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It's hard to respond to some of the commentary here. We truly exist mentally on different planets. The West wants Telegram destroyed because the platform permit

It's hard to respond to some of the commentary here. We truly exist mentally on different planets. The West wants Telegram destroyed because the platform permits the sharing of information and ideas that are in opposition to Western domestic and foreign policy(Israel, Ukraine, China etc). This is in addition to the West not having a backdoor to Telegram and not having it's servers on Western soil. Why do you want your country to control what you can see, read or say? Why do you want your country to have access to your private thoughts and opinions? Stop being a coward and fight this fascist overreach. And spite yourself if you support it.

unsupp0rted 2y ago
> Why do you want your country to control what you can see, read or say? No no, I want my country to control what other people can see, read or say. Not me: I'm a good person.
- V-2 2y ago
  Nothing to hide, nothing to fear : )
  - stavros 2y ago
    When everything is illegal, nobody is innocent.
    - smoyer 2y ago
      Nice reference!
      - stavros 2y ago
        Reference to what? Didn't I just coin it?! Aw, it sounded so good, too...
        pcf 2y ago
        Not sure what you referred to directly, but GPT-4o gives me these two similar quotes: "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." - Tacitus (Roman historian) "Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime." - Lavrentiy Beria (head of Stalin's secret police)
        stavros 2y ago
        Ah yeah, the general sentiment was definitely "there are laws that everyone breaks every day, so they can always get you on something". Mostly because I remembered the anecdote about the USSR outlawing fax machines that no business could do without, so they could always charge any business with a crime.
        smoyer 2y ago
        I thought you altered the phrase spoken by the villain Syndrome in Pixar's "Incredibles" movie: https://youtu.be/GYmHYQPaHaw?feature=shared https://youtu.be/GYmHYQPaHaw?feature=shared
        stavros 2y ago
        Ah, no, I didn't even remember this, but it's close.
rfoo 2y ago
If you really want to start a flamewar you can also casually mention the fact that Telegram also gives CCP major headache cause they don't control it and it's actually popular (unlike Signal) in China.
- TMWNN 2y ago
  How is it not banned in China?
  - pcf 2y ago
    It is: https://www.mactrast.com/2024/04/whatsapp-signal-threads-and-telegram-banned-from-chinas-iphone-app-store/ https://www.mactrast.com/2024/04/whatsapp-signal-threads-and... Still possible to access with VPNs, though.
  - thenthenthen 2y ago
    Telegram is totally blocked in China
- hnpolicestate 2y ago
  I can't comprehend how ensuring people other than me can read, see and talk about whatever they want is starting a flamewar. Like I said, I just exist mentally on another planet. Maybe universe.
tuwtuwtuwtuw 2y ago
When your idea of a sensible argument includes things such as "but think about the children" or "stop being a coward" then I think you should reconsider how you communicate your thoughts.
RandomThoughts3 2y ago
Most of the people I know use Telegram to buy drugs. The main use of Telegram in France is supporting illegal activities. The page allowing you to discover channels in your neighbourhood was clearly designed to facilitate that. Telegram has basically no market share as a chat application here outside of that. You don’t see “the West” whatever that means go after WhatsApp, Signal or Matrix. That should tell you something.
- rfoo 2y ago
  What prevents people from using Signal or Matrix to distribute drugs, besides serious usability issues?
  - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
    Signal or Matrix don’t openly advertise channels next to you selling drugs from directly inside the application. Telegram does. The “people nearby” feature is literally “find me a dealer close by”.
    - rfoo 2y ago
      Or "find me a hook up close by", "find me the notification channel of a nearby protest" (mind you, this actually happened in Hong Kong in 2019). But yeah, what you said also makes sense. I don't use this feature as I don't really want to send my precise location to Telegram but I can imagine it being in someone else's usability complain against Signal, too.
      - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
        “find me a hook up close by” literally means “find me a prostitute nearby” which is also illegal here and is indeed present on Telegram. Considering how everyone reporting their actual experience with Telegram here is downvoted to death, it seems to really hurt some users to actually consider that maybe the reason Durov got arrested is because Telegram welcomes criminals with open arms and does absolutely nothing to moderate the platform.
exceptione 2y ago
You are distracting from the issue: when law enforcement infiltrate into criminal telegram groups (drugs, child trafficking etc), they are for once doing their fucking job by ordering the platform to give them all the details they collect, so that they can come after those criminals. If Telegram did actually prioritize private and secure communication, they would indeed be just a data pipe and nothing could be shared with law enforcement.
- diggan 2y ago
  > ordering the platform to give them all the details they collect, so that they can come after those criminals. What details are you assuming Telegram are sitting on, besides the data law enforcement already collected? Durov got arrested for insufficient moderation of public channels, so my guess is that law enforcement would be able to get exactly the same data as Telegram themselves sit on. But it's hard to get a full picture without it going to public courts, for now we can only go on what's being reported.
