[HN Gopher] Protected Content, Delete by Date, Device Management...
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Protected Content, Delete by Date, Device Management and more
Author : yannoninator
Score : 213 points
Date : 2021-12-08 10:01 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (telegram.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (telegram.org)
| somebodythere wrote:
| Imagine future, with Neuralink DRM. You go to tell your friend
| the summary of the movie you just saw, but thankfully the implant
| was able to disable your vocal cords just in time to protect the
| intellectual property of the copy right holder.
| miki123211 wrote:
| This can be marketed as a great spoiler prevention feature.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| For your safety.
| diegoperini wrote:
| > was able to disable your vocal cords just in time
|
| Or make you forget instantly!
| josefx wrote:
| Your limited time license to Disneys "The Lion King" has just
| expired please assume a stable position while the licensing
| system purges your long term memory of any audio, visual or
| emotional response associated with it or pay $10 for the
| limited time chance of upgrading your memories to the latest
| Lion King remake with a monthly subscription fee of only
| $5.99^1 .
|
| ^1 Actual viewing of the movie not included, use of IP during
| social events requires a premium license, disparaging
| comments are subject to filtering and may result in license
| termination, Disney is not responsible for any long term
| damage to your brain, ... .
| tjpnz wrote:
| TriStar's lawyers have deemed your comment to be an
| unauthorised reproduction of the Total Recall plot line.
| Please step into the room opening on your left.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| I first read it as "Please step into the window opening
| on your left" and thought how creepy it was, but then I
| realized that it would be a loss of a consumer and
| associated future profit, on the other hand in this case
| missed future profit can be charged from your
| possessions.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I would not be surprised if this became reality one day.
| Copyright is an atrocity.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| wow. i can totally see this happening. It's not even funny
| anymore
| ducaale wrote:
| This reminds me of Tom Scott's "Welcome to Life: the
| singularity, ruined by lawyers" video [1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/IFe9wiDfb0E
| kingcharles wrote:
| This was fantastic.
|
| When I worked on Microsoft's DRM products in the early
| 00s I came to the sudden realization that if we had AR
| glasses in the future they could block out things from
| our vision and replace them with adverts. Ugh. It _will_
| come true.
| kuschku wrote:
| Also see the other video Tom Scott made on this topic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JlxuQ7tPgQ
| kingcharles wrote:
| Fantastic (and scary), thank you.
|
| These media fingerprinting databases are truly dystopian.
| I have come across a wide range of media recently that is
| being erased from our culture this way. The media giants
| say "don't pirate it, you can buy/rent it from us". But -
| and this is a big but - what if you can't rent/buy it?
| What if the media giant just adds the content's
| fingerprint to the database but then erases or locks away
| all copies of it.
|
| Now you cannot upload it to any site with any serious
| audience. I have videos that the networks have locked
| away, but yet I cannot upload them to Youtube/Vimeo or
| anything similar because they are flagged. I cannot self-
| host them because the bandwidth requirements would kill
| me. Sure, they probably exist on places like Freenet, but
| that is essentially inaccessible for most mortals.
|
| Once all the people that know of these things die off
| we'll only be left with whispers on the Web where such
| things are mentioned as having once existed, but can
| never be seen.
| iszomer wrote:
| Never heard of a piratebox before?
| kingcharles wrote:
| I have now ;)
| ben_w wrote:
| I think it would be more along the lines of the Panoply
| security mechanisms in Reynolds' _Revelation Space_ universe,
| where a (short-lived synthetic virus?) induces something akin
| to reverse-dyslexia so you can read things normal eyes cannot
| (keywords for search: "pangolin" or "manticore" security
| clearance).
| pdkl95 wrote:
| Tom Scott's speculative fiction about the end game of a DRM-
| based future:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E
|
| "Welcome to Life"
| sjustinas wrote:
| "The Artificial Intelligence That Deleted A Century" is
| another similar one from Tom.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JlxuQ7tPgQ
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I can also imagine one company disabling Neuralink DRM and
| another one publishing full-page ads in NYT how much it hurts
| small businesses in the USA.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| "Domestic terrorists hack and corrupt millions of Neuralink
| implants"
| varispeed wrote:
| Why not just program people to go to work, eat, spend and
| sleep? Just disable the ability of having creative thoughts and
| create a new thinker class where only children of the elites
| will not have an implant.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That's unironically what these "rights holders" want.
| Mindless consumers...
