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Because those providers cooperate with authorities and moderate their content to a fairly large degree?

by marcinzm 2y ago

whiterknight 2y ago
In other words, they give the government a cut of the power.
saintfrancis 2y ago
How does Meta cooperate with the authorities? Isn't Whatsapp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted?
- jsheard 2y ago
  Telegram is for the most part not end-to-end encrypted, one to one chats can be but aren't by default, and groups/channels are never E2EE. That means Telegram is privy to a large amount of the criminal activity happening on their platform but allegedly chooses to turn a blind eye to it, unlike Signal or WhatsApp, who can't see what their users are doing by design. Not to say that deliberately making yourself blind to what's happening on your platform will always be a bulletproof way to avoid liability, but it's a much more defensible position than being able to see the illegal activity on your platform and not doing anything about it. Especially in the case of seriously serious crimes like CSAM, terrorism, etc.
  - scotty79 2y ago
    If law enforcement asked them nicely for access I bet they wouldn't refuse. Why take responsibility for something if you can just offload it to law enforcement? The issue is law enforcement doesn't want that kind of access. Because they have no manpower to go after criminals. This would increase their caseload hundredfold within a month. So they prefer to punish the entity that created this honeypot. So it goes away and along with it the crime will go back underground where police can pretend it doesn't happen. Telegram is basically punished for existing and not doing law enforcement job for them.
    - Almondsetat 2y ago
      >I bet they wouldn't refuse Apparently, they have. Sorry for your bet.
      - scotty79 2y ago
        Maybe they didn't ask nicely. Or they asked for something else. There's literally zero drawback for service provider to provide secret access to the raw data that they hold to law enforcement. You'd be criminally dumb if you didn't do it. Literally criminally. I bet that if they really asked, they pretty much asked Telegram to build them one click creator that would print them court ready documents about criminals on their platform so that law enforcement can just click a button and yell "we got one!" to the judge.
        cbsmith 2y ago
        > There's literally zero drawback for service provider to provide secret access to the raw data that they hold to law enforcement. That's not true. For one things, it is expensive. For another, there's a chance people will find out and you'll lose all your criminal customers... they might even seek retribution. > I bet that if they really asked, they pretty much asked Telegram to build them one click creator that would print them court ready documents about criminals on their platform so that law enforcement can just click a button and yell "we got one!" to the judge. You seem to believe, without having looked at the publicly available facts of the matter, that the problem is law enforcement didn't say "pretty please". The fact of the matter is that they've refused proper law enforcement requests repeatedly; if anyone has been rude about it, it's been Durov.
  - c0mbonat0r 2y ago
    if its not not end-to-end encrypted, what does that mean? whats the method that govts access these messages?
    - mr_mitm 2y ago
      You can simply join those channels. Getting an invite is not hard, or even unnecessary, from what I hear.
    - ianburrell 2y ago
      End-to-end encrypted means that the server doesn’t have access to the keys. When server does have access, they could read messages to filter them or give law enforcement access.
  - hcfman 2y ago
    Slightly offtopic. Why would telegram have chosen to not make it e2ee like this? I'm trying to see the motivation for this?
    - int_19h 2y ago
      Because people generally want features like persistent chat history across all devices to "just work".
- marcinzm 2y ago
  You can report people and have their messages sent to Meta for review.
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  Meta seems to shy away from saying they don't look at the content in some fashion. Eg they might scan it with some filters, they just don't send plaintext around.
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
  Probably government portals that Meta provides
- raverbashing 2y ago
  Answering law enforcement letters, even if it's just to say that data cannot be provided, is some 80% of cooperation needed. Meta can provide conversation and account metadata (Twitter does the same - or used to do at least), or suspend accounts
