A very objective article, actually, and goes well to explain how this request to block the "voting app" isn't at all as controversial as portrayed in the Western MSM:
> Second, this particular demand of the Russian authorities wasn't obviously unconstitutional, as they referred to a law that restricts campaigning after people start casting their votes. Laws against political campaigning while voting is underway exist in many countries and the Russian counterpart had been introduced a long time ago. Had we received a similar demand from any European country, we would have complied with it. On the contrary, had Russia or any other country demanded something that is in clear violation of human rights, we would rather face an outright ban of Telegram in that country than compromise our values.
Except that law does not apply for these elections that last several days https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4800223 The law allowing campaigning was passed in May 2021.
tangential and not against your point, but isn't this proof that relying on applications provided by private companies for politics and public sensitive matters, is the best way to end like this?
especially when the only way to get the app is through a bunch of privately held "stores"
A directly downloaded versions of the app for Android and Windows are much more relaxed on the censorship. For example, they are able to access adult content blocked on iOS version. But they were unable to access voting bot.
I kinda doubt that part. If he was in their good graces again I think we'd hear more about it But I think Russia is a much bigger market for Telegram than Iran was. It's where they started after all.
I'm pretty sure that'll play a part in it too. Easy thing to throw away 0.5% of your marketshare, another when it's 20%. Ps I made those numbers up :)
When Russia wanted some kind of encryption keys he could not hand over because they dont exist, Telegram was banned in Russia but people found ways to use it anyway. So I dont think Russia has anything to "force" Durov other than via Apple/Google. He doesn't live there or owns anything there and according to past posts of him and there are no Telegram servers there either.
+ The proxy stuff to circumvent Russia's ban is already implemented if they would block the IPs again.
It seems very likely that Apple/Google is actually the problem here. I encourage everyone to download the app from the website or F-Droid not form Google.
There is a sideloaded version of Telegram for Android which can be installed from it's website and even is able to auto-update itself. It allows access to content blocked on iOS. But it was unable to access voting bot.
I dont think bots have the flags for blocking only in some apps like channels and groups have.
The bot runs on someone else machine and telegram most likely just temporary disabled the token to disable the bot from communicating with the telegram bot API. This then ofc affects all front ends/apps.
Client was showing something like "this content is illegal" instead of bot answers. It is now showing the original answers instead of these placeholders, which means the data was always there, it was just replaced on the fly for accounts with Russian registration.
But Telegram doesn't distribute apps, they blocked a "user" related to the app from using their network.
The article does seem very reasonable, but I'd disagree that it's objective, since the author, Durov, runs Telegram and is writing to justify their actions.
Whether an app should block a bot/user when the app store blocks the bot app?
=> Whether an app / telegram with third party extension/bot ability would be considered as similar to an app store?
=> Whether a bot built on a private application ecosystem should be considered as an independent app?
that's another way to say subjective if you aren't willing to admit it. the whole point of objective/subjective is that its supposed to be POV neutral.
What if the request came from the EU or the US, to ban an account that was campaigning in local elections in violation of local election finance laws?
Note that the ban is not even permanent! It's only for the last 2 days of the 3-day voting window. Campaigning was supposed to have been illegal throughout the whole 3-day period.
But why do you think any justification is needed in the first place?
It's basically the same law as in many other countries. The only difference is that citizens of most other countries don't dare to do these tricks, because there are severe consequences for playing with election integrity in the Western world. For example, look at what happened with Dinesh D'Souza when he tried donating to a campaign of a friend more than what the law allowed, using another friend as a lame duck to make the donation to avoid personal limits.
The specific law application and that article are both bullshit.
Let's start with the law application. If you want to apply it like that, you'd have to remove every single positive post about every single candidate from the entire Internet.
In case of Telegram it is even more bullshit because unlike web browsers which (in a common folk sense) show what is available to public and therefore could be compared to public advertisement like a billboard, Telegram bot will only respond to a direct question (yes, I know technically there's no difference).
The specific case that is described in this post is the law to stop campaigning during an ongoing vote, which seems like a reasonable request. Why is Telegram getting held responsible for everything else that is wrong in this world, is not clear.
There is no law in Russia which forces him to ban that channel, and no concept of “silent days” anymore.
