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Sbpr You explicitly write about things that Telegram has never supported and protected in reality, users are deceived and its CEO has created and propagated fear, uncertainty and doubt about Signal which is truly private and which really allows freedom of expression. I won't write this if Telegram had presented itself as a social network like Discord but that's not the case, Telegram has always presented itself as a private messaging app, which is completely false in practice.

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Just please lock this thread. It doesn't really belong here and it throws me out of balance. Not that I will ever use Telegram, ever, and I don't wish to say things that might win me another permanent ban. Thank you.

    locked

    Why does France have jurisdiction to charge Durov?

    There are three possible reasons for this, choose the one that fits you best:

    1. This service has an effect in France;
    2. Universal jurisdiction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction);
    3. Pavel Durov is a French citizen!

    My biggest concern is that there are other motives for this […]

    The breakdown of the inculpation is pretty revealing, in my opinion, but to each his own sensibility, I suppose. Understand I’m only explaining or repeating basic things that ought to be told. I see no point in going off on a tangent just yet, and to give my opinion, especially when I read this thread – too many commonplaces…

    He was a beacon of democracy in the eyes of the west.

    More or less, but I won’t disagree.

    locked

    Instead, they arrest him when he arrives in France by surprise.

    It’s usually more effective and efficient to arrest people by surprise and not warn them not to come; trapping them is also quite convenient. Where’s the issue here?

    raccoondad social media sites have the right (and responsibility) to remove bigoted content

    Who should be the arbiter of what is considered "bigoted" and what isn't?

      matchboxbananasynergy What's the issue, then? The word has been used very liberally in the past 8 years or so, and often to try to shut down someone's opposition.

      Sbpr Thank you, you are stating it perfectly in my opinion. This post needs to be stickied at the top of the forum.

      matchboxbananasynergy

      While I understand the argument you're trying to make, if you need others to spell out what is bigoted and what isn't, there's a big issue there.

      You clearly don't understand the argument...

      Sbpr It's also strange seeing many of the tired and debunked arguments ("objectionable" content, think of the children, terrorists, criminals, etc) from people on here when these arguments have already been understood to be poor or even fake excuses to conceal governments' desire to instill mass surveillance, issue uninterrupted government propaganda, and silence dissenters.

      Debunked? Telegram is full of all of the above. We can discuss what responsibilities platforms ought and ought not to have, but there can't be a proper conversation if we can't even acknowledge that this type of content routinely went unchecked on Telegram. If you want to make the argument that it "comes with the territory" of a "free speech" platform, sure, do that.

      Sbpr It's very strange that people on a forum for a privacy focused operating system, who celebrate how difficult if is for the government to crack GrapheneOS, are quick to insult another privacy focused project for not willingly allowing governments to spy on their users. Sure, Telegram's itself was poorly designed as a private messenger compared to other private messengers, but people on here are also attacking the company's free speech and user privacy philosophy in general, stating that it should have been doing more to censor users at government's convenience, which would also inherently erode user privacy.

      People are celebrating the technical achievement of a private company's forensic tool (in the case you're referring to, Cellebrite) not being able to get into Pixels running GrapheneOS. It is understood that you cannot protect privacy selectively. That's why you can't weaken E2EE (because that affects everyone, despicable criminals and persecuted dissidents alike). Same with a device, you make it sure not because you want to protect criminals or heinous people, but because you understand that a secure device has to be secure for everyone.

      Telegram is implementing no such thing (for the vast majority of users, secret chats are barely used by anyone). Put governments aside for a moment, because I don't think anybody participating in this thread is an official representative of one. It's one thing for someone to advocate for weakening E2EE in a messenger, or disk encryption or forensic resistance in an OS, and another for someone to say that when you operate a non-E2EE platform which allows for content moderation, that a genuine effort should be made to purge such platform of criminal content. It is baffling to me that the same people who in this thread are making arguments "for the children" based on their ideologies, fail to acknowledge the kinds of vile things Telegram was widely known for. Will they continue to occur elsewhere should Telegram cease to exist, or should it actually make a genuine effort to moderate its platform? Sadly yes, but that doesn't mean that Telegram gets a pass when it isn't doing anything about it.

      I'll say it once again, and maybe this time it'll at least stick for someone. You can have opinions that are nuanced. Don't trick yourself into picking a side and defending that side to the death. Should Durov be arrested? That's up to everyone's opinion. Are the laws about "licensed cryptology" in France ridiculous? I believe so. Does that mean that Telegram is some holy platform that can do no wrong and which has operated perfectly? In my opinion, absolutely not, and nobody is doing anybody any favors by taking either side to its logical conclusion where you have to defend indefensible things just to be "right".

      If you're going to make the argument that anybody who has issues with Telegram, how it markets itself, and how it operates is against free speech, pro censorship and many other things, I think you're losing a genuine chance to have a discussion about the topic that isn't projecting your beliefs on others.

      Conversely, for the people on the other end, by villainizing everyone who sees this as an attack on free speech, it would serve you well to actually listen to those peoples' concerns and consider whether they have merit.

      What is scary and sad, is that people are letting their ideology and beliefs, political and otherwise, completely sway their opinion on this issue, and it absolutely shows. We're not having a discussion about this topic, we're having a proxy politics debate, some of you just don't see it yet.

      Sbpr . Sure, Telegram's itself was poorly designed as a private messenger compared to other private messengers, but people on here are also attacking the company's free speech and user privacy philosophy in general, stating that it should have been doing more to censor users at government's convenience, which would also inherently erode user privacy.

      They deserve zero respect for their philosophies and supposed privacy focus when their product doesn't live up to those goals. Those words are just empty marketing, while Telegram's existence has actively undermined their own users privacy and the adoption of E2EE as a whole.

      Very very few people are the sort of free speech absolutists who think publicly available channels for ISIS recruitment and trading CP should be tolerated or seen as inevitable. Look into the "paradox of intolerance" for an opposing philosophical concern.

      admin locked the discussion .

      We're going to be locking it again and leaving it locked because as expected it ends up being a political debate outside the scope of what's permitted on our forum.