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  Read the founder exit letter. whatsapp is definitely not e2e encrypted for all features. You leak basic metadata (who talked to who at what time). You leak 100% of messages with "business account", which are another way to say "e2e you->meta and then meta relays the message e2e to N reciptients handling that business account". Then there's the all the links and images which are sent to e2e you->meta, meta stores the image/link once, sends you back a hash, you send that hash e2e to your contact. there's so many leaks it's not even fun to poke fun at them. And I pity anyone who is fool enough to think meta products are e2e anything.
  - switch007 2y ago
    Exactly. Another case of a business hijacking a term and abusing it to describe something else.
  - KaiserPro 2y ago
    > with "business account", which are another way to say "e2e you->meta and then meta relays actually its a nominated end point, and then from there its up to the business. It works out better for meta, because they aren't liable for the content if something goes wrong. (ie a secret is leaked, or PII gets out.) Great for GDPR because as they aren't acting as processor of PII they are less likley to be taken to court. Whatsapp has about the same level of practical "privacy" (encryption is a loaded word here) as iMessage. The difference is, there are many more easy ways to report nasty content in whatsapp, which reported ~1 million cases of CSAM a year vs apples' 267. (not 200k, just 267. Thats the whole of apple. https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/pdfs/2023-reports-by-esp.pdf https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/pdfs/202...) Getting the content of normal messages is pretty hard, getting the content of a link, much easier. Its not signal, but then its never meant to be.
    - MertsA 2y ago
      iMessage is not on the same playing field as Whatsapp and Signal. Apple has full control over key distribution and virtually no one verifies Apple isn't acting as a MitM. Whatsapp and e2e encrypted messenger force you to handle securely linking multiple devices to your account and gives you the option to verify that Meta isn't providing bogus public keys to break the e2e encryption. https://engineering.fb.com/2023/04/13/security/whatsapp-key-transparency/ https://engineering.fb.com/2023/04/13/security/whatsapp-key-... For iMessage, Apple can just add a fake iDevice to your account and now iMessage will happily encrypt everything to that new key as well and there's zero practical visibility to the user. If it was a targeted attack and not blanket surveillance then there's no way the target is going to notice. You can open up the keychain app and check for yourself but unless you regularly do this and compare the keys between all your Apple products you can't be sure. I don't even know how to do that on iPhone.
- iamtheworstdev 2y ago
  isn't meta only end to end encrypted in the most original definition in so much that it is encrypted to each hop. but it's not end to end encrypted like signal.. ie meta can snoop all day
  - smolder 2y ago
    If a service provider can see plain text for a messaging app between the END users, that is NOT end-to-end encryption, by any valid definition. Service providers do not get to be one of the ends in E2EE, no matter what 2019 Zoom was claiming in their marketing. That's just lying.
- layer8 2y ago
  Supporting E2EE doesn’t imply a failure to cooperate. This is not the issue here.
- jstummbillig 2y ago
  In a number of ways, and probably all the ways that are required by law in your jurisdiction. Learn more: https://about.meta.com/actions/safety/audiences/law/guidelines https://about.meta.com/actions/safety/audiences/law/guidelin... Yes, WA messages are supposed to be e2e encrypted. Unless end-to-end encryption is prohibited by law in your jurisdiction, I don't see how that question is relevant in this context.
- option 2y ago
  don’t you have an answer now?
- znpy 2y ago
  > Isn't Whatsapp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted? It is supposedly end-to-end encrypted. And in a shallow way. Also the app is closed source and you can't develop your own. It's basically end-to-end-trust-me-bro-level encrypted.
  - zo1 2y ago
    I'm more disturbed by the fact that on HN we have 0 devs confirming or denying this thing about FBs internals wrt encryption. We know there are many devs that work there that are also HN users. But I've yet to see one of them chime in on this discussion. That should scare a lot of us.
    - Illotus 2y ago
      I find it pretty ridiculous to assume that any dev would comment on the inner workings of their employers software in any way beyond what is publicly available anyway. I certainly wouldn't.
      - zo1 2y ago