Russian authorities has NEVER asked Telegram to remove anything. They pushed Google and Apple to remove links to Navalny application from search and from Apple Store (and Apple removes it only for Russia users, btw, unlike Telegram removes it for everyone), and Telegram was absolutely never in the picture and never asked to do a thing publicly. Just search Russian authorities speakers. They never bring Telegram into the picture.
Durov shamelessly lies. He pretends his application is a speech freedom, but it is not.
When there was a Telegram channel posting information about Belarus policemen who torture their own people — they ban it. When there is still a channel where white men posting personal details of women and attack them — no action.
Why Durov lies?
Because after SEC issued a claim that TON is a security and killed TON as a project, he owed ton of money to investors, including American. He had a real risk of being sued.
Where did he find money to pay investors back? He found them in Dubai, Qatar and Russia. He issued Telegram bonds and buyers of those bonds are affiliated with Russia structures like VTB Capital bank or Russian Government investment fund named “Russian Fund of Direct Investments”.
Moreover, few years ago, Russian authorities tried to ban Telegram. There was a massive campaign against the application, but then all things I mentioned happened, and SURPRISE Russia officially removed Telegram from the list of inappropriate applications and stoped attempts to ban it. Even now after the election, Russia published a list of websites whom they are going to ban because they didn’t stop spread of Navalny information. There WhatsApp and Viber in the list. But no Telegram.
For me it sounds very very directly: Durov lies. He takes money from Russia government to cover his costs from TON failure and in return he, for example, bans Navalny Telegram Bot even while he a) wasn’t asked; b) Apple and Google wasn’t asked to ask Telegram; c) law he mentioned doesn’t exist anymore.
There is no more free Telegram. Remove it now and stay safe
The law that prohibits campaigning during the election is still very much there, just like in many other countries, just not one day in advance like it used to be - this is debunked in the other thread - https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4800223
Btw, strange you didn't quote any sources for your claim - just a claim.
> Russian authorities has NEVER asked Telegram to remove anything
Yes, he starts the article by saying "has to follow rules set by Apple and Google", so he is not even talking about the Russian authorities. Apple and Google have been well known for swiftly taking down the apps that they think are troublesome for them.
Finally, Telegram was a massive channel for Belarus protests - in fact, Telegram was probably the main coordination mechanism for those - have you ever heard about Nexta?
>and buyers of those bonds are affiliated with Russia structures like VTB Capital bank or Russian Government investment fund named “Russian Fund of Direct Investments”.
As far as i know, it's not true(meaning there are no signs/proof of that). It's entirely possible, durov does have connections in russian elite, after all he was the creator of vk.com russian most popular social network. Vk was owned by russian oligarchs most of it's life at least partly. At the end of durov involvement with vk, he had some harsh clashes with oligarchs/regime, but ended up making a deal(and got paid well, even if not as well as he should've been). So he certainly knows how to deal with them, but i seriously doubt he enjoyed it, so he must have been really desperate if he got in bed with them again.
The biggest promise of telegram was that it would become a point of entrance to a decentralized economy based on TON blockchain and it's masternode hosted services. If they succeed to launch and than move telegram itself onto ton masternode hosting, telegram would've become the greatest/freest/(and potentially most secure, if they would implement e2ee key synchronization) messaging service ever
End of TON project, ment an end of telegram's future as a not data harvesting company.
They created a very elegant scheme when through a fictional Arabic investment fund they put russian government money (Government fund invests into Arabic fund which invests into bonds). It is kind of Russian classic and they did it a lot in the last.
Nowadays Telegram Bonds are traded at Saint-Petersburg stock exchange and there are a lot of rumors that Durov attends a lot of private parties in Russia for kids of oligarchs.
I'm russian as well, and rbc.ru is not the most independent source at the time of publishing, but even according to them, RDIF(РФПИ) invested about $2mil, that's a drop in the bucket, and since it was secondary market, it proves nothing but active propaganda from both sides(russian government has an agenda to promote as well as telegram)
bonds being traded wherever they are traded isn't really a proof of anything as well, wouldn't be even if it was shares of a company, but as bonds it's not that much of an influence, especially if accumulating big share of them would cost a fortune.
As to rumors, i would love to see any of it, again it's entirely possible, after Telegram official's attendance of government pr public forum(will use the same source, but it was all over the internet https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/09/07/2020/5f0730bf9... ) it would be surprising if telegram isn't dealing with them in any way.
It's funny how standard business dealings of having subsidiaries and offshore investment vehicles are being viewed by the Russians as a "Russian classic" just because critical thinking overload. :-)
The article does not really describe anything controversial or out of the ordinary.
