If they want to operate in country X, they have to abide by the laws of country X, I don't see what's controversial about this.

The laws of country X are controversial.

All countries have laws that are controversial for some other country.

Yep.

Imagine iran requesting all the IP addresses of people who have viewed gay porn from pornhub (=Aylo or whatever it's called now)

I imagine that this would be reason enough for them to either comply with the law or not operate there, like every other business does? You seem to imply that it's ok for internet companies to be above the law, I don't see how that's compatible with self-determinism/democracy (loss of jurisdiction) nor in the interests of the people (because inevitably such companies will optimize their profits at the expense of the public and can't be held accountable, in your anarchic world order).

They definitely wouldn't stop operating in Iran and miss that sweet ad money

then it's fair game for Iran (or any other country) to fine them/block them for that.

No, they'd comply with Iranian censorship laws to get the ad money.

Let's say your set up a raspberrypi at home (I assume you live in US), install apache, install wordpress, set up port forwarding and write a blog about making pickles. Then someone writes a comment under "How much dill?" and writes "I'm from Iran and I'm gay".

Are you really operating in iran? You don't have servers there, you don't have employees there, you're not a registered company there, what ties do you have with iran? Someone from iran "came to visit"? Sure, so do brits with amsterdam and legal weed.

But they're operating in UAE (or whereever they're registred).

They just get visitors from UK.

Where they operate doesn't matter, and it should be pretty obvious why (hint, for the same reasons that American bleached chicken can't be sold in the EU)

> telegram, not being a UK company (imho) shouldn't be forced to give UK government/police peoples ip addresses and phone numbers

They absolutely should if they want to operate in the UK.

Define operate in.

Does HN operate in the UK because I can access it here? Should they be subject to UK law?

Should the same rule exists in more authoritarian countries like China, North Korea, or Belarus?

If so should the government be allowed access to non-nationals outside the country? How about if a non-national is inside the country communicating with those outside? How about if those folks are journalist reporting where journalism is illegal (see Russia's laws on "fake news" on Ukraine).

I'm not saying your point of view is wrong, but I think its easy to jump to that conclusion as this is probably the least sympathetic case to set principle. But this _does_ set principle.

> Should the same rule exists in more authoritarian countries like China, North Korea, or Belarus?

If eg. Iran requested IP addresses from Pornhub (Aylo?) for all the visitors from iranian ip addresses who have viewed a gay video there, people would be changing their view pretty fast.

But they're registered in UAE (i think it's there).

They might get "visitors" from UK, but so do "coffeeshops" in amsterdam.

That’s not for telegram to decide and dictate to everyone else I’m not sure I’d call that sad