        Why not? If I think my employer is doing something unethical, I certainly would. That would be the moral thing to do. This tells me most of the people implementing this are either too-scared of the consequences, or they think what they're implementing is ethical and/or the right thing to do. Again, both are scary thoughts we should be highly concerned about in a healthy society that talks about these things. One other potential explanation: FB and these large behemoths have compartmentalized the implementations of these features so much that no one can speak authoritatively about it's encryption.
        mr_toad 2y ago
        It’d be quicker just to say when Facebook did something ethical.
        znpy 2y ago
        > That would be the moral thing to do. The simplest explanation: when peope start at facebook/meta they leave their ethics at the door on the first day in the role. It’s cynical, but does explain a lot: many people will pick the fat paycheque over their ethics any day, particularly in the US (where money is king)
- Almondsetat 2y ago
  What has E2EE got to do with it? If you catch someone who sent CP you can open their phone and read their messages. Then you can tell Meta which ones to delete and they can do it from the metadata alone.
- archerx 2y ago
  I find it funny that they claim to be “end-to-end” at least once they have censored one of my messages.
  - bananskalshalk 2y ago
    The receiving end shared your message with the administrators? E2e doesn't mean you aren't allowed to do what you want with the messages you receive, they are yours.
    - archerx 2y ago
      Nope, it didn't even arrive on their end, it prevented me from sending the message and said I wasn't allowed to send that. So they are pre screening your messages before you send them.
  - MertsA 2y ago
    For some trivial client side filtering that still makes it e2e encrypted.
- DLoupe 2y ago
  The chats are encrypted but the backup saved in the cloud isn't. So if someone gets access to your Google Drive he can read your WhatsApp chats. You can opt-in to encrypt the backup but it doesn't work well.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
unsupp0rted 2y ago
Reddit moderates itself so well that even half the legitimate posts get immediately removed by mods or downvoted by users to oblivion
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
  I've actually given up trying to post on Reddit for this reason. Whenever I've tried to join in on a discussion in some subreddit that's relevant(eg r/chess) my post has been autoremoved by a bot because my karma is too low or my account is "too new". Well how can I get any karma if all my posts are deleted?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - kemayo 2y ago
    Comment in subreddits without those restrictions for a bit. E.g. this list: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/wiki/index/newusersubs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/wiki/index/newusersubs/ I can see how it's frustrating, but the communities you're trying to post in are essentially offloading their moderation burden onto the big popular subreddits with low requirements -- if you can prove you're capable of posting there without getting downvoted into oblivion, you're probably going to be less hassle for the smaller moderator teams.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
      That's silly. I gotta go shitpost in subreddits I have no interest in as some sort of bizarre rite of passage? I'd rather just not use the site at that point.
      - hereyouare 2y ago
        Yet here you are posting on HN which does the exact same thing.
medo-bear 2y ago
There is a simpler explanation, those providers are controlled by Western governments (read US)
- squidbeak 2y ago
  There's a simpler explanation. Those providers make an earnest attempt to obey western law.
  - medo-bear 2y ago
    It's simpler, the US wants to control the narrative everywhere and in everything, just like in the 90s and 00s. Things like Telegram and Tiktok and to some extent RT, stand in the way of that.
mmis1000 2y ago
As far as I can see. CP is probably the fastest way to get a channel and related account wiped on telegram in a very short time. As a telegram group manager. I often see automated purge of CP related ad/contents, or auto lockout for managers to clear up the channel/group. Saying telegram isn't managing CP problems is just absurd. I really feel like they just created the reason for other purpose.
Aurornis 2y ago
