidentally the German company DeepL is not only widely known for offering the best machine translation quality, but they also offer a plugin to translate websites: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/deepl-translate-beta-vers/cofdbpoegempjloogbagkncekinflcnj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/deepl-translate-be... Wunderbar!
fulafel 5y ago
This seems like an outdated policy now that people use machine translation to read foreign language sites as normal part of their web browsing flow.

cultofmetatron 5y ago

If they are holocaust deniers, As much as I love free speech, I can understand where the german government is coming from. we can't allow THAT to ever happen again. This will probably get flagged or downvoted to oblivion but meanwhile, no one bats an eye at the worldwide brushing under the rug of the Palestinian Apartheid.

throwaway2037 5y ago

My comment will appear abstract compared to the vast majority of free speech-related comments. I read the article translated into English: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&u=https://netzpolitik.org/2022/nach-gespraechen-mit-bundesregierung-telegram-sperrt-erstmals-kanaele-in-deutschland-wegen-lokalen-gesetzesverstoessen/&client=webapp https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&u=h... Then, I went to read this person's Wiki page:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_Hildmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_Hildmann He sounds like a reasonable person until 2015. I am not a psychiatrist, but this person sounds like they are descending into serious mental illness. How else do you go from a health food public persona... publish multiple cookbooks on the matter, the descend into some kind of 1980s "crazy person" talking about Holocaust denial, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, etc.? This person needs help from mental health professionals. Plain and simple. Please do not read this post as someone apologising for anti-semitic comments -- directly or indirectly. No, I reject (200%!) anti-semitic comments from _mentally healthy people_. This person has gone "over the edge"! Does anyone else feel the same as me? I hope his family can get him help. He should go back to healthy cookbooks and forget about all the crazy conspiracy theories...

deleted 5y ago

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amai 5y ago

The article also notes: The channels are only blocked, if you have a German phone number. If you have an Austrian phone number you can still read them.