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Durov was notorious in Russia for refusing to cooperate with FSB (successor to KGB), too. I remember when FSB asked him to give access to protester communicatio

by kgeist 2y ago

Durov was notorious in Russia for refusing to cooperate with FSB (successor to KGB), too. I remember when FSB asked him to give access to protester communications on VK (in 2011 during mass protests), he mockingly responded with a picture of a dog with its tongue out (showing your tongue means "I won't give it to ya" in Russian culture). That's why he left Russia, because he felt he'd get arrested soon. Quite ironic that he ended up getting arrested in the "free world", not Russia. Telegram was also banned in Russia for a few years.

codedokode 2y ago
And my intuition is that Telegram is going to become banned in Russia soon, as Youtube is being banned now and Telegram is the last popular application where you can find the content about war, protests or elections that govt doesn't like.
- kgeist 2y ago
  Telegram has also large Russian pro-war communities, and it's extensively used by soldiers deployed in Ukraine for communication. If pro-war channels outnumber opposition channels (and they probably do), Telegram probably won't be banned as long the government has no alternative. The fact of Durov getting arrested could be also used for propaganda purposes (no free speech in the West).
- foverzar 2y ago
  > And my intuition is that Telegram is going to become banned in Russia soon It had already happened with extreme humiliation of responsible agencies. > as Youtube is being banned now It's not banned, it's throttled because google kept abusing backbone networks once their CDNs had started to burn down and claiming that this is totally fine and fixable with direct BGP peerings with ISPs (yeah, right) It works just fine on mobile internet connection where traffic shaping is an inherent feature and it only works like shit on broadband where ISPs are only capable of sending TCP RST once the queue is over the limit. > Telegram is the last popular application where you can find the content about war, protests or elections that govt doesn't like Clearly you are not in touch with people in Russia and have never actually seen their social media. Or just being dramatic.
  - codedokode 2y ago
    Do you have any confirmation for what you are claiming? E.g. the claim that all ISPs simultaneously voluntarily decided to throttle Youtube to reduce foreign traffic? It seems to me that you either don't know the details or are simply trolling. > It's not banned, it's throttled because google kept abusing backbone networks once their CDNs had started to burn down and claiming that this is totally fine and fixable with direct BGP peerings with ISPs (yeah, right) > It works just fine on mobile internet connection where traffic shaping is an inherent feature and it only works like shit on broadband where ISPs are only capable of sending TCP RST once the queue is over the limit. This is not true. The connections to googlevideo are throttled by government-operated DPI, not by ISPs. You can verify this by sending following request from a Russian residential or mobile IP address to a Russian hosting provider Selectel: curl --connect-to ::speedtest.selectel.ru https://manifest.googlevideo.com/100MB -k -o/dev/null The request above is not send to Youtube, it doesn't even leave Russia, but it will be throttled because curl uses "googlevideo.com" in SNI field in ClientHello TLS record. DPI detects the SNI and drops the packets. The download speed will be very low, in the range of kilobytes/sec. However, if you remove googlevideo.com domain from SNI and write curl https://speedtest.selectel.ru/100MB -k -o/dev/null Then the file will be downloaded at full speed, megabytes/sec. It is a request to the same host, to the same IP address, but it is not throttled anymore. Also the information about mobile connection not being throttled is outdated and incorrect. Nowadays mobile connections are throttled as well. The information that all ISPs voluntarily decided to throttle Youtube is implausible. Why would they throttle the speed to allow their competitors to lure away their clients?
    - foverzar 2y ago