This distinction gets lost in these discussions all of the time. A company that makes an effort to comply with laws is in a completely different category than a company that makes the fact that they’ll look the other way one of their core selling points. Years ago there was a case where someone built a business out of making hidden compartments in cars. He did an amazing job of making James Bond style hidden compartments that perfectly blended into the interior. He was later arrested because drug dealers used his hidden compartment business to help their drug trade. There was an uproar about the fact that he wasn’t doing the drug crimes himself. He was only making hidden compartments which could be used for anything. How was he supposed to know that the hidden compartments were being used for illegal activities rather than keeping people’s valuables safe during a break-in? Yet when the details of the case came out, IIRC, it was clear that he was leaning into the illegal trades and marketing his services to those people. He lost his plausible deniability after even a cursory look at how he was operating. I don’t know what, if any, parts of that case apply to Pavel Durov. I do like to share it as an example of how intent matters and how one can become complicit in other crimes by operating in a manner where one of your selling points is that you’ll help anyone out even when their intent is to break the law. It’s also why smart corporate criminals will shut down and walk away when it becomes too obvious that they’re losing plausible deniability in a criminal enterprise.
- kyleee 2y ago
  Is it illegal to offer legal services to undesirables and/or criminals?
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Yes. If you are directly aiding and abetting without any plausible attempt to minimize bad actors from using your services then absolutely. For example, CP absolutely exists on platforms like FB or IG, but Meta will absolutely try to moderate it away to the best of their ability and cooperate with law enforcement when it is brought to their attention. And like I have mentioned a couple times before, Telegram was only allowed to exist because the UAE allowed them to, and both the UAE and Russia gained ownership stakes in Telegram by 2021. Also, messaging apps can only legally operate in the UAE if they provide decryption keys to the UAE govt because all instant messaging apps are treated as VoIP under their Telco regulation laws. There have been plenty of cases where anti-Russian govt content was moderated away during the 2021 protests - https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-chat/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-chat...
asdf6969 2y ago
Why don’t they arrest telecom CEOs for allowing terrorists to have uncensored phone calls with each other?
- marcinzm 2y ago
  You do realize the police wiretap and get metadata from phone companies all the time, right? Not event counting Five Eyes stuff.
  - asdf6969 2y ago
    But why don’t they arrest them for allowing it to happen? Phone calls should be actively moderated to block customers who speak about terrorist activity.
    - marcinzm 2y ago
      You really should Google Snowden and PRISM at some point.
      - asdf6969 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - throwaway48476 2y ago
        Phone calls are transcribed and stored forever.
    - WickyNilliams 2y ago
      Because the telcos _cooperate_ with law enforcement. It's not whether the platform is being used for illegal activity (all platforms are to some extent, as your facile comment shows). It's whether the operator of a platform actively avoids cooperating with LE to stop that activity once found.
      - asdf6969 2y ago
rgreekguy 2y ago
For Reddit it is a bit documented how some power-mods used to flood subreddits with child porn to get them taken down. It was seemingly done with the administration's best wishes. Not sure if it still going on, but some of these people are certainly around, in the same positions.
- sharpshadow 2y ago
  That’s disgusting but certainly effective to take down something very quickly. I was very disappointed to hear that UFO related subreddits take down and block UFO sightings. What’s the whole point of the sub if they censor the relevant content.
  - hnpolicestate 2y ago
    This is unrelated to main thread but since you brought up UFOs and censorship. Isn't it a disgrace what Wikipedia has done to the trove of "list of UFO sightings"? Those listings were great and well documented up until about 2019 or so. They've been scrubbed heavily.
    - sharpshadow 2y ago
      Yes it is. I don’t recall when and if I check out the list of UFO sightings on Wikipedia but I’m very aware of the problem. In the English wiki it’s a group “Guerilla Skepticism” which dominates the field on esoteric content and much more. In Germany we have the same situation and very likely every language has the same issue. The bigger pictures is that the whole content from Wikipedia gets fed into the AIs and then it answers you practically the strongly moderates censored misleading content from Wikipedia. The very disappointing thing is that nobody can’t to anything about the mods in Wikipedia, they dominate the place.
      - hnpolicestate 2y ago
        I cam across this website probably in the mid 00's. It's still excellent but good luck finding it through a Google search. http://www.ufoevidence.org/ http://www.ufoevidence.org/