  - Arnt 2y ago
    So he was... but there's this coincidence... https://nitter.poast.org/RALee85/status/1827459553526448307#m https://nitter.poast.org/RALee85/status/1827459553526448307#...
    - twelve40 2y ago
      The person who wrote the text in the screenshot (a typical sensationalist "milblogger") most likely is not informed enough to realize that this software was written in Berlin, hosted in the Netherlands and its code is continuously audited and gate-kept by Apple which can throw them out of the Appstore for non-compliance with local laws any second. It has most likely survived for a whole decade in the West by cooperating from day 1; any data of interest is already being handed over to whoever is asking, otherwise they would have been banned from the stores many years ago. The only reason why it is still being used by the military is incompetence: believing the hype that it's "safe" and lack of alternatives.
  - 2y ago
lukan 2y ago
"Why do you want your country to have access to your private thoughts and opinions? " Anyone who does not want that, should stay away from Telegram in the first place - an app that stores all your private messages unencrypted for the company to read. All your interactions on any channel ever - all their data. All this is about is sharing that data with the western governments. The russian government already has it for example.
- miki123211 2y ago
  > The russian government already has it for example. With the situation in Ukraine being what it is, wouldn't they be cracking down on Telegram usage in their country if this were true? They don't seem to be doing so, and the usage seems to be quite high.
  - lukan 2y ago
    Why should they crack down on Telegram? They tolerate it, as long as the high profile channels are broadcasting pro russian points of views. (everyone above a certain viewer size MUST register with the state, that goes for any site)
    - ikt 2y ago
      He's saying why would Ukraine tolerate Telegram if it was so Pro-Russian? Since he's saying it directly leads to their conversations/data being handed directly to the Russians
      - lukan 2y ago
        I did not say Telegram is pro russian. Pavel Durov certainly isn't that much - but he still made a deal with them in order to be allowed to continue operating there. https://www.ft.com/content/b1e76905-29f2-4ac0-99e0-7af07cef280d https://www.ft.com/content/b1e76905-29f2-4ac0-99e0-7af07cef2...
    - twelve40 2y ago
      > everyone above a certain viewer size MUST register with the state, that goes for any site this is false, it's kind of funny you are using all caps to lie. Something that resembles what you described may happen in November, but doesn't exist yet.
lisnake 2y ago
Telegram's data centers are located in USA, Netherlands and Singapore
- hkpack 2y ago
  Why does it matter if staff with access to those servers are in Russia?
  - twelve40 2y ago
    who told you that?
    - hkpack 2y ago
      Telegram staff are all living in Russia, this is not even a secret.
      - lisnake 2y ago
        Core team members are living in Dubai
- schleck8 2y ago
  Hey, get away with your facts and logic. It distracts from OP's agenda.
sunaookami 2y ago
The ship has already sailed years ago. Suddenly, everyone is pro-censorship, you just have to say the magic words like "hate speech", "terrorists" or something with children. The media became a mouthpiece of the government instead of asking critical questions. It wasn't like this before and it terrifies me. The people will only see the damage once it affects them personally.
jorvi 2y ago
I think you are living on a different planet. I am pretty staunchly pro-privacy, but this arrest has little to do with > permits the sharing of information and ideas that are in opposition to Western domestic and foreign policy(Israel, Ukraine, China etc) It is about drug sales and extremism, that last one being about alt right / anti-vaccine crazies / terrorism, whatever else extremism du jour.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  Do you believe everything that is written down?
- ilumanty 2y ago
  If our democracy is as robust as our leaders advertise it, it should easily cope with extremism, anti-vaxxers and system opponents.
  - schleck8 2y ago
    This is about identity theft like selling credit card details, meth and child porn (telegram deletes 60 thousand such groups. Per month. It's a shitpile that attracts flies, evidently)
    - hnpolicestate 2y ago
      Sure. And Tik Toks attempted ban is about Chinese surveillance.
  - exceptione 2y ago
    If the rule of law is robust, we should abolish the police. You are very mistaken. Democracy requires defense. Everyone can have its own stupid opinion, but that is not the point. Actively sabotaging society via campaigns is something any sane democratic society should defend against (all western "social" media are relentlessly hit by troll bots and disinformation campaigns, funded by your favorite dictatorships like Russia and China). It is no wonder that Twitter for example got in the hands of Apartheid Musk. The paradox of tolerance, read it up. It is a __paradox__.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gloryjulio 2y ago
Didn't signal and WhatsApp support e2e encryption better and by default? Last time I checked didn't find telegram to be superior in the encryption space. That basically counters ur whole point

unsupp0rted 2y ago

> Why do you want your country to control what you can see, read or say? No no, I want my country to control what other people can see, read or say. Not me: I'm a good person.

