[HN Gopher] Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when the...
___________________________________________________________________
Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a
voting app
Author : noxer
Score : 126 points
Date : 2021-09-25 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (telegra.ph)
(TXT) w3m dump (telegra.ph)
| Kinrany wrote:
| Regardless of whether these are the true reasons, Telegram being
| forced to ban a bot means Telegram can no longer be relied upon
| as a messenger.
|
| They have two options:
|
| 1. Find a way around relying on Apple and Google's blessings
|
| 2. Make it technically impossible for themselves to ban someone
| like this again
| noxer wrote:
| They ban bots all the time. Bots are consider public and have
| to comply with telegrams ToS and to an extent with
| Apple/Googles ToS. Problems here mostly are related to illegal
| data, copyright infringement and adult content. If they could
| not remove such stuff Telegram would have long been shut down
| or at least kicked from all app stores.
|
| The same rules apply to any other app on the stores. No
| technical solution (encryption or whatever) would make this go
| away.
| prirai wrote:
| They do provide the apks on their website which dondon't have
| the app stores' rules upon them. You might try that.
| saurik wrote:
| Apple pushing requirements on apps is also (supposedly) why a lot
| of apps (such as Instagram, which had explicitly come out to
| blame Apple for this) banned content of women breastfeeding, as
| Apple (due to Steve Jobs: there is some interesting stuff you can
| find on this) is so puritan.
|
| You can also find tons of other examples of Apple's influence
| making decisions about what large numbers of people can
| experience, often without even realizing it is Apple pulling the
| strings, whether it be content about drugs, guns, or the use of
| sweat shops in the manufacturing of smart phones (a category of
| app I find particularly egregious for Apple to be censoring as it
| is so self-serving).
|
| The core problem is really that there is no alternative: if your
| app isn't allowed to be accepted by Apple, you simply don't get
| to address something like half of Americans with your product.
| Users generally don't own multiple phones and they can't take an
| extra trip to "visit" another phone for your product, so attempts
| to draw analogies to supermarkets or Walmart tend to be
| unhelpful.
|
| It is more akin to a physical region of the country... imagine
| more as if all Apple users happened to live West of the
| Mississippi River or whatever and you weren't allowed to sell
| there because they had a monopoly, and for users to use your
| product they have to take on massive switching costs (of moving
| across the country).
|
| This centralized bottleneck on software development and
| distribution then plays out in tons of ways, and tends to make
| Apple a patsy for local government interference. People like to
| claim "they have to follow local laws!"... but they didn't have
| to build a product that puts them in so much centralized control
| in the first place, as except for in the most authoritarian of
| regimes (such as North Korea) pretty much everywhere is ok with
| relatively open devices (such as computers or phones that support
| sideloading).
|
| Apple has thereby made an active choice to build a product that
| is bad for democracy around the world (including here in the
| west!) in no small part because it makes them a ton more money
| than one that they would have less centralized control over (and
| thereby manage to charge their extreme overheads on all use cases
| for)... this profits before people approach should be familiar,
| as it is also similar to the playbook used by Big Oil and Big
| Tobacco.
|
| And, as we see in situations like this, maybe that Google merely
| allows sideloading isn't sufficient, given how they actively
| discourage it with functionality barriers (alternative stores not
| supporting automatic updates), discouraging messaging (telling
| users that side loading is dangerous), complex activation paths
| (sometimes requiring switches in hidden developer-only settings
| panels), and even stronghanding users back into their happy path
| (such as with their anti-virus-like tool that tends to flag
| alternative stores as if some kind virus).
|
| We need to stop allowing this sort of behavior. If a company is
| doing something that puts them in a situation where they are
| making decisions to support authoritarian regimes, we should not
| only be morally judging them--and of course this includes
| everyone who works at these companies on these products: you
| don't get some moral pass for "merely" being a foot soldier if
| you have the skills to take on another job--but maybe putting in
| place laws that prevent our companies from tolerating these kinds
| of decisions.
|
| And _again_ : this is _not_ to say that "you are asking Apple to
| violate the laws of Russia" or "you are requiring Apple to not
| sell to Russia"... the laws in Russia or China or wherever we
| tend to be talking about when these issues come up do not make it
| illegal to sell a device that lets users install this software:
| Apple, and in a different (though I do think lesser, if only for
| being more indirect) way Google, have gone out of their way to
| build a product that puts them in that position.