I'm sure many countries do similar investments and arrangements. For example, IDA Ireland has offices in the US, and runs ads on Bloomberg TV. How's RDIF that much different?
In my country, we use telegram to communicate, rather than WhatsApp or SMS. Older people might use Viber, but Viber is a total nightmare. Just having it installed, I get dozens of spam messages per week from shops where I’ve bought things.
SMS is very expensive here.
Comparing telegram to WhatsApp or other competing apps isn’t even worth doing - there is no other app as user friendly or as functional and well thought out as telegram. It’s niche features like scheduled messages are a Godsend.
During the events of Jan 6, I was very worried that Apple would pull TG from the App Store. Thankfully they didn’t, but it’s not white supremicist groups that they would be hurting - it’s ordinary young people in foreign countries.
do you think a lot of people would be willing to donate to telegram? what would be an average annual donation per user? I bet it would be a lot less than what big tech makes, and there is no reason to believe durov would settle for that
completely disagree, he is definitely focused on making telegram some huge IT project that would put him on the same level as great IT entrepreneurs of our time. The whole TON project was all about making tons of money from becoming the main beneficiary from first decentralized consumer economy. It's a mystery how he is going to achieve anything similar now, but that goal was so ambitious, it's unlikely he will settle for something as small as this
> When there is still a channel where white men posting personal details of women and attack them — no action.
I’m not familiar with the situation you are referring to, but I’m curious why you specifically mentioned the race of these men. How is their race relevant?
Telegram remains the only mainstream free speech platform on the web today, with the least amount of censorship and the most resiliency against being taken down.
there is matrix, the best option, both secure and reasonably well made(element and alternative clients), but it miles behind telegram in terms of UI/UX even though it's on par with whatsapp/signal/etc
The grandparent said mainstream and Matrix is far away from that. You _might_ count Signal, but its market share is still way behind and in an area with so many network effects, this is everything.
Is it? I just tried Telegram again today and something as basic as joining a public channel from the app itself (as opposed to clicking on a link) was seemingly unavailable, or at least hidden well enough that I was unable to find it.
Sorry but this is you first post here and what you claim doesn't make much sense.
He didn't have to pay back the TON investors because the deal included that if the network does not go live by a set date (and the reason isn't telegrams fault) he would return the remaining of the investment not the part used for the development. This is the risk the investors took and they lost. telegram itself only had to pay the sec fine which was peanuts for Durov.
Don't know anything about you other claims so I cant debunk but please post sources so we can check for our self.
While Telegram is seen as a "wild west" of free speech by many, its centralization and worrying lack of encryption for most "non-secret" chats is something to keep in mind when reading Durov's passionate claims.
Also, the optional E2EE encryption is way more limited (e.g., single-device, rather than having a key sharing mechanism) than most other, possibly more genuine, alternatives (Matrix, Signal).
I doubt many here are still under the illusion that Telegram has anything to do with security or encrypted messaging. (It's just too damn convenient for UX reasons.)
That's not the same as a "wild west of free speech", though. I have no idea how well they do on the front of censorship, they're way too intransparent an organisation for that, but the USA also sees itself as such and it is not encrypted. Secure protocols and censorship are two separate things, even if one (in this day and age) helps the other.
Signal made their server code closed source for over a year while they added a scam cryptocurrency coin that has a financial conflict of interest with the creator of the project. They claimed to be "open source" while this was happening.
More recently, they've had egregious bugs such as images being sent to random contacts in your list, an absolutely inexcusable error.
But the server code doesn't mean anything the most important thing is E2EE happen on device and the server is just a messenger. Signal is the most trusted app in authoritarian countries.
No it's not. When Belarus had it's internet blackout last summer, Telegram was the only option to communicate to the outside world. Multiple persons asked if Signal is going to do anything about it, like enable censorship circumvention but it was never addressed[1].
Matrix servers can be hosted by anyone and conversations are decentralized, i.e. can't be taken down easily.
the Matrix protocol is accessible to anyone understanding English and having access to the web.
It is even being worked on enabling P2P with Matrix, i.e. each client can spin up a local server that communicates with others (servers) via Bluetooth and other means of transports even if there is not a direct connection possible
but it shows that your argumentation to show that it wouldn't be is flawed, and it is certainly possible that more trust is put in Matrix than it is into Signal
I would pick encrypted Telegram over Signal anyday, but I believe that decentralized solutions with open source backends, like MaidSAFE, Freenet, and to some extent Matrix.org are the future.