V-2 2y ago
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear : )
- stavros 2y ago
  When everything is illegal, nobody is innocent.
  - smoyer 2y ago
    Nice reference!
    - stavros 2y ago
      Reference to what? Didn't I just coin it?! Aw, it sounded so good, too...
      - pcf 2y ago
        Not sure what you referred to directly, but GPT-4o gives me these two similar quotes: "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." - Tacitus (Roman historian) "Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime." - Lavrentiy Beria (head of Stalin's secret police)
        stavros 2y ago
        Ah yeah, the general sentiment was definitely "there are laws that everyone breaks every day, so they can always get you on something". Mostly because I remembered the anecdote about the USSR outlawing fax machines that no business could do without, so they could always charge any business with a crime.
      - smoyer 2y ago
        I thought you altered the phrase spoken by the villain Syndrome in Pixar's "Incredibles" movie: https://youtu.be/GYmHYQPaHaw?feature=shared https://youtu.be/GYmHYQPaHaw?feature=shared
        stavros 2y ago
        Ah, no, I didn't even remember this, but it's close.

rfoo 2y ago

If you really want to start a flamewar you can also casually mention the fact that Telegram also gives CCP major headache cause they don't control it and it's actually popular (unlike Signal) in China.

TMWNN 2y ago
How is it not banned in China?
- pcf 2y ago
  It is: https://www.mactrast.com/2024/04/whatsapp-signal-threads-and-telegram-banned-from-chinas-iphone-app-store/ https://www.mactrast.com/2024/04/whatsapp-signal-threads-and... Still possible to access with VPNs, though.
- thenthenthen 2y ago
  Telegram is totally blocked in China
hnpolicestate 2y ago
I can't comprehend how ensuring people other than me can read, see and talk about whatever they want is starting a flamewar. Like I said, I just exist mentally on another planet. Maybe universe.

tuwtuwtuwtuw 2y ago

When your idea of a sensible argument includes things such as "but think about the children" or "stop being a coward" then I think you should reconsider how you communicate your thoughts.

RandomThoughts3 2y ago

Most of the people I know use Telegram to buy drugs. The main use of Telegram in France is supporting illegal activities. The page allowing you to discover channels in your neighbourhood was clearly designed to facilitate that. Telegram has basically no market share as a chat application here outside of that. You don’t see “the West” whatever that means go after WhatsApp, Signal or Matrix. That should tell you something.

rfoo 2y ago
What prevents people from using Signal or Matrix to distribute drugs, besides serious usability issues?
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  Signal or Matrix don’t openly advertise channels next to you selling drugs from directly inside the application. Telegram does. The “people nearby” feature is literally “find me a dealer close by”.
  - rfoo 2y ago
    Or "find me a hook up close by", "find me the notification channel of a nearby protest" (mind you, this actually happened in Hong Kong in 2019). But yeah, what you said also makes sense. I don't use this feature as I don't really want to send my precise location to Telegram but I can imagine it being in someone else's usability complain against Signal, too.
    - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
      “find me a hook up close by” literally means “find me a prostitute nearby” which is also illegal here and is indeed present on Telegram. Considering how everyone reporting their actual experience with Telegram here is downvoted to death, it seems to really hurt some users to actually consider that maybe the reason Durov got arrested is because Telegram welcomes criminals with open arms and does absolutely nothing to moderate the platform.

exceptione 2y ago

You are distracting from the issue: when law enforcement infiltrate into criminal telegram groups (drugs, child trafficking etc), they are for once doing their fucking job by ordering the platform to give them all the details they collect, so that they can come after those criminals. If Telegram did actually prioritize private and secure communication, they would indeed be just a data pipe and nothing could be shared with law enforcement.