|
| (To the extent to which anyone finds any of these thoughts
| interesting, I gave a talk at Mozilla Privacy Lab back four years
| ago on "That's How You Get a Dystopia", citing numerous examples
| of how centralized systems lead directly to the problem of
| gatekeepers either themselves becoming corrupt over time or being
| forced to corrupt themselves to satisfy external pressures, with
| numerous concrete examples--every slide is a citation--across the
| entire industry. The saddest part is that it feels like I am
| constantly writing down new examples of the issue I could use to
| make this long talk even longer, as this is a never-ending
| problem.)
|
| https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's an excellent article. I would love to see it used as a
| "template" for transparency articles by other providers.
| webmobdev wrote:
| > _First, without support from Apple and Google, any fight with a
| local regulator is lost before it starts ... Our website that
| hosts Telegram Web and the standalone Telegram app for Android
| would be blocked by local telecoms in a matter of minutes. Even
| existing users would lose access to Telegram once Apple and
| Google turn off notifications for the app (which are used not
| only to deliver messages to users, but also to distribute
| unblocked IP addresses and dodge censorship)._
|
| > _Some users wish Telegram was 100% independent from everyone
| and could ignore Apple, Google and national laws of all
| countries. I also wish it was possible. But the reality we live
| in is different. I have warned the public many times of the
| danger that the Apple /Google duopoly poses for freedom of
| speech. And, as I wrote in August, the world is becoming more
| pro-censorship in general, with even democratic countries
| changing their definitions of free speech due to concerns of
| election interference from geopolitical rivals._
|
| This is the main issue - BigTech have grown too big and have too
| much influence now on politics since the US decided to sub-
| contract intelligence gathering and surveillance to them (as
| Snowden revealed). The author is right that democratic countries
| are now increasingly becoming pro-censorship and have an anti-
| privacy attitude.
| echelon wrote:
| Who is downvoting you?
|
| We should _never_ support censorship or the erosion of privacy.
| Preservation of these two is essential for our democracy and
| freedom.
| echelon wrote:
| I've just lost the ability to edit posts.
|
| I was in the middle of an edit to add more commentary, and it
| failed. This hasn't ever happened to me on HN before.
|
| Can a moderator explain what is going on or why I'm being
| targeted?
|
| Edit button is completely gone on the above post.
| https://i.imgur.com/BnYuqx6.jpg
| saagarjha wrote:
| Try clicking on the post itself and seeing if that page has
| an edit button?
| LegitShady wrote:
| HN has a time limit on how long you can edit posts after
| they go up - its not special its for everyone. You'd know
| about it but HN also has terrible design in terms of
| telling users what the heck is going on.
| echelon wrote:
| The post was less than five minutes old. I can still edit
| other posts which are older.
|
| Right now it's 19 minutes old (and uneditable), yet I can
| still edit a different 27 minute old comment.
|
| I crafted an edit URL for the post using its id, and I
| still can't edit it:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=28656231
| LegitShady wrote:
| I think its supposed to be 2 hours.
| noxer wrote:
| Probably when something gets down-voted/flagged edit is
| disabled so you cant "remove the evidence".
|
| But I'm just guessing HN internals are p proprietary.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Yesterday I could only make two posts on HN before HN
| temporarily banned me with the message _" Please slow down.
| You are posting too fast."_ This kind of ban is only for a
| few hours. I don't know if this ban is automatically
| triggered or mod initiated but believe the trigger for it is
| when some comments of mine receive high upvotes and downvotes
| (perhaps "flagging" the comment as "controversial /
| inflammatory"). And I guess it is part of HN's moderation
| tactic to ensure quality of content, and while it is annoying
| sometimes, I don't see any conspiracy in it.
|
| However, like you noticed, I do believe that some of my posts
| are targeted as part of the online marketing / "reputation
| management" that happens regularly all over the internet by
| BigTech. I am vocal about right to privacy, right to repair
| and need for government regulation of BigTech, and have
| noticed that if my posts on these subjects specifically
| mention Google, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon they are often
| downvoted (I once noticed a post go from 10 upvotes to 10
| downvotes, in real-time, and that's when I realised what's
| happening).
|
| (Anyway, HN doesn't like this kind of discussion as it
| doesn't add much value due to its speculative nature and it
| tends to distract us from the main topic.)