> The average guy likely doesn't host for thousands of people
The python server already has trouble if you subscribe to large rooms. I'm all for promoting Matrix (it's a great project), but the default server has warts and nobody is served by trying to hide them.
Can confirm. I'm joined into Matrix HQ from a not-very-powerful VPS and a recent Synapse uses about 700M RAM and otherwise has no trouble handling it at all.
> Dendrite is their own project. Conduit is the project of another guy they don't get on with it.
Seems you've mixed something up. Dendrite is a matrix.org project, just like Synapse. Conduit is written by Timo Kösters who is currently employed by Famedly and is on good terms with both matrix.org and Element staff. They frequently cooperate.
Yeah, I agree. I am simply counting them due to their future plams to do E2E peer to peer networks.
What I would really LOVE to see is just decentralized backends that can be accessed via a growing number of https gateways by a widget on any website, and used to sideload code that will run apps and update apps.
That will be an uncensorable app store (unless you censor all websites, or sniff all https packets and block ones that seem like they follow this protocol).
If only Apple/Google would allow us the ability to run our own notification servers…
It's not.
It doesn't work with iOS in practice and requires you to verify each single session instead of just a the people to prevent MITM attacks.
Afaik it does not have any audit either
Here's my experience. I have three devices I use to connect to my XMPP server: phone (Conversations), PC and laptop (both gajim). Each one generates a keypair. I verified the public keys of PC and laptop by scanning a QR code using Conversations (phone). Conversations remembers all fingerprints as my own. Next time I meet a friend, they scan the QR code on my phone. They now have verified all three of my devices.
I find Telegram in this gray area as a messaging app like WhatsApp or Signal and public channels and groups app as Discord. Durov is passionate about Telegram encryptions when many Telegram users do not actually care of privacy and more about convenience and a way to keep update with may communities as Discord.
A website which would get blocked instantaneously. Russia has an extensive censorship toolset available. They've blanket blocked a whole range of Cloudflare IPs at some point because they wanted a certain website behind Cloudflare shut down and didn't care about the collateral damage.
Of course, such a block is easy to circumvent with a VPN, but if you need a VPN to access it then the service is essentially unavailable to non-techs, greatly reducing its effectiveness.
There is a website[0] and I don't know why they didn't just launch a similar web app. Running on Google's appspot.com, the website would probably be dealt with the same way the apps were dealt with. No big hosting company (Amazon, Google, OVH, you name it) wants to risk being banned from the Russian internet, after all. A TOR hidden service would probably survive attempts at censorship, but at that point the whole effort is probably not worth the effort because you're not reaching many people locking the information behind TOR.
If your adversary is happy to block arbitrary network requests, why do they need to get the app removed from the app store? Can't they just block all requests it makes?
He mentioned that Telegram used Google and Apple's notifications to push fresh ip addresses to the app. Russian authorities can't block notifications selectively to the Telegram app, only to all apps that use Google's and Apple's infrastructure.
They obviously could, but these days everybody uses CDNs and shared resources so they'd probably end up blocking a lot more than just this app.
For instance the app could well function completely offline if it embedded the list of candidates it supports, it which case they'd have to block all requests to the Google Play Store which would be rather heavy handed and unpopular.
At least we can sleep peacefully knowing that Tim Cook will make another million by improving the lives of oppressive governments thwarting change by knee-capping the only modern tool of communication.
I understand their choice, their hands were tied by the distributors; apple and Google. At least for Android phones they make it easy to sideload an apk so I'm little less empathetic on that end but for iOS, you're pretty much at the mercy of apple.
> First, without support from Apple and Google, any fight with a local regulator is lost before it starts ... Our website that hosts Telegram Web and the standalone Telegram app for Android would be blocked by local telecoms in a matter of minutes. Even existing users would lose access to Telegram once Apple and Google turn off notifications for the app (which are used not only to deliver messages to users, but also to distribute unblocked IP addresses and dodge censorship).
> Some users wish Telegram was 100% independent from everyone and could ignore Apple, Google and national laws of all countries. I also wish it was possible. But the reality we live in is different. I have warned the public many times of the danger that the Apple/Google duopoly poses for freedom of speech. And, as I wrote in August, the world is becoming more pro-censorship in general, with even democratic countries changing their definitions of free speech due to concerns of election interference from geopolitical rivals.
