Do you unironically believe it's not already backdoored for Russian government?
The fact of Durov getting arrested could be also used for propaganda purposes (no free speech in the West).
It had already happened with extreme humiliation of responsible agencies.
> as Youtube is being banned now
It's not banned, it's throttled because google kept abusing backbone networks once their CDNs had started to burn down and claiming that this is totally fine and fixable with direct BGP peerings with ISPs (yeah, right)
It works just fine on mobile internet connection where traffic shaping is an inherent feature and it only works like shit on broadband where ISPs are only capable of sending TCP RST once the queue is over the limit.
> Telegram is the last popular application where you can find the content about war, protests or elections that govt doesn't like
Clearly you are not in touch with people in Russia and have never actually seen their social media. Or just being dramatic.
> It's not banned, it's throttled because google kept abusing backbone networks once their CDNs had started to burn down and claiming that this is totally fine and fixable with direct BGP peerings with ISPs (yeah, right)
> It works just fine on mobile internet connection where traffic shaping is an inherent feature and it only works like shit on broadband where ISPs are only capable of sending TCP RST once the queue is over the limit.
This is not true. The connections to googlevideo are throttled by government-operated DPI, not by ISPs. You can verify this by sending following request from a Russian residential or mobile IP address to a Russian hosting provider Selectel:
curl --connect-to ::speedtest.selectel.ru https://manifest.googlevideo.com/100MB -k -o/dev/null
curl https://speedtest.selectel.ru/100MB -k -o/dev/null
Also the information about mobile connection not being throttled is outdated and incorrect. Nowadays mobile connections are throttled as well.
The information that all ISPs voluntarily decided to throttle Youtube is implausible. Why would they throttle the speed to allow their competitors to lure away their clients?
> The information that all ISPs voluntarily decided to throttle Youtube is implausible
> Also the information about mobile connection not being throttled
Why are you trying to build a strawman? That's not what I said. I've said "google kept abusing backbone networks" (e.g. IEXPs), which obviously means it's a matter of the Main Radiofrequency Centre, since it involves nation-wide infrastructure - not some "ISP volunteering".
And I’ve never said that “mobile connection is not being throttled”. In fact, I am stating exactly the opposite, pointing out that traffic shaping is an inherent feature for a mobile ISP. In contrast to broadband, where no one bothered with deep traffic manipulation before, so an ad-hoc throttling solution (yes, typically simply reusing existing law enforcement integrations) works like shit.
> This is not true. The connections to googlevideo are throttled by government-operated DPI, not by ISPs. You can verify this by sending following request from a Russian residential or mobile IP address to a Russian hosting provider Selectel:
One does not need a synthetic test such as yours. One can simply try playing a video from the same browser, switching connection between broadband connected Wi-Fi and a mobile hotspot and notice that broadband doesn’t seem to be working properly, but mobile actually works, even if it’s not Full HD. How come? Does your hypothesis regarding “not by ISPs, but by government-issued DPIs” explain the variance in ISPs behavior? No, it doesn’t. Just as it doesn’t explain why “blocked” YT seems to be “blocked” completely different from your typical weed growers forum. It works differently from how you imagine it.
> Why would they throttle the speed to allow their competitors to lure away their clients?
Speaking of which, apparently some broadband ISPs are now trying to implement throttling properly to give them an edge over the competition: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6919868
The Communists lied to us about Communism, unfortunately they didn't lie about the West.
It was still better than what happened to the USSR between 1993 and 2000 when the West won the cold war and dictated surrender terms.
And how exactly do you think it got unbanned?
Their "encryption" used to use an in-house algorithm (in house algorithms almost always are vastly inferior to standard ones) and even today encryption stores the keys on their servers (in Russia...) and E2EE has to be enabled per-conversation by hand.
What has changed since then?
Maybe they also understood that if you can't defeat them, lead them. Currently, Telegram has a lot of pro-war, pro-Kremlin channels.
I think this might become a future for most of the countries; China and Russia are just several years ahead.
Also, it is clear that Durov is a dissident and personally experienced and run away of the dictatorial state. So I think that it is probably one of the tech personality that I trust the most in the world.
Fun fact: Telegram at some point was blocked in Russia for not giving FSB access to data. Later telegram was unblocked and is used extensively in Russia. It's not hard to figure out why it was unblocked.
After a while they just stopped trying and decided that it's less reputational damage to just let it be.
That's not true. It's legally unblocked. the reason why it was unblocked was never published. "It was unblocked because they gave up" is just your interpretation of the events. Pretty naive one, in my opinion.
Saying Russian government would give a shit about people opinions, funny joke.
When something newsworthy happens in some region, all messengers get blocked in that region for days, Telegram included. They don't care about collateral damage to other websites then.