| saagarjha wrote:
| Hacker News caps scores at -4.
| echelon wrote:
| This is why apps suck.
|
| Steve Jobs got us into this mess by trying to monopolize the
| iPhone processor (and only allowed the web to bootstrap his
| platform). Complete control can be strong armed by dictators, and
| our spineless capitalists will bend to their will.
|
| The W3C needs to develop a standard for non-DOM, immediate mode
| painted, fully WASM apps that can access all of a device's
| hardware. Storage, cameras, network, GPS, multithreading, gyros,
| all of it. _Native apps over web._
|
| We need a web-based drive by app that we can run sandboxed and
| install without the Apple/Google duopoly, and the US, EU, and
| Asia need to mandate support.
|
| Edit: downvoters, seriously, we need to talk. You're walking the
| evil line.
| Labo333 wrote:
| Totally agree. Web apps are actually more efficient in the long
| run because there are so many apps people use infrequently and
| yet use storage and receive updates.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I could go along with the idea of it, but the idea of the US
| mandating what I'd have to include in a browser is a bridge too
| far for me. If the US, EU, and Asia (like, _all_ of Asia, en
| bloc?) want features, they can develop 'em themselves.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| What's even the point in making native apps work over the web?
| Just use native apps, period. You can install native
| applications on most operating systems already (iOS notably
| lacking support for persistent "sideloading").
|
| If you want, I'm sure you can cross-compile WASM into some kind
| of native application or even just leverage a WebView component
| to make your "app" an HTML page with just a <canvas>.
|
| All of this is already possible today, and yet this problem
| still persists. Open access to your own hardware is important,
| but it doesn't solve political problems like these. Web
| applications can quickly be blocked by censors as China and
| Russia have shown. The technology arms race doesn't solve the
| political root cause of the problem.
| echelon wrote:
| Native apps aren't a cross platform standard, when the truth
| is that they should be. They do the same things on all
| platforms.
|
| They're also tightly controlled and taxed, which they
| shouldn't be.
| cybernautique wrote:
| I agree with the spirit of your post; however, I don't
| understand why it needs to be drive-by, browser-delivered-and-
| run apps. It almost seems like you're proposing a cross-
| platform sandbox and app store, which I'm all for! but I'd like
| it to stay as far away from modern web browsers as possible.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| W3C have zero power. Apple and Google have power.
|
| Also I don't think that DOM presents any problem to security.
| It makes no sense to cut DOM or JS engine from your sandbox.
| You can use Canvas/WebGL/WebGPU to access GPU and draw anything
| in browser window. You can use WASM to have good speed. Tech is
| already there, you don't need W3C for it and DOM or JS is not
| really in the way. Storage, Cameras, GPS, Mulththreading, Gyros
| are available for web apps. Everything is already there.
|
| Web apps miss notifications on Apple platform, home screen
| installation via API on Apple platform, better integration with
| OS on Apple platform (not sure about Android), but probably you
| want your password manager to be native app anyway.
| noxer wrote:
| Wouldn't that move the power from the app store owners to the
| browser owner? These are the same companies just a bit
| different market shares.
| achikin wrote:
| _Second, this particular demand of the Russian authorities wasn
| 't obviously unconstitutional, as they referred to a law that
| restricts campaigning after people start casting their votes._
|
| The problem is that according to the recent federal law -
| campaigning ban does not apply in case when voting lasts for
| several days.
| atomicusit wrote:
| As HN'sers would say, "Google/Apple are private companies and
| allowed to deplatform whomever they wish. Just start your own App
| Store"
| cunidev wrote:
| While Telegram is seen as a "wild west" of free speech by many,
| its centralization and worrying lack of encryption for most "non-
| secret" chats is something to keep in mind when reading Durov's
| passionate claims.
|
| - https://www.wired.com/story/telegram-encryption-whatsapp-set...
|
| - https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/amp/multiple-encryption-f...
|
| Also, the optional E2EE encryption is way more limited (e.g.,
| single-device, rather than having a key sharing mechanism) than
| most other, possibly more genuine, alternatives (Matrix, Signal).
|
| -
| https://telegram.org/faq#:~:text=Remember%20that%20Telegram%....
| noxer wrote:
| There was recently comments about this with questionable
| reasoning. There is an official statement now so everyone can
| make their own educated opinion.
|
| Please don't start a "telegram is not encrypted by default"
| shitstorm like in every other comment section about anything
| related to Telegram.
