It's because it is in fact used for this, unlike say whatsapp that does not enjoy any trust.

I can't tell if it's just uninformed grassroots mistrust of big tech, or the result of astroturf PsyOps to get more people to use the app with weaker encryption.

Encryption is really not the main issue here. I think nerds may not fully grasp Telegram's security model: it's essentially stateless, not tied to any particular country. Its infrastructure is distributed across various jurisdictions, with no official representation in many countries—no subsidiaries, nothing.

As a result, it doesn't respond to authorities because it doesn't have to. However, this approach is unsustainable and unacceptable for many governments, both in the East and the West. That's why he's being accused in France: he is not "cooperating with law enforcement".

> That's why he's being accused in France...

Or it could be that he has French citizenship; subject to French law. Spreading your infrastructure across legal jurisdiction doesn't make you stateless - it just ensures you're subject to the laws of each jurisdiction you operate in.

> not tied to any particular country

I don't think that's accurate. Like any other business, he collects money from the Western users, so that's one easy choke point. He is also fully accountable to Apple, otherwise he can forget about 1.5 billion Iphone users forever. (apparently, he also just seems to enjoy visiting France and other countries he decided to go against)

> He is also fully accountable to Apple

What does this even mean???

He is partially accountable to Apple - he's agreed to a TOS and EULA, as well as conditions for furnishing his Apps. Even with Apple's authoritarian control of their ecosystem though, he isn't fully accountable to Apple. Apple is not a nation or a court that can make decisions like that on their behalf; they have been sued several times for taking punitive action that is illegal obstruction.

Nobody is "fully accountable" to Apple. Apple is fully accountable to the law, and that's that.

he has to disclose his company's location, where they are paying taxes, probably how much money they are making, which makes it far from "stateless, not tied to any particular country". Through that, he also is forced to comply with local laws that Apple plays by, or get kicked out of those countries iPhones', or the App Store entirely. Apple can and does take that action by requests from local governments, e.g. remove a gay dating app from Turkey's app store by the government request.

Going after the one with the least care factor first would make a lot of sense, assuming their cryptographic implementation is inline with their care factor.

Because Telegram is not just a messenger, it's a platform for distributing news/info through channels. Signal simply does not have that.

Signal and WhatsApp do have that. You can easily use group chats that way, you just have to get invited. You can't look for them and join them.

It's really easy for e.g. a drugdealer to post QR codes or something on lamp posts with their contact and then they can invite people. Making Telegram go away is just going to hide the problem, not solve it.

Aaaah yes, the standard political "solution".

Afaik WhatsApp and signal group chats have been way to small for that.

In Telegram you can have 10k and more in a channel

If you don't cooperate while having the data and your approach to legal compliance is "votes on your personal TG channel", expect to get arrested. At least the services with actual E2EE worth a shit can make a convincing argument they can't produce the data.

That was my first thought as well. There are good uses for telegram and some things work better than signal ( API comes to mind ). But just from privacy perspective, telegram is much more easily neutered than signal.

I will admit I am confused. I can only assume something else is at play.

edit: The only thing I can think of is that there some rather gruesome channels showing Russia/Ukraine, Palestine/Israel toll. I wonder if it was decided that general population should not have access to these.

In a way, Durov's arrest retroactively vindicates every EU citizen's decision to use Telegram (up until now), as it proves that they haven't been getting what they want from him. I am not nearly as concerned about Durov himself or the government of Dubai getting to read my messages as I am about the EU or one of its member states doing so, as there simply isn't much I can see the former doing with that data. The real danger only arises when the people who can read your messages and the people who can dispatch dudes with guns to your house are in cahoots. (For the same reason, I tend to roll my eyes at warnings about various forms of Chinese spyware.)

Why would you be afraid of EU LE? Unlike countries such as Iran, Russia, SA, UAE it has reasonable laws.

Iran and Russia also had reasonable laws once. Then things changed. The problem is, you can't delete your old chats from the %EU_NSA_analogue%'s servers once they get there. The funniest part is, you might think that you are safe because that one sussy message was posted so long ago. Well, statutes of limitations are changed/ignored just as easily as any other law.

EU countries prosecuted Assange, the Pirate Bay guys and now Durov. People in countries like Britain appear to frequently get persecuted for political posts. I'm sure that I've said things online that could get me in trouble now or would at some point in the future when the Overton window shifts in some other direction.

Paternity testing is illegal in France. Attempting to verify a very basic fact that your child is indeed yours is criminal. So is outsourcing it to other (even neighboring) countries. If French customs intercept DNA samples or results in the mail, the perpetrators can face up to a year in prison and a €15,000 fine.

> It's really weird that Telegram is singled out like this.

wasn't he bragging that he operates with like a dozen people or something. I can also see him just punting on many kinds of moderation (outside of the kind that helps running the service), because it's a lot of subjective, dirty work and an army of people.