      > E.g. the claim that all ISPs simultaneously voluntarily decided to throttle Youtube to reduce foreign traffic > The information that all ISPs voluntarily decided to throttle Youtube is implausible > Also the information about mobile connection not being throttled Why are you trying to build a strawman? That's not what I said. I've said "google kept abusing backbone networks" (e.g. IEXPs), which obviously means it's a matter of the Main Radiofrequency Centre, since it involves nation-wide infrastructure - not some "ISP volunteering". And I’ve never said that “mobile connection is not being throttled”. In fact, I am stating exactly the opposite, pointing out that traffic shaping is an inherent feature for a mobile ISP. In contrast to broadband, where no one bothered with deep traffic manipulation before, so an ad-hoc throttling solution (yes, typically simply reusing existing law enforcement integrations) works like shit. > This is not true. The connections to googlevideo are throttled by government-operated DPI, not by ISPs. You can verify this by sending following request from a Russian residential or mobile IP address to a Russian hosting provider Selectel: One does not need a synthetic test such as yours. One can simply try playing a video from the same browser, switching connection between broadband connected Wi-Fi and a mobile hotspot and notice that broadband doesn’t seem to be working properly, but mobile actually works, even if it’s not Full HD. How come? Does your hypothesis regarding “not by ISPs, but by government-issued DPIs” explain the variance in ISPs behavior? No, it doesn’t. Just as it doesn’t explain why “blocked” YT seems to be “blocked” completely different from your typical weed growers forum. It works differently from how you imagine it. > Why would they throttle the speed to allow their competitors to lure away their clients? Speaking of which, apparently some broadband ISPs are now trying to implement throttling properly to give them an edge over the competition: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6919868 https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6919868
llm_trw 2y ago
To slightly mis-quote the only good Soviet joke that came out after the fall of the USSR: The Communists lied to us about Communism, unfortunately they didn't lie about the West.
- cactusplant7374 2y ago
  I don’t get it.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    The USSR was a totalitarian hell hole which had nothing to do with what communism was supposed to be. It was still better than what happened to the USSR between 1993 and 2000 when the West won the cold war and dictated surrender terms.
    - kgeist 2y ago
      Nitpick: USSR was never officially a communist state, it was a "socialist" state. I remember the Soviet government had slogans like "we will build communism by 1980" etc. No one thought they already had communism. IIRC their idea was that, to build communism, you must have some kind of transitional state/ideology first. But something went wrong :)
baxtr 2y ago
So you don’t think that there a chance this could be cleverly staged?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kgeist 2y ago
  Anything is possible, of course. But without evidence, it'd consider it nothing more than a conspiracy theory.
  - baxtr 2y ago
    Is there evidence for the other theory?
timeon 2y ago
> Telegram was also banned in Russia for a few years. What has changed since then?
- codedokode 2y ago
  The procedures and setup for censoring the Internet were significantly improved; no need to go to the court, no need to exchange data with ISPs, black boxes with DPI are installed at every large ISP, compared to blacklists of IP/hostname hat were sent to ISPs before. I think this might become a future for most of the countries; China and Russia are just several years ahead.
- kgeist 2y ago
  IIRC the bans weren't successful because the Telegram client had a system which announced new servers/IPs via push notifications. So they easily evaded it. Plus, the agency responsible for the bans got a bad rep after accidentally banning lots of unrelated services, ruining random businesses in Russia. Maybe they also understood that if you can't defeat them, lead them. Currently, Telegram has a lot of pro-war, pro-Kremlin channels.
KennyBlanken 2y ago
> Telegram was also banned in Russia for a few years. And how exactly do you think it got unbanned? Their "encryption" used to use an in-house algorithm (in house algorithms almost always are vastly inferior to standard ones) and even today encryption stores the keys on their servers (in Russia...) and E2EE has to be enabled per-conversation by hand.