| SahAssar wrote:
| You are basically describing this old (2012) video, where this
| concept is applied to a brain-upload afterlife:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E
| gmuslera wrote:
| Brain upload afterlife will be a lot more like
| https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
| est31 wrote:
| And the implant will also disable your vocal cords for the
| sharing of bad or good opinions about the movie. Whether it's
| the good or bad ones that are being blocked depends whether the
| publisher runs ad campaigns through Neuralink or not.
| iszomer wrote:
| Or turn you into a temporary vegetable so law enforcement can
| come pick you up.
| bleuchase wrote:
| Or they pay to silently implant a positive false memory of the
| film so you think you liked it.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Just plant the memory of you watching the movie, no need to
| make any actual movies at all. The copyrighter's dream.
| Asmod4n wrote:
| Can apps on iOS disable screen recording or mirroring?
| Gigachad wrote:
| They can block recordings or mirrors for DRM video. Telegram
| blocks screenshots of secret chats on android but on iOS it
| sends a message to the other side saying a screenshot was taken
| which makes me suspect it isn't possible to block screenshots.
| staff009 wrote:
| And today I had to update before I was able to use Telegram.
| Stupid policy.
| GranPC wrote:
| So much for not editorializing titles.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| A lot of negativity here for this, but I see the benefits in some
| scenarios for privacy: We may want to share family pictures with
| more of our family, but not have those pictures piped out to
| social media/the public. Especially for less technical users,
| this provides a reasonably decent protection from that occurring.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Why is this called DRM?
| depingus wrote:
| It's not called DRM. OP used disingenuous title.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I hate "DRM" as much as the next person, but ... am I the only
| person that sees this as a great feature in the particular
| content it is implemented for?
|
| This isn't like classical DRM where the intent is to stop you
| from owning content you already purchased.
|
| This is effectively a way for group/page holders to ensure
| control over content that is not meant to be shared beyond that
| context.
|
| Yes I know that technically if you post a picture of your kids in
| the group someone could still take a physical screenshot from
| another phone, but the point is reasonable friction, not an
| insurmountable tech barrier.
| up6w6 wrote:
| A nice idea in the opposite direction I saw recently was
| watermarking images, why create a fake felling of privacy when
| you can create legal liability ?
|
| https://community.signalusers.org/t/watermark-photos-videos/...
| marcodiego wrote:
| Ok. Since this is open source using an open protocol, what is the
| healthy client or fork?
| [deleted]
| chrismorgan wrote:
| The tooltips on the images and videos are excellent. Now I want a
| comparison between iOS's text recognition and a pharmacist. And
| it made me think of how 93% of paint splatters are valid Perl
| programs (https://www.mcmillen.dev/sigbovik/2019.pdf, PDF, 7MB).
| JorgeGT wrote:
| There are witty alt texts in all figures in Telegram's blog
| posts. I would really like to know the ratio of (time spent
| writing the text) / (time spent coming up with the alt
| texts)...
| gopkarthik wrote:
| "Telegram Introduces DRM"
|
| Just want to point out that it's not actually DRM. Just Telegram
| giving users the option to prevent message recipients from
| downloading content.
| fsflover wrote:
| How is it different from DRM?
| Scharkenberg wrote:
| It doesn't prevent the user from accessing it "the wrong
| way", it just makes it inconvenient to save an external copy.
| fsflover wrote:
| Exactly as with DRM.
| Scharkenberg wrote:
| Only in the most liberal sense of the phrase "DRM" (which
| IMO would be a useless definition as many platforms/apps
| have analogous intentional and unintentional barriers,
| but they're not called "DRM"), but not DRM as we know it.
| While the decision is on the sender's side, a crucial
| distinction is that the sender enjoys the same power as
| the recipient in the conversation - very similar to
| information sharing between friends IRL. Calling it "DRM"
| is just pedantic.
| fsflover wrote:
| > as many platforms/apps have analogous intentional and
| unintentional barriers
|
| Now, that I'm thinking about it, it seems that the new
| trend of hiding the files on the disk looks indeed like a
| light version of DRM preventing users from doing whatever
| they want with their data.
| AlfeG wrote:
| So every Authenticator app is implementing DRM?
| fsflover wrote:
| Do they prevent the authenticated person from sharing the
| accessed data?
| comprev wrote:
| So you could say Telegram is giving users the option to
| digitally manage the usage rights of the content?
| sparkling wrote:
| It does not prevent anything, it just makes it inconvenient
| enough for the average user.