This is the main issue - BigTech have grown too big and have too much influence now on politics since the US decided to sub-contract intelligence gathering and surveillance to them (as Snowden revealed). The author is right that democratic countries are now increasingly becoming pro-censorship and have an anti-privacy attitude.
HN has a time limit on how long you can edit posts after they go up - its not special its for everyone. You'd know about it but HN also has terrible design in terms of telling users what the heck is going on.
Yesterday I could only make two posts on HN before HN temporarily banned me with the message "Please slow down. You are posting too fast." This kind of ban is only for a few hours. I don't know if this ban is automatically triggered or mod initiated but believe the trigger for it is when some comments of mine receive high upvotes and downvotes (perhaps "flagging" the comment as "controversial / inflammatory"). And I guess it is part of HN's moderation tactic to ensure quality of content, and while it is annoying sometimes, I don't see any conspiracy in it.
However, like you noticed, I do believe that some of my posts are targeted as part of the online marketing / "reputation management" that happens regularly all over the internet by BigTech. I am vocal about right to privacy, right to repair and need for government regulation of BigTech, and have noticed that if my posts on these subjects specifically mention Google, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon they are often downvoted (I once noticed a post go from 10 upvotes to 10 downvotes, in real-time, and that's when I realised what's happening).
(Anyway, HN doesn't like this kind of discussion as it doesn't add much value due to its speculative nature and it tends to distract us from the main topic.)
Occam's razor leads me to believe that it's organic behavior and not organized vote brigading. Perhaps employees or shareholders take opposition to negativity more frequently than not. Or maybe negative articles get posted on an internal company Slack and get extra attention.
I suppose they could hire a service that does the same as a form of brand management, but I'm more inclined to think that those in our profession have simply forgotten the importance of privacy and speech when they're being paid not to care.
What I noticed was that an attempt is made to keep the comment from gaining points and to keep it at 1 or 0 (this is what I meant when I said I saw a comment gaining points, and losing it just as fast). This is perhaps to ensure that vote brigading is not obvious.
Steve Jobs got us into this mess by trying to monopolize the iPhone processor (and only allowed the web to bootstrap his platform). Complete control can be strong armed by dictators, and our spineless capitalists will bend to their will.
The W3C needs to develop a standard for non-DOM, immediate mode painted, fully WASM apps that can access all of a device's hardware. Storage, cameras, network, GPS, multithreading, gyros, all of it. Native apps over web.
We need a web-based drive by app that we can run sandboxed and install without the Apple/Google duopoly, and the US, EU, and Asia need to mandate support.
Edit: downvoters, seriously, we need to talk. You're walking the evil line.
Also I don't think that DOM presents any problem to security. It makes no sense to cut DOM or JS engine from your sandbox. You can use Canvas/WebGL/WebGPU to access GPU and draw anything in browser window. You can use WASM to have good speed. Tech is already there, you don't need W3C for it and DOM or JS is not really in the way. Storage, Cameras, GPS, Mulththreading, Gyros are available for web apps. Everything is already there.
Web apps miss notifications on Apple platform, home screen installation via API on Apple platform, better integration with OS on Apple platform (not sure about Android), but probably you want your password manager to be native app anyway.
I agree with the spirit of your post; however, I don't understand why it needs to be drive-by, browser-delivered-and-run apps. It almost seems like you're proposing a cross-platform sandbox and app store, which I'm all for! but I'd like it to stay as far away from modern web browsers as possible.
Totally agree. Web apps are actually more efficient in the long run because there are so many apps people use infrequently and yet use storage and receive updates.
What's even the point in making native apps work over the web? Just use native apps, period. You can install native applications on most operating systems already (iOS notably lacking support for persistent "sideloading").
If you want, I'm sure you can cross-compile WASM into some kind of native application or even just leverage a WebView component to make your "app" an HTML page with just a <canvas>.
All of this is already possible today, and yet this problem still persists. Open access to your own hardware is important, but it doesn't solve political problems like these. Web applications can quickly be blocked by censors as China and Russia have shown. The technology arms race doesn't solve the political root cause of the problem.
I could go along with the idea of it, but the idea of the US mandating what I'd have to include in a browser is a bridge too far for me. If the US, EU, and Asia (like, all of Asia, en bloc?) want features, they can develop 'em themselves.