| peakaboo wrote:
| 100% this. People sitting in their WhatsApps and Facebook
| messangers, not understanding why someone would like to use a
| better chat client because it's actually better, and also
| because your data doesn't end up at Google or Facebook.
|
| Probably ends up at the nsa though. But I care more about not
| being a product of Google.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| WhatsApp does have pretty good E2E encryption though.
|
| Its weak point were the backups. They were encrypted but the
| key was with WhatsApp and the data with Google or Apple. All
| a friendly secret government request away. Of course you can
| turn off backups but you don't know whether everyone in your
| group does.
|
| However they have recently started to shore this up too. You
| can now choose to keep the key yourself. Of course you still
| don't know whether everyone in your chat group does this..
| But even the alternative password method is much safer than
| before. According to FB it's stored in a HSM. Yes, we have to
| take their word for it. But if you use the numeric key only
| you will have it (and thus no way to recover the data which
| is a normal consequence of good encryption)
|
| WhatsApp still leaks data for sure. Like all your contacts
| (even non WhatsApp users), and all your metadata, like when
| you're talking to whom.
|
| But the content is pretty safe there IMO. Surprisingly so for
| Facebook. I don't like using it very much either but I'm
| Europe we simply don't have a choice. I limit its access to
| my contacts and photos by running it inside a 'work profile'
| on Android.
|
| Messenger is a different story of course.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I think for open group chats it doesn't really matter. Because
| anyone can join anyway. Nobody complains that IRC isn't E2E
| encrypted and still many people use it every day :) That
| usecase doesn't benefit from it at all.
|
| For closed (invite only) group chats and 1:1 chats I think it
| should be encrypted by default though. Like WA and Signal.
| There's the secret chats of course but they only work on one
| device and not on group chats. Of course key management is hard
| in those cases but the others have worked around this very
| well.
|
| I agree that encryption issue doesn't really have any bearing
| on this bot ban though. This thing wasn't really about
| surveillance. But the best way to make this appear in the
| comments is Telegram fixing it :)
|
| Edit: FWIW I really like Telegram because they're open to
| integration with other networks (eg Matrix) and that they
| actually allow and embrace bots. But it would be so much better
| if they did have E2E.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I trust Telegram E2E implementation more, than Whatsapp. I'm
| sure that there are no cloud backups (for me and for other
| person), I'm sure that there's no sync happening (any sync is
| potential threat to security). All data stays on device and
| that's about it. It's true end-to-end. Whatsapp and Signal
| implementations are not End to End. They're something like
| User to User or Account to Account, with some encrypted
| copies floating around. They have many ends. That blurs
| responsibilities.
|
| I hope that their implementation will stay as it is. I'm all
| for implementing better security for ordinary chats, but they
| should keep secret chats feature as a restricted high-
| security channel.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| The 'many ends' are really needed to make E2E viable IMO.
| It's the #1 reason I rarely use the secret chats in
| Telegram.
|
| And if a security feature has so many drawbacks that nobody
| uses it, you end up with less security. I'd rather have a
| flawed E2E implementation than one that is not used at all.
| For example I recently sent passwords to our Makerspace
| users in secret chats but half of them didn't see them
| because they were either on another device or they weren't
| online (also seems to be a requirement for secret chats).
| So many of them asked to 'stop being difficult' and send
| them in a normal chat. This is what I mean. And those
| people are mostly geeks. If they give up on it, what will
| normal people do?
|
| If it's not seamless enough, only us crypto geeks will use
| it and the rest will roll their eyes. It has to work for
| grandma just as easy as it does for us. And Signal and
| WhatsApp do really pull that off.
|
| I agree that backups were WhatsApp's weak spot but they are
| making some good modifications that allow users to store
| the key themselves.
|
| It would help if the key management could be checked
| though.. I totally agree with you there. Right now it's not
| transparent enough, even for those of us who know what
| they're doing it's not really possible to check with
| WhatsApp. Signal is another story as it's open source.
| thevinter wrote:
| I would like to point out that key management is hard when,
| like telegram, you can seamlessly access your account on
| multiple devices. See Signal or WhatsApp asking you to be on
| the same network with your phone etc. This is the only reason
| I didn't move to Signal yet and I don't think there's (yet) a
| clear solution.