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| like DRM?
| Gigachad wrote:
| Nothing prevents anything. You could also disconnect the
| display and dump the raw data to capture the image.
| gopkarthik wrote:
| Which seems to be Telegram's goal here.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I don't use telegram, but I know it can be added as a bridge in
| Matrix - so if someone has that setup, surely this is pointless?
| Would the image not just be saved on the Matrix server? In fact
| with any sort of bot?
| dathinab wrote:
| I think this trend of preventing people from copying is worry
| some as:
|
| - people might have a _legal right_ to make copies
|
| - it's opens up a lot of potential for abuse, as it's harder to
| safe proof of abuse.
|
| - it gives people a false sense of security (e.g. when sexting)
|
| Couldn't they instead e.g. display low resulution images for
| screenshots or similar?
|
| That should be good enough for artists in my experience. (I mean
| there are artists which live draw the art on e.g. twitch they
| then sell, it works as the image quality you can easily extract
| is just not "good enough" for most potential buyers, and if we
| idk. throw AI sharpening tools at it then we could also throw
| tools at it which circumvent telegrams protections).
| dathinab wrote:
| Oh, they also added support for deleting messages you send.
|
| If we compare it to classical post that is like sneaking into
| someones else house and stealing the message you send.
|
| I can understand why they do it.
|
| But it, especially compared with the DRM change, makes abuse
| SOOO much easier.
| elcomet wrote:
| Deleting messages was alreday supported in telegram for
| years. They just added the option to partially delete a whole
| conversation (whereas you could delete only the full
| conversation, or messages one by one).
| dathinab wrote:
| yes, but that makes a very big difference for the usability
| for cyber mobbing, extortion and similar.
| handoflixue wrote:
| How so? You could already delete the whole conversation
| to avoid leaving traces, or individual messages if you
| want to create a misleading log. What specific tactics
| does the new method open up?
| dathinab wrote:
| For e.g. abusesive relation ship sever (and sadly often
| effective) cases of Gaslightling are pretty common,
| similar tackticks are often applied in other cases, too.
|
| And with fully deleting messages this opens quite a bit
| of possibilities.
|
| If they instead would just make the message unreadable,
| i.e. leaf a placeholder behind this would be a different
| thing.
| afiori wrote:
| also given that they add an "edited" flag; a deletion is
| a substantial edit.
|
| also I would like to have a flag for silent messages,
| elzbardico wrote:
| Block the person. Problem solved
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > sneaking into someones else house and stealing the message
| you send
|
| I remember watching at least one movie where a character did
| this.
| politician wrote:
| > Restricted saving
|
| No one has two phones, or one phone and a camera.
|
| Of course, that's not remotely true, so what have they
| accomplished? If someone receives messages that they want or need
| to save, e.g. for legal reasons, this feature isn't going to stop
| them.
| petercooper wrote:
| It's more a bathroom door lock than DRM. It's not meant to be
| unbeatable - it's to prevent accidental embarrassment, and most
| likely to be used by small groups of willing participants (as in
| 'group chats' or the 'secret santa' example, perhaps)?
| bhelkey wrote:
| >it's to prevent accidental embarrassment
|
| I am not sure I understand where you are coming from. Are you
| suggesting that people accidentally take screenshots and share
| them?
| londons_explore wrote:
| There is more of a social issue here... If Person A sends a
| message to Person B, who should get to decide when that message
| is deleted?
|
| Telegram seems to have decided that either Person A or Person B
| can delete the message, without the permission or notification of
| the other.
|
| I personally would prefer it to be the message is only deleted
| with the permission of Person A _and_ Person B. Ie. "Bob has
| deleted his copy of this chat, and requests you do the same.
| Delete Chat?"
| Gigachad wrote:
| In my ideal world. You would get one hour to delete the
| message. I think it is genuinely useful to be able to "undo" a
| send and redact stuff accidentally sent to the wrong person as
| this is so trivial to mess up. But after you leave it for an
| hour, it becomes archived history for the other person. This is
| actually how telegram used to work from memory before they let
| you delete both sides whenever you want.
| liminalsunset wrote:
| Of course, the other consequence of being able to delete
| unilaterally is that message history is no longer a "redundant
| backup" - one person's mistake can delete everything.
| Furthermore, chat transcripts can change silently, which may
| have various consequences. Telegram deleted messages are not
| shown as placeholders, but just disappear.