This is at least partially bullshit. I have a sideloaded version of Telegram for Android, which is capable of auto-update itself and promoted as even more free speech compared to stores version. I also have a Windows desktop client, which works normally with adult content blocked on iOS client.
Both of those clients blocked Smart Vote bot because my phone number is in Russia. At the same time all my non-Russian friends was able to freely use the bot all of the time.
Second, this particular demand of the Russian authorities wasn't obviously unconstitutional, as they referred to a law that restricts campaigning after people start casting their votes.
The problem is that according to the recent federal law - campaigning ban does not apply in case when voting lasts for several days.
Apple pushing requirements on apps is also (supposedly) why a lot of apps (such as Instagram, which had explicitly come out to blame Apple for this) banned content of women breastfeeding, as Apple (due to Steve Jobs: there is some interesting stuff you can find on this) is so puritan.
You can also find tons of other examples of Apple's influence making decisions about what large numbers of people can experience, often without even realizing it is Apple pulling the strings, whether it be content about drugs, guns, or the use of sweat shops in the manufacturing of smart phones (a category of app I find particularly egregious for Apple to be censoring as it is so self-serving).
The core problem is really that there is no alternative: if your app isn't allowed to be accepted by Apple, you simply don't get to address something like half of Americans with your product. Users generally don't own multiple phones and they can't take an extra trip to "visit" another phone for your product, so attempts to draw analogies to supermarkets or Walmart tend to be unhelpful.
It is more akin to a physical region of the country... imagine more as if all Apple users happened to live West of the Mississippi River or whatever and you weren't allowed to sell there because they had a monopoly, and for users to use your product they have to take on massive switching costs (of moving across the country).
This centralized bottleneck on software development and distribution then plays out in tons of ways, and tends to make Apple a patsy for local government interference. People like to claim "they have to follow local laws!"... but they didn't have to build a product that puts them in so much centralized control in the first place, as except for in the most authoritarian of regimes (such as North Korea) pretty much everywhere is ok with relatively open devices (such as computers or phones that support sideloading).
Apple has thereby made an active choice to build a product that is bad for democracy around the world (including here in the west!) in no small part because it makes them a ton more money than one that they would have less centralized control over (and thereby manage to charge their extreme overheads on all use cases for)... this profits before people approach should be familiar, as it is also similar to the playbook used by Big Oil and Big Tobacco.
And, as we see in situations like this, maybe that Google merely allows sideloading isn't sufficient, given how they actively discourage it with functionality barriers (alternative stores not supporting automatic updates), discouraging messaging (telling users that side loading is dangerous), complex activation paths (sometimes requiring switches in hidden developer-only settings panels), and even stronghanding users back into their happy path (such as with their anti-virus-like tool that tends to flag alternative stores as if some kind virus).
We need to stop allowing this sort of behavior. If a company is doing something that puts them in a situation where they are making decisions to support authoritarian regimes, we should not only be morally judging them--and of course this includes everyone who works at these companies on these products: you don't get some moral pass for "merely" being a foot soldier if you have the skills to take on another job--but maybe putting in place laws that prevent our companies from tolerating these kinds of decisions.
And again: this is not to say that "you are asking Apple to violate the laws of Russia" or "you are requiring Apple to not sell to Russia"... the laws in Russia or China or wherever we tend to be talking about when these issues come up do not make it illegal to sell a device that lets users install this software: Apple, and in a different (though I do think lesser, if only for being more indirect) way Google, have gone out of their way to build a product that puts them in that position.
(To the extent to which anyone finds any of these thoughts interesting, I gave a talk at Mozilla Privacy Lab back four years ago on "That's How You Get a Dystopia", citing numerous examples of how centralized systems lead directly to the problem of gatekeepers either themselves becoming corrupt over time or being forced to corrupt themselves to satisfy external pressures, with numerous concrete examples--every slide is a citation--across the entire industry. The saddest part is that it feels like I am constantly writing down new examples of the issue I could use to make this long talk even longer, as this is a never-ending problem.)
> Apple has thereby made an active choice to build a product that is bad for democracy
That's a good point, actually. If a company wants to claim that they are on the side of users and democracy, it needs to include in its threat modelling the possibility of "Are we the baddies?".
This is it. If you build the machine of tyranny it will inevitably be used to impose tyranny. Building open systems that center software freedom is a moral imperative.