Because those providers cooperate with authorities and moderate their content to a fairly large degree?

whiterknight 2y ago

In other words, they give the government a cut of the power.

saintfrancis 2y ago

How does Meta cooperate with the authorities? Isn't Whatsapp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted?

jsheard 2y ago
Telegram is for the most part not end-to-end encrypted, one to one chats can be but aren't by default, and groups/channels are never E2EE. That means Telegram is privy to a large amount of the criminal activity happening on their platform but allegedly chooses to turn a blind eye to it, unlike Signal or WhatsApp, who can't see what their users are doing by design. Not to say that deliberately making yourself blind to what's happening on your platform will always be a bulletproof way to avoid liability, but it's a much more defensible position than being able to see the illegal activity on your platform and not doing anything about it. Especially in the case of seriously serious crimes like CSAM, terrorism, etc.
- scotty79 2y ago
  If law enforcement asked them nicely for access I bet they wouldn't refuse. Why take responsibility for something if you can just offload it to law enforcement? The issue is law enforcement doesn't want that kind of access. Because they have no manpower to go after criminals. This would increase their caseload hundredfold within a month. So they prefer to punish the entity that created this honeypot. So it goes away and along with it the crime will go back underground where police can pretend it doesn't happen. Telegram is basically punished for existing and not doing law enforcement job for them.
  - Almondsetat 2y ago
    >I bet they wouldn't refuse Apparently, they have. Sorry for your bet.
    - scotty79 2y ago
      Maybe they didn't ask nicely. Or they asked for something else. There's literally zero drawback for service provider to provide secret access to the raw data that they hold to law enforcement. You'd be criminally dumb if you didn't do it. Literally criminally. I bet that if they really asked, they pretty much asked Telegram to build them one click creator that would print them court ready documents about criminals on their platform so that law enforcement can just click a button and yell "we got one!" to the judge.
      - cbsmith 2y ago
        > There's literally zero drawback for service provider to provide secret access to the raw data that they hold to law enforcement. That's not true. For one things, it is expensive. For another, there's a chance people will find out and you'll lose all your criminal customers... they might even seek retribution. > I bet that if they really asked, they pretty much asked Telegram to build them one click creator that would print them court ready documents about criminals on their platform so that law enforcement can just click a button and yell "we got one!" to the judge. You seem to believe, without having looked at the publicly available facts of the matter, that the problem is law enforcement didn't say "pretty please". The fact of the matter is that they've refused proper law enforcement requests repeatedly; if anyone has been rude about it, it's been Durov.
- c0mbonat0r 2y ago
  if its not not end-to-end encrypted, what does that mean? whats the method that govts access these messages?
  - mr_mitm 2y ago
    You can simply join those channels. Getting an invite is not hard, or even unnecessary, from what I hear.
  - ianburrell 2y ago
    End-to-end encrypted means that the server doesn’t have access to the keys. When server does have access, they could read messages to filter them or give law enforcement access.
- hcfman 2y ago
  Slightly offtopic. Why would telegram have chosen to not make it e2ee like this? I'm trying to see the motivation for this?
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Because people generally want features like persistent chat history across all devices to "just work".
marcinzm 2y ago
You can report people and have their messages sent to Meta for review.
rich_sasha 2y ago
Meta seems to shy away from saying they don't look at the content in some fashion. Eg they might scan it with some filters, they just don't send plaintext around.
ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
Probably government portals that Meta provides
raverbashing 2y ago
Answering law enforcement letters, even if it's just to say that data cannot be provided, is some 80% of cooperation needed. Meta can provide conversation and account metadata (Twitter does the same - or used to do at least), or suspend accounts
1oooqooq 2y ago
Read the founder exit letter. whatsapp is definitely not e2e encrypted for all features. You leak basic metadata (who talked to who at what time). You leak 100% of messages with "business account", which are another way to say "e2e you->meta and then meta relays the message e2e to N reciptients handling that business account". Then there's the all the links and images which are sent to e2e you->meta, meta stores the image/link once, sends you back a hash, you send that hash e2e to your contact. there's so many leaks it's not even fun to poke fun at them. And I pity anyone who is fool enough to think meta products are e2e anything.
- switch007 2y ago
  Exactly. Another case of a business hijacking a term and abusing it to describe something else.