I doubt they explicitly say to themselves, "Today I do evil for fun and profit.". I wonder what their rationalization is.
https://storage.googleapis.com/gsc-link/cbe9d20e.html
If you're implying it's backdoored, that's a wild mental gymnastics you made there.
No hate, but your comment is speculative in nature.
I'm not even going to mention how many people were arrested over telegram messages in russia.
I'm not sure that counts as an impeccable track record.
Yes. You should read the history of Durov and why Telegram was created in the first place.
The very reason why France is not happy is that because they cannot get access to private chats and stuff. EU was (and is) pushing for the end of E2E encryption after all (it failed this time, but they will try again).
Durov created Telegram because the russian government was trying to take over his original social network - VK (basically imagine USA gov taking over Facebook). Thus he sold his shared and left the country.
I do find it hilarious to see apologists of government over-reach like you.
What did I say that made me an apologist for government overreach? I recommend users use Signal? Your accusation is unfounded when I was complaining about a lack of encryption.
Governments don't go after services that they can access freely.
Can you point to the relevant part of the comment?
Yes as Telegram was banned in Russia for a long time (or at least they tried) before giving up.
To people arguing against this, Russia's Sovereign Wealth Fund RDIF has an ownership stake in Telegram after co-raising with Abu Dhabi's Mudabala in 2021 [0]
Either way, Telegram is at the whims of MbZ, and if the UAE ever needs something from Russia, they'll use Durov and Telegram as collateral. The UAE's done the same thing with Pakistan (Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif), India (Dawood Ibrahim), Israel-Palestine (Mohammad Dahlan), Serbia (Belgrade Waterfront Project and Mohammad Dahlan), Turkiye (Mohammad Dahlan), etc.
If the Telegram founders were truly opposed to Russia, they would have immigrated to Israel, the UK, Germany, Netherlands, or the US like most business dissidents in Russia. If VK wasn't stolen by an oligarch, they would have remained in Russia to this day.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-23/russia-mu...
Obviously there’s client security, potential backdoors, unencrypted backups, and many other things to worry about. But I don’t see a scenario where it fares worse than Telegram, and many where it’s significantly better.
As long as enough people click that checkbox, law enforcement has access and Meta/Apple are out of the news without having lied about or hidden anything.
I also can’t tell if you’re being sincere. I was under the impression that Telegram was considered significantly less secure than Signal and that the matter was mostly settled. I’ve been seeing the following talking points repeated for years now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/xk1jdw/comment/ipbv...
This is in contrast to Facebook or Twitter. Those platforms will absolutely take down content that is offensive or criminal in nature.
This is not even remotely true. I have reported content many times and when I come back to check it, it's gone. This includes account of spammers, some sellers (or pretending to be) of illegal goods, etc.
The political establishment doesn't want the proletariat having journalism that reports against the wishes of the powerful or of regular people having free speech to be used against the government.
No ethical person should take part in enforcing these laws.
The have moderation teams because they are required by law. These are outsourced to the lowest bidder. They are so overwhelmed by the amount of that content.
Watch those documentaries about the psychological traumas inflicted to those that moderate Facebook content.
> Reporting a channel
> Open Telegram > Open channel > Select channel name (top) > Report > Select the report reason
> If you need to report content by email
> Address it to [email protected] with a subject like “Report user @username”
In desktop app you can simply click right button on the message or click three-dots menu in the top bar and there will be an option for report.
> But it looks like it is because that he is accused of being an accessory of a lot of things like traffic, drugs, pedopornography, anything bad you can image because he would not have done anything to combat that on Telegram.
This very article says that it's because Telegram doesn't cooperate with authorities in handling illegal content (which it is legally obligated to, to operate in France) and provides services to facilitate illegal activities (crypto or throwaway numbers).
It's in the "why was he arrested" section.
Telegram is a backdoor by design. The server has complete access to all your messages, they can do whatever they want with those.
And they even had a backdoor in E2EE chats, see: https://habr.com/ru/articles/206900/
So if these things happen in WhatsApp or Signal we simply don't know about it.
By end-to-end encrypting messages, but uploading backups to Google Drive and iCloud, and in a non-end-to-end encrypted way by default, WhatsApp (and iMessage, which does largely the same) have quite cleverly maneuvered themselves out of that potential source of legal problems without cutting off law enforcement access entirely.
There is no info about why exactly he was arrested but it looks like that French police had a warrant for him.
But it looks like it is because that he is accused of being an accessory of a lot of things like traffic, drugs, pedopornography, anything bad you can image because he would not have done anything to combat that on Telegram.
If it is real, it would really be the same kind of political crime abuse on an individual of the same level as what happened to Julian Assange.
I can easily guess that assholes in secret service would probably like very much to use that to blackmail him to add backdoors to telegram. So sad.