> tends to make Apple a patsy for local government interference
It feels like that's part of their business model. Apple (and Google) can have more business if they follow the dictates of dictators. Dictators can "buy" suppression of free speech from Apple/Google.
Remember when Google left China. It's not a pipe dream to expect a strategic choice against working for a tyranny. (Yes, it is unusual. We can hope to make it less so.)
I mean, did you at least try to search 'Steve Jobs puritan' on Google? That has some information, though 'Steve Jobs porn' is probably better (and immediately turns up most of the references I would push someone towards).
What I don't get is why not make the blocked channel available for sideloaded APKs only? Telegram could then show an explanation on how to sideload the app and still comply with Google rules.
TL;DR: Apple and Google banned a Russian voting app due to local laws. Telegram has to follow rules set by Apple and Google in order to remain available to users on iOS and Android.
Were they threatened by Apple and Google directly? No.
Are they much different from a web browser in the regard that you can access a web page (strike that) bot by navigating to a link?
I am somewhat confused by the argument offered here. Providing an application that helps voters to decide whom they can choose to vote for, or who the alternative candidates are in an election is not the same as campaigning.
From what I've found so far, I disagree with this interpretation. It's as if saying that publishing a list of people with their stances on a particular policy is the same as campaigning for them. It's not.
Admittedly, the application differed from isidewith by focusing on a single issue - anti-totalitarianism, it did not do anything different that voteclimatepac, the NRA-PVF, Gun Sense Voter etc don't do. It was meant to match voters with candidates who already offer their preferred position - anti-totalitarianism. I don't see how this is campaigning.
Further, the app wasn't affiliated with most of the people it was recommending. While it was designed by Navalny, it recommended people across multiple parties. This fact weakens the argument even further.
As you will see, it doesn't advocate for a party or a candidate, but across parties and candidates based on a single issue - anti-totalitarianism.
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While Telegram has taken a stand against the Russian govt. in the past, I do not believe that past action is necessarily predictive of future results in this regard. Given that the new Kremlin, in particular, is famous for bringing its opposition under their thumbs and turning them into controlled opposition.
> With a flourish he sponsored lavish arts festivals for the most provocative modern artists in Moscow, then supported Orthodox fundamentalists, dressed all in black and carrying crosses, who in turn attacked the modern-art exhibitions. The Kremlin’s idea is to own all forms of political discourse, to not let any independent movements develop outside of its walls. Its Moscow can feel like an oligarchy in the morning and a democracy in the afternoon, a monarchy for dinner and a totalitarian state by bedtime.
This assertion may seem conspiratorial. And it is. Though not guaranteed, it is well within the realm of possibility that the state leader bred by the KGB found ways to turn the screws on M. Durov to keep his hold on power. Given that he kills regularly for it. Should we consider it unlikely that he's willing to coerce others for it?
They ban bots all the time. Bots are consider public and have to comply with telegrams ToS and to an extent with Apple/Googles ToS. Problems here mostly are related to illegal data, copyright infringement and adult content. If they could not remove such stuff Telegram would have long been shut down or at least kicked from all app stores.
The same rules apply to any other app on the stores. No technical solution (encryption or whatever) would make this go away.
The browser does not host or provide content. Messengers like Telegram however do. Public telegram content can be found direct with telegrams in-app search.
Also everyone knows that browsers are excluded form most of these store rules because reasons. Browsers dont have to pay a fee for ads shown either for obvious reasons.
BTW you can use web.telegram.org to circumvent apple blocked content on telegram because this runs in a browser they dont have to comply with app store rules (for now).
And you can use F-Droids Telegram Fork or the APK form telegram.org to circumvent googles blocked content.
In case of a bot that is turned off however this does not help because its turned off at the backed.
There was recently comments about this with questionable reasoning. There is an official statement now so everyone can make their own educated opinion.
Please don't start a "telegram is not encrypted by default" shitstorm like in every other comment section about anything related to Telegram.
I think for open group chats it doesn't really matter. Because anyone can join anyway. Nobody complains that IRC isn't E2E encrypted and still many people use it every day :) That usecase doesn't benefit from it at all.
For closed (invite only) group chats and 1:1 chats I think it should be encrypted by default though. Like WA and Signal. There's the secret chats of course but they only work on one device and not on group chats. Of course key management is hard in those cases but the others have worked around this very well.