| ledoge wrote:
| The Signal desktop application doesn't have such a
| requirement. Unlike WhatsApp, it doesn't connect to your
| phone. You just scan a QR code for the initial setup and
| after that it's completely independent.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| WhatsApp is dropping that requirement too by the way. The
| new system is already in beta.
| [deleted]
| areoform wrote:
| I am somewhat confused by the argument offered here. Providing an
| application that helps voters to decide whom they can choose to
| vote for, or who the alternative candidates are in an election is
| not the same as campaigning.
|
| From what I've found so far, I disagree with this interpretation.
| It's as if saying that publishing a list of people with their
| stances on a particular policy is the same as campaigning for
| them. It's not.
|
| By this metric, a website like isidewith is campaigning,
| https://www.isidewith.com/, as are voting guides that help voters
| pick out candidates who back action on Climate Change,
| https://voteclimatepac.org/voters-guide/, or who are pro/anti-2A,
| https://www.nrapvf.org/grades/ / https://gunsensevoter.org/ . Are
| these campaigning as well?
|
| Admittedly, the application differed from isidewith by focusing
| on a single issue - anti-totalitarianism, it did not do anything
| different that voteclimatepac, the NRA-PVF, Gun Sense Voter etc
| don't do. It was meant to match voters with candidates who
| already offer their preferred position - anti-totalitarianism. I
| don't see how this is campaigning.
|
| Further, the app wasn't affiliated with most of the people it was
| recommending. While it was designed by Navalny, it recommended
| people across multiple parties. This fact weakens the argument
| even further.
|
| Here is the app for you to judge for yourself,
| https://votesmart.appspot.com/ English translation:
| https://votesmart-appspot-com.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=auto&...
|
| As you will see, it doesn't advocate for _a_ party or _a_
| candidate, but across parties and candidates based on a single
| issue - anti-totalitarianism.
|
| -
|
| While Telegram has taken a stand against the Russian govt. in the
| past, I do not believe that past action is necessarily predictive
| of future results in this regard. Given that the new Kremlin, in
| particular, is famous for bringing its opposition under their
| thumbs and turning them into controlled opposition.
|
| > _With a flourish he sponsored lavish arts festivals for the
| most provocative modern artists in Moscow, then supported
| Orthodox fundamentalists, dressed all in black and carrying
| crosses, who in turn attacked the modern-art exhibitions. The
| Kremlin's idea is to own all forms of political discourse, to not
| let any independent movements develop outside of its walls. Its
| Moscow can feel like an oligarchy in the morning and a democracy
| in the afternoon, a monarchy for dinner and a totalitarian state
| by bedtime._
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/hi...
|
| This assertion may seem conspiratorial. And it is. Though not
| guaranteed, it is well within the realm of possibility that the
| state leader bred by the KGB found ways to turn the screws on M.
| Durov to keep his hold on power. Given that he kills regularly
| for it. Should we consider it unlikely that he's willing to
| coerce others for it?
| cnst wrote:
| A very objective article, actually, and goes well to explain how
| this request to block the "voting app" isn't at all as
| controversial as portrayed in the Western MSM:
|
| > Second, this particular demand of the Russian authorities
| wasn't obviously unconstitutional, as they referred to a law that
| restricts campaigning after people start casting their votes.
| Laws against political campaigning while voting is underway exist
| in many countries and the Russian counterpart had been introduced
| a long time ago. Had we received a similar demand from any
| European country, we would have complied with it. On the
| contrary, had Russia or any other country demanded something that
| is in clear violation of human rights, we would rather face an
| outright ban of Telegram in that country than compromise our
| values.
| Y_Y wrote:
| But Telegram doesn't distribute apps, they blocked a "user"
| related to the app from using their network.
|
| The article does seem very reasonable, but I'd disagree that
| it's objective, since the author, Durov, runs Telegram and is
| writing to justify their actions.
| cnst wrote:
| But why do you think any justification is needed in the first
| place?
|
| It's basically the same law as in many other countries. The
| only difference is that citizens of most other countries
| don't dare to do these tricks, because there are severe
| consequences for playing with election integrity in the
| Western world. For example, look at what happened with Dinesh
| D'Souza when he tried donating to a campaign of a friend more
| than what the law allowed, using another friend as a lame
| duck to make the donation to avoid personal limits.
| raman162 wrote:
| Not the OP but I would say it's "objective" from telegrams
| perspective.