diggan 2y ago
> ordering the platform to give them all the details they collect, so that they can come after those criminals. What details are you assuming Telegram are sitting on, besides the data law enforcement already collected? Durov got arrested for insufficient moderation of public channels, so my guess is that law enforcement would be able to get exactly the same data as Telegram themselves sit on. But it's hard to get a full picture without it going to public courts, for now we can only go on what's being reported.
- Arnt 2y ago
  So he was... but there's this coincidence... https://nitter.poast.org/RALee85/status/1827459553526448307#m https://nitter.poast.org/RALee85/status/1827459553526448307#...
  - twelve40 2y ago
    The person who wrote the text in the screenshot (a typical sensationalist "milblogger") most likely is not informed enough to realize that this software was written in Berlin, hosted in the Netherlands and its code is continuously audited and gate-kept by Apple which can throw them out of the Appstore for non-compliance with local laws any second. It has most likely survived for a whole decade in the West by cooperating from day 1; any data of interest is already being handed over to whoever is asking, otherwise they would have been banned from the stores many years ago. The only reason why it is still being used by the military is incompetence: believing the hype that it's "safe" and lack of alternatives.
- 2y ago

lukan 2y ago

"Why do you want your country to have access to your private thoughts and opinions? " Anyone who does not want that, should stay away from Telegram in the first place - an app that stores all your private messages unencrypted for the company to read. All your interactions on any channel ever - all their data. All this is about is sharing that data with the western governments. The russian government already has it for example.

miki123211 2y ago
> The russian government already has it for example. With the situation in Ukraine being what it is, wouldn't they be cracking down on Telegram usage in their country if this were true? They don't seem to be doing so, and the usage seems to be quite high.
- lukan 2y ago
  Why should they crack down on Telegram? They tolerate it, as long as the high profile channels are broadcasting pro russian points of views. (everyone above a certain viewer size MUST register with the state, that goes for any site)
  - ikt 2y ago
    He's saying why would Ukraine tolerate Telegram if it was so Pro-Russian? Since he's saying it directly leads to their conversations/data being handed directly to the Russians
    - lukan 2y ago
      I did not say Telegram is pro russian. Pavel Durov certainly isn't that much - but he still made a deal with them in order to be allowed to continue operating there. https://www.ft.com/content/b1e76905-29f2-4ac0-99e0-7af07cef280d https://www.ft.com/content/b1e76905-29f2-4ac0-99e0-7af07cef2...
  - twelve40 2y ago
    > everyone above a certain viewer size MUST register with the state, that goes for any site this is false, it's kind of funny you are using all caps to lie. Something that resembles what you described may happen in November, but doesn't exist yet.

lisnake 2y ago

Telegram's data centers are located in USA, Netherlands and Singapore

hkpack 2y ago
Why does it matter if staff with access to those servers are in Russia?
- twelve40 2y ago
  who told you that?
  - hkpack 2y ago
    Telegram staff are all living in Russia, this is not even a secret.
    - lisnake 2y ago
      Core team members are living in Dubai
schleck8 2y ago
Hey, get away with your facts and logic. It distracts from OP's agenda.

sunaookami 2y ago

The ship has already sailed years ago. Suddenly, everyone is pro-censorship, you just have to say the magic words like "hate speech", "terrorists" or something with children. The media became a mouthpiece of the government instead of asking critical questions. It wasn't like this before and it terrifies me. The people will only see the damage once it affects them personally.

jorvi 2y ago

I think you are living on a different planet. I am pretty staunchly pro-privacy, but this arrest has little to do with > permits the sharing of information and ideas that are in opposition to Western domestic and foreign policy(Israel, Ukraine, China etc) It is about drug sales and extremism, that last one being about alt right / anti-vaccine crazies / terrorism, whatever else extremism du jour.

inglor_cz 2y ago
Do you believe everything that is written down?
ilumanty 2y ago
If our democracy is as robust as our leaders advertise it, it should easily cope with extremism, anti-vaxxers and system opponents.
- schleck8 2y ago
  This is about identity theft like selling credit card details, meth and child porn (telegram deletes 60 thousand such groups. Per month. It's a shitpile that attracts flies, evidently)
  - hnpolicestate 2y ago
    Sure. And Tik Toks attempted ban is about Chinese surveillance.
- exceptione 2y ago
  If the rule of law is robust, we should abolish the police. You are very mistaken. Democracy requires defense. Everyone can have its own stupid opinion, but that is not the point. Actively sabotaging society via campaigns is something any sane democratic society should defend against (all western "social" media are relentlessly hit by troll bots and disinformation campaigns, funded by your favorite dictatorships like Russia and China). It is no wonder that Twitter for example got in the hands of Apartheid Musk. The paradox of tolerance, read it up. It is a __paradox__.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

gloryjulio 2y ago

Didn't signal and WhatsApp support e2e encryption better and by default? Last time I checked didn't find telegram to be superior in the encryption space. That basically counters ur whole point