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  > with "business account", which are another way to say "e2e you->meta and then meta relays actually its a nominated end point, and then from there its up to the business. It works out better for meta, because they aren't liable for the content if something goes wrong. (ie a secret is leaked, or PII gets out.) Great for GDPR because as they aren't acting as processor of PII they are less likley to be taken to court. Whatsapp has about the same level of practical "privacy" (encryption is a loaded word here) as iMessage. The difference is, there are many more easy ways to report nasty content in whatsapp, which reported ~1 million cases of CSAM a year vs apples' 267. (not 200k, just 267. Thats the whole of apple. https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/pdfs/2023-reports-by-esp.pdf https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/pdfs/202...) Getting the content of normal messages is pretty hard, getting the content of a link, much easier. Its not signal, but then its never meant to be.
  - MertsA 2y ago
    iMessage is not on the same playing field as Whatsapp and Signal. Apple has full control over key distribution and virtually no one verifies Apple isn't acting as a MitM. Whatsapp and e2e encrypted messenger force you to handle securely linking multiple devices to your account and gives you the option to verify that Meta isn't providing bogus public keys to break the e2e encryption. https://engineering.fb.com/2023/04/13/security/whatsapp-key-transparency/ https://engineering.fb.com/2023/04/13/security/whatsapp-key-... For iMessage, Apple can just add a fake iDevice to your account and now iMessage will happily encrypt everything to that new key as well and there's zero practical visibility to the user. If it was a targeted attack and not blanket surveillance then there's no way the target is going to notice. You can open up the keychain app and check for yourself but unless you regularly do this and compare the keys between all your Apple products you can't be sure. I don't even know how to do that on iPhone.
iamtheworstdev 2y ago
isn't meta only end to end encrypted in the most original definition in so much that it is encrypted to each hop. but it's not end to end encrypted like signal.. ie meta can snoop all day
- smolder 2y ago
  If a service provider can see plain text for a messaging app between the END users, that is NOT end-to-end encryption, by any valid definition. Service providers do not get to be one of the ends in E2EE, no matter what 2019 Zoom was claiming in their marketing. That's just lying.
layer8 2y ago
Supporting E2EE doesn’t imply a failure to cooperate. This is not the issue here.
jstummbillig 2y ago
In a number of ways, and probably all the ways that are required by law in your jurisdiction. Learn more: https://about.meta.com/actions/safety/audiences/law/guidelines https://about.meta.com/actions/safety/audiences/law/guidelin... Yes, WA messages are supposed to be e2e encrypted. Unless end-to-end encryption is prohibited by law in your jurisdiction, I don't see how that question is relevant in this context.
option 2y ago
don’t you have an answer now?
znpy 2y ago
> Isn't Whatsapp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted? It is supposedly end-to-end encrypted. And in a shallow way. Also the app is closed source and you can't develop your own. It's basically end-to-end-trust-me-bro-level encrypted.
- zo1 2y ago
  I'm more disturbed by the fact that on HN we have 0 devs confirming or denying this thing about FBs internals wrt encryption. We know there are many devs that work there that are also HN users. But I've yet to see one of them chime in on this discussion. That should scare a lot of us.
  - Illotus 2y ago
    I find it pretty ridiculous to assume that any dev would comment on the inner workings of their employers software in any way beyond what is publicly available anyway. I certainly wouldn't.
    - zo1 2y ago
      Why not? If I think my employer is doing something unethical, I certainly would. That would be the moral thing to do. This tells me most of the people implementing this are either too-scared of the consequences, or they think what they're implementing is ethical and/or the right thing to do. Again, both are scary thoughts we should be highly concerned about in a healthy society that talks about these things. One other potential explanation: FB and these large behemoths have compartmentalized the implementations of these features so much that no one can speak authoritatively about it's encryption.
      - mr_toad 2y ago
        It’d be quicker just to say when Facebook did something ethical.
      - znpy 2y ago
        > That would be the moral thing to do. The simplest explanation: when peope start at facebook/meta they leave their ethics at the door on the first day in the role. It’s cynical, but does explain a lot: many people will pick the fat paycheque over their ethics any day, particularly in the US (where money is king)
Almondsetat 2y ago
What has E2EE got to do with it? If you catch someone who sent CP you can open their phone and read their messages. Then you can tell Meta which ones to delete and they can do it from the metadata alone.
archerx 2y ago
I find it funny that they claim to be “end-to-end” at least once they have censored one of my messages.
- bananskalshalk 2y ago
  The receiving end shared your message with the administrators? E2e doesn't mean you aren't allowed to do what you want with the messages you receive, they are yours.
  - archerx 2y ago
    Nope, it didn't even arrive on their end, it prevented me from sending the message and said I wasn't allowed to send that. So they are pre screening your messages before you send them.
- MertsA 2y ago
  For some trivial client side filtering that still makes it e2e encrypted.
DLoupe 2y ago
The chats are encrypted but the backup saved in the cloud isn't. So if someone gets access to your Google Drive he can read your WhatsApp chats. You can opt-in to encrypt the backup but it doesn't work well.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