|
| They shared their decision making process which I agreed
| with, not too sure what would have been a better choice in
| that situation.
| LegitShady wrote:
| > it's "objective" from telegrams perspective.
|
| that's another way to say subjective if you aren't willing
| to admit it. the whole point of objective/subjective is
| that its supposed to be POV neutral.
| cnst wrote:
| How's it not objective, though?
|
| What if the request came from the EU or the US, to ban an
| account that was campaigning in local elections in
| violation of local election finance laws?
|
| Note that the ban is not even permanent! It's only for
| the last 2 days of the 3-day voting window. Campaigning
| was supposed to have been illegal throughout the whole
| 3-day period.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Because it is from his point of view.
|
| It doesn't make the content false just colored by the
| authors point of view.
| timmit wrote:
| Yeah, true, the problem is basically becoming
|
| Whether an app should block a bot/user when the app store
| blocks the bot app?
|
| => Whether an app / telegram with third party extension/bot
| ability would be considered as similar to an app store? =>
| Whether a bot built on a private application ecosystem should
| be considered as an independent app?
| sega_sai wrote:
| Except that law does _not_ apply for these elections that last
| several days https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4800223 The law
| allowing campaigning was passed in May 2021.
| simias wrote:
| Your link contradicts what you're saying, no?
|
| >Soglasno zakonu, predvybornaia agitatsiia dolzhna byt'
| zavershena v 00:00 po mestnomu vremeni pervogo dnia
| golosovaniia.
| sega_sai wrote:
| I think you are right. I was incorrect. Indeed that implies
| that campaining was prohibited from Friday on.
| lotusmars wrote:
| Yes, and this is the most puzzling lie in Durov's post.
|
| He knows he's lying. Personally I think he's found a common
| ground with Kremlin behind the scenes.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I kinda doubt that part. If he was in their good graces
| again I think we'd hear more about it But I think Russia is
| a much bigger market for Telegram than Iran was. It's where
| they started after all.
|
| I'm pretty sure that'll play a part in it too. Easy thing
| to throw away 0.5% of your marketshare, another when it's
| 20%. Ps I made those numbers up :)
| noxer wrote:
| When Russia wanted some kind of encryption keys he could
| not hand over because they dont exist, Telegram was
| banned in Russia but people found ways to use it anyway.
| So I dont think Russia has anything to "force" Durov
| other than via Apple/Google. He doesn't live there or
| owns anything there and according to past posts of him
| and there are no Telegram servers there either. + The
| proxy stuff to circumvent Russia's ban is already
| implemented if they would block the IPs again.
|
| It seems very likely that Apple/Google is actually the
| problem here. I encourage everyone to download the app
| from the website or F-Droid not form Google.
| cnst wrote:
| As I understand the article, it used to be that campaigning
| has been disallowed as early as one day before the voting
| day.
|
| Now it's disallowed starting from the voting day.
|
| Is that not so?
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| tangential and not against your point, but isn't this proof
| that relying on applications provided by private companies
| for politics and public sensitive matters, is the best way to
| end like this?
|
| especially when the only way to get the app is through a
| bunch of privately held "stores"
| jefftk wrote:
| This is why the web is so important: no app stores to pressure.
|
| It looks to be like this particular telegram bot could have been
| a web site?
| akomtu wrote:
| Why would it matter? If a website tries to undermine a dictator
| with long hands, the website's owner needs a better defense
| than tech buzzwords.
| raman162 wrote:
| The web is not open for everyone some countries block certain
| traffic. I guess one can use a VPN, thankfully that's becoming
| more mainstream.
| timmit wrote:
| If the app is a website or a webapp.
|
| I am pretty sure the pressure will be given to the host and
| domain register.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| A website which would get blocked instantaneously. Russia has
| an extensive censorship toolset available. They've blanket
| blocked a whole range of Cloudflare IPs at some point because
| they wanted a certain website behind Cloudflare shut down and
| didn't care about the collateral damage.
|
| Of course, such a block is easy to circumvent with a VPN, but
| if you need a VPN to access it then the service is essentially
| unavailable to non-techs, greatly reducing its effectiveness.
|
| There is a website[0] and I don't know why they didn't just
| launch a similar web app. Running on Google's appspot.com, the
| website would probably be dealt with the same way the apps were
| dealt with. No big hosting company (Amazon, Google, OVH, you
| name it) wants to risk being banned from the Russian internet,
| after all. A TOR hidden service would probably survive attempts
| at censorship, but at that point the whole effort is probably
| not worth the effort because you're not reaching many people
| locking the information behind TOR.