I agree that encryption issue doesn't really have any bearing on this bot ban though. This thing wasn't really about surveillance. But the best way to make this appear in the comments is Telegram fixing it :)
Edit: FWIW I really like Telegram because they're open to integration with other networks (eg Matrix) and that they actually allow and embrace bots. But it would be so much better if they did have E2E.
I would like to point out that key management is hard when, like telegram, you can seamlessly access your account on multiple devices. See Signal or WhatsApp asking you to be on the same network with your phone etc. This is the only reason I didn't move to Signal yet and I don't think there's (yet) a clear solution.
The Signal desktop application doesn't have such a requirement. Unlike WhatsApp, it doesn't connect to your phone. You just scan a QR code for the initial setup and after that it's completely independent.
I trust Telegram E2E implementation more, than Whatsapp. I'm sure that there are no cloud backups (for me and for other person), I'm sure that there's no sync happening (any sync is potential threat to security). All data stays on device and that's about it. It's true end-to-end. Whatsapp and Signal implementations are not End to End. They're something like User to User or Account to Account, with some encrypted copies floating around. They have many ends. That blurs responsibilities.
I hope that their implementation will stay as it is. I'm all for implementing better security for ordinary chats, but they should keep secret chats feature as a restricted high-security channel.
The 'many ends' are really needed to make E2E viable IMO. It's the #1 reason I rarely use the secret chats in Telegram.
And if a security feature has so many drawbacks that nobody uses it, you end up with less security. I'd rather have a flawed E2E implementation than one that is not used at all. For example I recently sent passwords to our Makerspace users in secret chats but half of them didn't see them because they were either on another device or they weren't online (also seems to be a requirement for secret chats). So many of them asked to 'stop being difficult' and send them in a normal chat. This is what I mean. And those people are mostly geeks. If they give up on it, what will normal people do?
If it's not seamless enough, only us crypto geeks will use it and the rest will roll their eyes. It has to work for grandma just as easy as it does for us. And Signal and WhatsApp do really pull that off.
I agree that backups were WhatsApp's weak spot but they are making some good modifications that allow users to store the key themselves.
It would help if the key management could be checked though.. I totally agree with you there. Right now it's not transparent enough, even for those of us who know what they're doing it's not really possible to check with WhatsApp. Signal is another story as it's open source.
100% this. People sitting in their WhatsApps and Facebook messangers, not understanding why someone would like to use a better chat client because it's actually better, and also because your data doesn't end up at Google or Facebook.
Probably ends up at the nsa though. But I care more about not being a product of Google.
WhatsApp does have pretty good E2E encryption though.
Its weak point were the backups. They were encrypted but the key was with WhatsApp and the data with Google or Apple. All a friendly secret government request away. Of course you can turn off backups but you don't know whether everyone in your group does.
However they have recently started to shore this up too. You can now choose to keep the key yourself. Of course you still don't know whether everyone in your chat group does this.. But even the alternative password method is much safer than before. According to FB it's stored in a HSM. Yes, we have to take their word for it. But if you use the numeric key only you will have it (and thus no way to recover the data which is a normal consequence of good encryption)
WhatsApp still leaks data for sure. Like all your contacts (even non WhatsApp users), and all your metadata, like when you're talking to whom.
But the content is pretty safe there IMO. Surprisingly so for Facebook. I don't like using it very much either but I'm Europe we simply don't have a choice. I limit its access to my contacts and photos by running it inside a 'work profile' on Android.
A friend recently wanted to post something anonymously. Turns out that finding a webhost depends on having an email address, and email hosts depend on having a phone number, and phone numbers depend on a payment mechanism and - in case of prepaid - a government ID needs to be shown. Telegra.ph seems to be one of the few places where you can (with a reasonable amount of markup) just post things at will. I didn't know it was censored on popular media, that's an interesting twist to the degree to which you can still anonymously post things online.
You can use use one of the web archive services to get a url to share if Telegraph is blocked. By combining the 2 services you can get what you want without identification.
> Second, this particular demand of the Russian authorities wasn't obviously unconstitutional, as they referred to a law that restricts campaigning after people start casting their votes. Laws against political campaigning while voting is underway exist in many countries and the Russian counterpart had been introduced a long time ago. Had we received a similar demand from any European country, we would have complied with it. On the contrary, had Russia or any other country demanded something that is in clear violation of human rights, we would rather face an outright ban of Telegram in that country than compromise our values.