unsupp0rted 2y ago

Reddit moderates itself so well that even half the legitimate posts get immediately removed by mods or downvoted by users to oblivion

mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
I've actually given up trying to post on Reddit for this reason. Whenever I've tried to join in on a discussion in some subreddit that's relevant(eg r/chess) my post has been autoremoved by a bot because my karma is too low or my account is "too new". Well how can I get any karma if all my posts are deleted?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kemayo 2y ago
  Comment in subreddits without those restrictions for a bit. E.g. this list: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/wiki/index/newusersubs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/wiki/index/newusersubs/ I can see how it's frustrating, but the communities you're trying to post in are essentially offloading their moderation burden onto the big popular subreddits with low requirements -- if you can prove you're capable of posting there without getting downvoted into oblivion, you're probably going to be less hassle for the smaller moderator teams.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
    That's silly. I gotta go shitpost in subreddits I have no interest in as some sort of bizarre rite of passage? I'd rather just not use the site at that point.
    - hereyouare 2y ago
      Yet here you are posting on HN which does the exact same thing.

medo-bear 2y ago

There is a simpler explanation, those providers are controlled by Western governments (read US)

squidbeak 2y ago
There's a simpler explanation. Those providers make an earnest attempt to obey western law.
- medo-bear 2y ago
  It's simpler, the US wants to control the narrative everywhere and in everything, just like in the 90s and 00s. Things like Telegram and Tiktok and to some extent RT, stand in the way of that.

mmis1000 2y ago

As far as I can see. CP is probably the fastest way to get a channel and related account wiped on telegram in a very short time. As a telegram group manager. I often see automated purge of CP related ad/contents, or auto lockout for managers to clear up the channel/group. Saying telegram isn't managing CP problems is just absurd. I really feel like they just created the reason for other purpose.