|
| [0]: https://votesmart.appspot.com/
| [deleted]
| jefftk wrote:
| If your adversary is happy to block arbitrary network
| requests, why do they need to get the app removed from the
| app store? Can't they just block all requests it makes?
| simias wrote:
| They obviously could, but these days everybody uses CDNs
| and shared resources so they'd probably end up blocking a
| lot more than just this app.
|
| For instance the app could well function completely offline
| if it embedded the list of candidates it supports, it which
| case they'd have to block all requests to the Google Play
| Store which would be rather heavy handed and unpopular.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| I'm sure this was the easiest path this time.
|
| They have in the past blocked large swaths of AWS to
| block this app:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16859299
| golergka wrote:
| He mentioned that Telegram used Google and Apple's
| notifications to push fresh ip addresses to the app.
| Russian authorities can't block notifications selectively
| to the Telegram app, only to all apps that use Google's and
| Apple's infrastructure.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes and in fact this is exactly what they did to Telegram
| for a while. But they found ways around it like those
| changing IPs.
| [deleted]
| raman162 wrote:
| I understand their choice, their hands were tied by the
| distributors; apple and Google. At least for Android phones they
| make it easy to sideload an apk so I'm little less empathetic on
| that end but for iOS, you're pretty much at the mercy of apple.
| keleftheriou wrote:
| Twitter is currently blocking the sharing of this post:
| https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1441875098810519558?...
| tandav wrote:
| Twitter blocks telegra.ph links for the last 3 years
| keleftheriou wrote:
| Thanks. Turns out graph.org links are not blocked and can be
| used instead.
| lucb1e wrote:
| A friend recently wanted to post something anonymously. Turns
| out that finding a webhost depends on having an email
| address, and email hosts depend on having a phone number, and
| phone numbers depend on a payment mechanism and - in case of
| prepaid - a government ID needs to be shown. Telegra.ph seems
| to be one of the few places where you can (with a reasonable
| amount of markup) just post things at will. I didn't know it
| was censored on popular media, that's an interesting twist to
| the degree to which you can still anonymously post things
| online.
| noxer wrote:
| You can use use one of the web archive services to get a
| url to share if Telegraph is blocked. By combining the 2
| services you can get what you want without identification.
| cnst wrote:
| Looks like telegra.ph link are shadowbanned from Reddit,
| too.
| [deleted]
| axpy906 wrote:
| From the looks of it both Android and Apple have a great deal of
| power, even for Telegram.
| vldchk wrote:
| Here is the thing: Durov lies.
|
| There is no law in Russia which forces him to ban that channel,
| and no concept of "silent days" anymore.
|
| Russian authorities has NEVER asked Telegram to remove anything.
| They pushed Google and Apple to remove links to Navalny
| application from search and from Apple Store (and Apple removes
| it only for Russia users, btw, unlike Telegram removes it for
| everyone), and Telegram was absolutely never in the picture and
| never asked to do a thing publicly. Just search Russian
| authorities speakers. They never bring Telegram into the picture.
|
| Durov shamelessly lies. He pretends his application is a speech
| freedom, but it is not.
|
| When there was a Telegram channel posting information about
| Belarus policemen who torture their own people -- they ban it.
| When there is still a channel where white men posting personal
| details of women and attack them -- no action.
|
| Why Durov lies?
|
| Because after SEC issued a claim that TON is a security and
| killed TON as a project, he owed ton of money to investors,
| including American. He had a real risk of being sued.
|
| Where did he find money to pay investors back? He found them in
| Dubai, Qatar and Russia. He issued Telegram bonds and buyers of
| those bonds are affiliated with Russia structures like VTB
| Capital bank or Russian Government investment fund named "Russian
| Fund of Direct Investments".
|
| Moreover, few years ago, Russian authorities tried to ban
| Telegram. There was a massive campaign against the application,
| but then all things I mentioned happened, and SURPRISE Russia
| officially removed Telegram from the list of inappropriate
| applications and stoped attempts to ban it. Even now after the
| election, Russia published a list of websites whom they are going
| to ban because they didn't stop spread of Navalny information.
| There WhatsApp and Viber in the list. But no Telegram.
