Are you a high profile enemy of the Russian state? Probably not. People seriously have a strange idea about how important they are to some intelligence agency. There are billions of messages being sent every day and I guarantee you the FSB or the NSA don't crawl through your grocery list

Every time these discussions come up people sound like they think they're El Chapo or Ai Weiwei in which case yes don't use telegram. If you're an average citizen these agencies couldn't care less what youtube videos you share

This should be a top comment in each Telegram privacy-related post or thread. Everyone is ok, that Google may read their e-mails and has full access to search details, Facebook might read their messages, 3-rd party ad-companies profile them through pixels, but at the same time start complaining, that FSB may read their Telegram messages (not proven btw).

Google and Facebook “read” that personal information by algorithms and by robots not by humans (except rare mistakes) to show you better advertisements.

FSB would try to read that information to try to damage the countries, to spy, to steal databases, to hurt people and so on.

If FSB could read private messages of US citizens it would be 1000 times worse than Google or Facebook reading them even accounting for leaks and misuse in G and FB.

G and FB is thousands engineers who love unicorns and rainbows and are extremely offended when the see a person wearing MAGA hat. FSB is men who regularly drink vodka, who are trained kill, who are not allowed to leave Russia, who are constantly told that Russia is surrounded by enemies.

Don’t compare G and FB to FSB.

(I doubt FSB can read Telegram.)

"FSB is men who regularly drink vodka"

And have a pet bear that plays balalayka.

Be careful not to conflate "I don't want them reading my messages." with "I'm worried they will assassinate me in my home country."

You need to have really pissed them off for them to poison you, much like how you really need to piss the Department of State off for them to drone strike you, or to throw you in a sack, mark it 'DIPLOMATIC MAIL', and ship you to Gitmo.

Yeah but there's not gonna open that can of worms on a whim whereas if the ATF catches wind of all that fertilizer you bought they're gonna incompetently shoot your dog regardless of the fact that you just want to peacefully break up some boulders into small enough pieces for your tractor to move.

Dissenters? Skripal is a former GRU traitor.

There's a spectrum between the Russian state is willing to risk people, money to kill me, and the Russian state is willing to have local Russian police throw me in prison (or local right wing thugs beat me up) because I'm openly gay ...