by kgeist 2y ago

codedokode 2y ago

And my intuition is that Telegram is going to become banned in Russia soon, as Youtube is being banned now and Telegram is the last popular application where you can find the content about war, protests or elections that govt doesn't like.

kgeist 2y ago
Telegram has also large Russian pro-war communities, and it's extensively used by soldiers deployed in Ukraine for communication. If pro-war channels outnumber opposition channels (and they probably do), Telegram probably won't be banned as long the government has no alternative. The fact of Durov getting arrested could be also used for propaganda purposes (no free speech in the West).
foverzar 2y ago
> And my intuition is that Telegram is going to become banned in Russia soon It had already happened with extreme humiliation of responsible agencies. > as Youtube is being banned now It's not banned, it's throttled because google kept abusing backbone networks once their CDNs had started to burn down and claiming that this is totally fine and fixable with direct BGP peerings with ISPs (yeah, right) It works just fine on mobile internet connection where traffic shaping is an inherent feature and it only works like shit on broadband where ISPs are only capable of sending TCP RST once the queue is over the limit. > Telegram is the last popular application where you can find the content about war, protests or elections that govt doesn't like Clearly you are not in touch with people in Russia and have never actually seen their social media. Or just being dramatic.
- codedokode 2y ago
  Do you have any confirmation for what you are claiming? E.g. the claim that all ISPs simultaneously voluntarily decided to throttle Youtube to reduce foreign traffic? It seems to me that you either don't know the details or are simply trolling. > It's not banned, it's throttled because google kept abusing backbone networks once their CDNs had started to burn down and claiming that this is totally fine and fixable with direct BGP peerings with ISPs (yeah, right) > It works just fine on mobile internet connection where traffic shaping is an inherent feature and it only works like shit on broadband where ISPs are only capable of sending TCP RST once the queue is over the limit. This is not true. The connections to googlevideo are throttled by government-operated DPI, not by ISPs. You can verify this by sending following request from a Russian residential or mobile IP address to a Russian hosting provider Selectel: curl --connect-to ::speedtest.selectel.ru https://manifest.googlevideo.com/100MB -k -o/dev/null The request above is not send to Youtube, it doesn't even leave Russia, but it will be throttled because curl uses "googlevideo.com" in SNI field in ClientHello TLS record. DPI detects the SNI and drops the packets. The download speed will be very low, in the range of kilobytes/sec. However, if you remove googlevideo.com domain from SNI and write curl https://speedtest.selectel.ru/100MB -k -o/dev/null Then the file will be downloaded at full speed, megabytes/sec. It is a request to the same host, to the same IP address, but it is not throttled anymore. Also the information about mobile connection not being throttled is outdated and incorrect. Nowadays mobile connections are throttled as well. The information that all ISPs voluntarily decided to throttle Youtube is implausible. Why would they throttle the speed to allow their competitors to lure away their clients?
  - foverzar 2y ago
    > E.g. the claim that all ISPs simultaneously voluntarily decided to throttle Youtube to reduce foreign traffic > The information that all ISPs voluntarily decided to throttle Youtube is implausible > Also the information about mobile connection not being throttled Why are you trying to build a strawman? That's not what I said. I've said "google kept abusing backbone networks" (e.g. IEXPs), which obviously means it's a matter of the Main Radiofrequency Centre, since it involves nation-wide infrastructure - not some "ISP volunteering". And I’ve never said that “mobile connection is not being throttled”. In fact, I am stating exactly the opposite, pointing out that traffic shaping is an inherent feature for a mobile ISP. In contrast to broadband, where no one bothered with deep traffic manipulation before, so an ad-hoc throttling solution (yes, typically simply reusing existing law enforcement integrations) works like shit. > This is not true. The connections to googlevideo are throttled by government-operated DPI, not by ISPs. You can verify this by sending following request from a Russian residential or mobile IP address to a Russian hosting provider Selectel: One does not need a synthetic test such as yours. One can simply try playing a video from the same browser, switching connection between broadband connected Wi-Fi and a mobile hotspot and notice that broadband doesn’t seem to be working properly, but mobile actually works, even if it’s not Full HD. How come? Does your hypothesis regarding “not by ISPs, but by government-issued DPIs” explain the variance in ISPs behavior? No, it doesn’t. Just as it doesn’t explain why “blocked” YT seems to be “blocked” completely different from your typical weed growers forum. It works differently from how you imagine it. > Why would they throttle the speed to allow their competitors to lure away their clients? Speaking of which, apparently some broadband ISPs are now trying to implement throttling properly to give them an edge over the competition: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6919868 https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6919868

llm_trw 2y ago

To slightly mis-quote the only good Soviet joke that came out after the fall of the USSR: The Communists lied to us about Communism, unfortunately they didn't lie about the West.

cactusplant7374 2y ago
I don’t get it.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  The USSR was a totalitarian hell hole which had nothing to do with what communism was supposed to be. It was still better than what happened to the USSR between 1993 and 2000 when the West won the cold war and dictated surrender terms.
  - kgeist 2y ago
    Nitpick: USSR was never officially a communist state, it was a "socialist" state. I remember the Soviet government had slogans like "we will build communism by 1980" etc. No one thought they already had communism. IIRC their idea was that, to build communism, you must have some kind of transitional state/ideology first. But something went wrong :)

baxtr 2y ago

So you don’t think that there a chance this could be cleverly staged?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kgeist 2y ago
Anything is possible, of course. But without evidence, it'd consider it nothing more than a conspiracy theory.
- baxtr 2y ago
  Is there evidence for the other theory?

timeon 2y ago

> Telegram was also banned in Russia for a few years. What has changed since then?

codedokode 2y ago
The procedures and setup for censoring the Internet were significantly improved; no need to go to the court, no need to exchange data with ISPs, black boxes with DPI are installed at every large ISP, compared to blacklists of IP/hostname hat were sent to ISPs before. I think this might become a future for most of the countries; China and Russia are just several years ahead.
kgeist 2y ago
IIRC the bans weren't successful because the Telegram client had a system which announced new servers/IPs via push notifications. So they easily evaded it. Plus, the agency responsible for the bans got a bad rep after accidentally banning lots of unrelated services, ruining random businesses in Russia. Maybe they also understood that if you can't defeat them, lead them. Currently, Telegram has a lot of pro-war, pro-Kremlin channels.

KennyBlanken 2y ago

> Telegram was also banned in Russia for a few years. And how exactly do you think it got unbanned? Their "encryption" used to use an in-house algorithm (in house algorithms almost always are vastly inferior to standard ones) and even today encryption stores the keys on their servers (in Russia...) and E2EE has to be enabled per-conversation by hand.