|
| For me it sounds very very directly: Durov lies. He takes money
| from Russia government to cover his costs from TON failure and in
| return he, for example, bans Navalny Telegram Bot even while he
| a) wasn't asked; b) Apple and Google wasn't asked to ask
| Telegram; c) law he mentioned doesn't exist anymore.
|
| There is no more free Telegram. Remove it now and stay safe
| noxer wrote:
| Sorry but this is you first post here and what you claim
| doesn't make much sense.
|
| He didn't have to pay back the TON investors because the deal
| included that if the network does not go live by a set date
| (and the reason isn't telegrams fault) he would return the
| remaining of the investment not the part used for the
| development. This is the risk the investors took and they lost.
| telegram itself only had to pay the sec fine which was peanuts
| for Durov.
|
| Don't know anything about you other claims so I cant debunk but
| please post sources so we can check for our self.
| cnst wrote:
| Remove it and replace it with what exactly?!
|
| Telegram remains the only mainstream free speech platform on
| the web today, with the least amount of censorship and the most
| resiliency against being taken down.
| seniorivn wrote:
| there is matrix, the best option, both secure and reasonably
| well made(element and alternative clients), but it miles
| behind telegram in terms of UI/UX even though it's on par
| with whatsapp/signal/etc
| seniorivn wrote:
| >and buyers of those bonds are affiliated with Russia
| structures like VTB Capital bank or Russian Government
| investment fund named "Russian Fund of Direct Investments".
|
| As far as i know, it's not true(meaning there are no
| signs/proof of that). It's entirely possible, durov does have
| connections in russian elite, after all he was the creator of
| vk.com russian most popular social network. Vk was owned by
| russian oligarchs most of it's life at least partly. At the end
| of durov involvement with vk, he had some harsh clashes with
| oligarchs/regime, but ended up making a deal(and got paid well,
| even if not as well as he should've been). So he certainly
| knows how to deal with them, but i seriously doubt he enjoyed
| it, so he must have been really desperate if he got in bed with
| them again.
|
| The biggest promise of telegram was that it would become a
| point of entrance to a decentralized economy based on TON
| blockchain and it's masternode hosted services. If they succeed
| to launch and than move telegram itself onto ton masternode
| hosting, telegram would've become the greatest/freest/(and
| potentially most secure, if they would implement e2ee key
| synchronization) messaging service ever
|
| End of TON project, ment an end of telegram's future as a not
| data harvesting company.
| vldchk wrote:
| I can share sources to Russian websites but will it tell you
| anything?
|
| https://www.rbc.ru/business/23/03/2021/605a3fbc9a79470b2eb35.
| ..
|
| They created a very elegant scheme when through a fictional
| Arabic investment fund they put russian government money
| (Government fund invests into Arabic fund which invests into
| bonds). It is kind of Russian classic and they did it a lot
| in the last.
|
| Nowadays Telegram Bonds are traded at Saint-Petersburg stock
| exchange and there are a lot of rumors that Durov attends a
| lot of private parties in Russia for kids of oligarchs.
| seniorivn wrote:
| I'm russian as well, and rbc.ru is not the most independent
| source at the time of publishing, but even according to
| them, RDIF(RFPI) invested about $2mil, that's a drop in the
| bucket, and since it was secondary market, it proves
| nothing but active propaganda from both sides(russian
| government has an agenda to promote as well as telegram)
|
| bonds being traded wherever they are traded isn't really a
| proof of anything as well, wouldn't be even if it was
| shares of a company, but as bonds it's not that much of an
| influence, especially if accumulating big share of them
| would cost a fortune.
|
| As to rumors, i would love to see any of it, again it's
| entirely possible, after Telegram official's attendance of
| government pr public forum(will use the same source, but it
| was all over the internet https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and
| _media/09/07/2020/5f0730bf9... ) it would be surprising if
| telegram isn't dealing with them in any way.
| cnst wrote:
| It's funny how standard business dealings of having
| subsidiaries and offshore investment vehicles are being
| viewed by the Russians as a "Russian classic" just because
| critical thinking overload. :-)
|
| The article does not really describe anything controversial
| or out of the ordinary.
|
| I'm sure many countries do similar investments and
| arrangements. For example, IDA Ireland has offices in the
| US, and runs ads on Bloomberg TV. How's RDIF that much
| different?
| [deleted]
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