I am sure many of you have heard by now that the CEO of Telegram has been arrested upon arriving in France on his private jet and is being held. I am concerned that this could result in telegram changing its moderation policy especially since they are a social media app, not just a messenger, and that they (telegram) and other apps such as whatsapp and signal may also come under pressure to weaken encryption and moderate content under the guise of 'misinformation' as a certain faction likes to call any information they don't agree with.

    locked Hopefully it serves as yet another reminder not to blindly trust everything and everyone.

    At least he uses GrapheneOS, right? Right? 😜

    • Edited

    Last night I watched an hour long interview with him by Tucker Carlson which I believe was a few months old... was very insightful to Pavel's views and mindset... impressed me, though I felt he was too optimistic.

    That's why I have decentralized chat software on hand

    locked Telegram mostly doesn't use end-of-end encryption. It doesn't have it for group chats and it's an opt-in feature for direct messages that's tucked away in a menu rather than the default or a choice that's offered for each direct message. Telegram is marked as private/encrypted but it doesn't check out. It's not comparable to actual private messaging apps. The bulk of Telegram user data is at risk of being seized since only a small portion of direct messages are actually inaccessible to Telegram. The idea that Telegram is the app that's being pressured to add a backdoor doesn't really make sense but rather Telegram can access and hand over data so it would make sense for them to be served with lots of warrants demanding data.

    We posted a thread about the misconception that Telegram is a private messaging app and how user data is at risk of being seized if governments are going after them due to the overall lack of end-to-end encryption:

    https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/113019413094631964

      GrapheneOS So I have always recommended others to use decentralized chat software, without a central server, they cannot capture any chat content.

      locked This is what telegram gets trying to be a free speech platform without the actual moderation efforts needed to be an ethical social media site.

      This is just the consequence of bad design/lazy moderation. There ARE things that should be censored, that telegram didn't take the proper effort to suppress.

      Not saying they didn't try to or that the CEO is secretly ok with terrorism/child abuse/whatnot, but I personally don't think they did enough, not as much as other sites.

      There are just certain responsibilities you take running any network service

        • Edited

        raccoondad Agreed. Digital freedom and basic morals go hand in hand.

        Had Telegram implemented encryption by default, making the majority of chats encrypted, they would not have been able to moderate much. Albeit that doesn't mean they would have been oblivious to everything going on.

        But in this case, they were asking for trouble.

          yore WAY to many lazy sysadmins out there hosting services without any care of the harm they might cause...this is coming from a lead sysadmin of multiple fairly active websites

          I have actually filed abuse reports to MAJOR ISPs and have been told, outright, "sorry we aren't filing this because we want your full name and address and if you don't give it we will throw out the abuse report" (which is against the law mind you, I already gave them the details of the abuse report, they just required my personal info to actually take action)

          Its very popular behavior it seems, it puts a bad taste in my mouth as someone who very much understands, from experience, the harm an abused service can be to a lot of very vulnerable people. Its almost malicious how little some sysadmins seem to care

            router99 The word "censorship" has a bit of a bad connotation.

            But there are many things that admins should moderate, most of which are obvious and don't need to be listed. It's a shame that such content often goes by untouched in the name of digital rights/freedom.

            router99

            For major social media sites: slander/dangerous disinfo, promotion of violence, shock content, personal information, vile bigotry, stuff of that realm...

            Basically things that make modern social media abysmal if not impossible to use.

            For the internet at large: see what ICANN is doing, basically that...maybe a bit better with scams/malware

              Comments here started to get too political, so I removed some and replies to them. The discussion will remain locked (unless another moderator chooses to unlock it) because I suspect posts will start to be political again.

              Please see this post and the linked thread here GrapheneOS to see the project's response to the the OP in this thread and the news.

              • yore replied to this.
                • Edited

                raccoondad I understand what you are saying, and I agree that public channels should be moderated, but beyond this, there is ambiguity in the language that the French have released up until now. If they are complaining just about moderation of public content, then O.K, even though Telegram has definitely stepped up their moderation in recent years. However, if they are wanting to gain access to private conversations and it's simply that telegram is not complying, then I fully back telegram for not doing so.

                  • Edited

                  raccoondad
                  For major social media sites: slander/dangerous disinfo, promotion of violence, shock content, personal information, vile bigotry, stuff of that realm...

                  So?
                  Don't like it - don't watch it. Take your nanny state mentality elsewhere.

                    locked
                    I hope Durov is able to make his escape from the putrid EU scumbags and is more careful in the future which countries he visits. France has sunk to the very bottom. But it was probably at the behest of the US anyways. I wish the Durov brothers all the best and they will do well to avoid the "free world". What a joke the West has become.