Aurornis 2y ago

This distinction gets lost in these discussions all of the time. A company that makes an effort to comply with laws is in a completely different category than a company that makes the fact that they’ll look the other way one of their core selling points. Years ago there was a case where someone built a business out of making hidden compartments in cars. He did an amazing job of making James Bond style hidden compartments that perfectly blended into the interior. He was later arrested because drug dealers used his hidden compartment business to help their drug trade. There was an uproar about the fact that he wasn’t doing the drug crimes himself. He was only making hidden compartments which could be used for anything. How was he supposed to know that the hidden compartments were being used for illegal activities rather than keeping people’s valuables safe during a break-in? Yet when the details of the case came out, IIRC, it was clear that he was leaning into the illegal trades and marketing his services to those people. He lost his plausible deniability after even a cursory look at how he was operating. I don’t know what, if any, parts of that case apply to Pavel Durov. I do like to share it as an example of how intent matters and how one can become complicit in other crimes by operating in a manner where one of your selling points is that you’ll help anyone out even when their intent is to break the law. It’s also why smart corporate criminals will shut down and walk away when it becomes too obvious that they’re losing plausible deniability in a criminal enterprise.

kyleee 2y ago
Is it illegal to offer legal services to undesirables and/or criminals?
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Yes. If you are directly aiding and abetting without any plausible attempt to minimize bad actors from using your services then absolutely. For example, CP absolutely exists on platforms like FB or IG, but Meta will absolutely try to moderate it away to the best of their ability and cooperate with law enforcement when it is brought to their attention. And like I have mentioned a couple times before, Telegram was only allowed to exist because the UAE allowed them to, and both the UAE and Russia gained ownership stakes in Telegram by 2021. Also, messaging apps can only legally operate in the UAE if they provide decryption keys to the UAE govt because all instant messaging apps are treated as VoIP under their Telco regulation laws. There have been plenty of cases where anti-Russian govt content was moderated away during the 2021 protests - https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-chat/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-chat...

asdf6969 2y ago

Why don’t they arrest telecom CEOs for allowing terrorists to have uncensored phone calls with each other?

marcinzm 2y ago
You do realize the police wiretap and get metadata from phone companies all the time, right? Not event counting Five Eyes stuff.
- asdf6969 2y ago
  But why don’t they arrest them for allowing it to happen? Phone calls should be actively moderated to block customers who speak about terrorist activity.
  - marcinzm 2y ago
    You really should Google Snowden and PRISM at some point.
    - asdf6969 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      Phone calls are transcribed and stored forever.
  - WickyNilliams 2y ago
    Because the telcos _cooperate_ with law enforcement. It's not whether the platform is being used for illegal activity (all platforms are to some extent, as your facile comment shows). It's whether the operator of a platform actively avoids cooperating with LE to stop that activity once found.
    - asdf6969 2y ago

rgreekguy 2y ago

For Reddit it is a bit documented how some power-mods used to flood subreddits with child porn to get them taken down. It was seemingly done with the administration's best wishes. Not sure if it still going on, but some of these people are certainly around, in the same positions.

sharpshadow 2y ago
That’s disgusting but certainly effective to take down something very quickly. I was very disappointed to hear that UFO related subreddits take down and block UFO sightings. What’s the whole point of the sub if they censor the relevant content.
- hnpolicestate 2y ago
  This is unrelated to main thread but since you brought up UFOs and censorship. Isn't it a disgrace what Wikipedia has done to the trove of "list of UFO sightings"? Those listings were great and well documented up until about 2019 or so. They've been scrubbed heavily.
  - sharpshadow 2y ago
    Yes it is. I don’t recall when and if I check out the list of UFO sightings on Wikipedia but I’m very aware of the problem. In the English wiki it’s a group “Guerilla Skepticism” which dominates the field on esoteric content and much more. In Germany we have the same situation and very likely every language has the same issue. The bigger pictures is that the whole content from Wikipedia gets fed into the AIs and then it answers you practically the strongly moderates censored misleading content from Wikipedia. The very disappointing thing is that nobody can’t to anything about the mods in Wikipedia, they dominate the place.
    - hnpolicestate 2y ago
      I cam across this website probably in the mid 00's. It's still excellent but good luck finding it through a Google search. http://www.ufoevidence.org/ http://www.ufoevidence.org/