|
| On the other hand however, unilateral delete does help the use
| case where people want to minimize the chance that the
| information is accidentally leaked or exposed - the "store less
| info" strategy
| [deleted]
| sylvain_kerkour wrote:
| While I'm not a fan of Telegram's security model, I have to say
| that their dedication to create an awesome product is admirable.
|
| EDIT: Just to be clear given the title, I'm not pro DRM, and we
| can be pro or against auto-removable content, but I just love how
| they implement features that their users are asking for and the
| quality of their apps.
| kmarc wrote:
| I am amazed how high quality telegram's client apps are. Both
| on desktop (native), android, and even the web versions are
| feature full, native, blazing FAST. As I said once, telegram is
| not the best chat app I have to use, but the best... App
| altogether on my laptop/phone, I have to use :-)
|
| The UX is slicker and more comfortable to use than that of
| whatsapp (and miles ahead signal). With the latest update if I
| got it correctly, even E2E encrypted chats can be synced to all
| clients (? Needs to be verified)
|
| I guess you mean the security model of non-E2E chats. Although
| you can read into it that they can do MITM, the details reveal
| that the actual keys/messages are shared into datacenters in
| multiple countries so no government alone can retrieve
| plaintext from at-rest storage. To me (especially compared to
| anything Facebook products) is already much better than
| nothing. If it's an issue for you, opt in for E2E chats and
| enjoy!
|
| Sometimes I have to use whatsapp with some contacts and it
| feels like a huge step back after telegram, especially in UX.
| baxuz wrote:
| One thing I can't stand is that it's the only messaging app
| out there without a presence monitor. As soon as I receive a
| message all of my clients will start pinging.
|
| It's the reason why I avoid it. I talk to someone on the
| desktop client, yet my phone, work laptop and tablet will
| ring on every message.
|
| I can't be assed to go and mute 3 other devices every time I
| decide to talk to someone.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| That would be a nice feature, but for me it's not
| absolutely essential because my phone is nearly always on
| Do Not Disturb (I only let calls, SMS/iMessage and Viber
| through, but I still see other notifications when I pick up
| my phone), and even on my laptop I disabled the
| notification sound and just left the popup/badge on.
| kmarc wrote:
| Hmmm does my version have a presence monitor? I don't
| remember being bothered by this (using it on Linux desktop,
| android phone and android tablet)
| afiori wrote:
| it does have a presence monitor, but I believe it isn't
| uniform between the various platforms and it is quite
| fickle when it works (as soon as you close the window it
| marks you as totally offline)
|
| on Android at least you can set telegram to limit the
| frequency of notifications (eg "at most 3 every 5 minutes")
| it is not perfect but it is an improvement
| liminalsunset wrote:
| In my experience on macOS (swift) app, this does indeed
| detect presence - only if I ignore it for an (albeit
| short), few seconds will it ping my phone I think.
| baxuz wrote:
| Neither the macOS swift app, nor Unigram on Windows does
| this in my experience.
| hansel_der wrote:
| > I talk to someone on the desktop client, yet my phone,
| work laptop and tablet will ring on every message.
|
| ime the desktop will pickup the message a few seconds
| before any of the mobile clients does and mark it as read,
| hence surpressing any notifications on the latter.
|
| ofc chat notifications don't make any sounds on my systems
| to begin with.
| edpichler wrote:
| I agree. They do a great job. I like the drag and drop of
| images, depending how you drop it compresses or not the
| image.
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| It's much faster than Discord, especially on mobile.
| Sometimes I get notifications from Discord, then when I open
| the app, it takes a few seconds to create a connection and
| show the message. With Telegram it's just there
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| > Sometimes I get notifications from Discord, then when I
| open the app, it takes a few seconds to create a connection
| and show the message.
|
| The exact same thing also happens on Telegram for me all
| the time, and I have a gigabit connection. The push
| notification arrives on my phone instantly, but when I open
| the app it loads for like 15 seconds before showing
| everything.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I'm a happy Telegram user as well! That being said:
|
| > I guess you mean the security model of non-E2E chats.
| Although you can read into it that they can do MITM, the
| details reveal that the actual keys/messages are shared into
| datacenters in multiple countries so no government alone can
| retrieve plaintext from at-rest storage. To me (especially
| compared to anything Facebook products) is already much
| better than nothing. If it's an issue for you, opt in for E2E
| chats and enjoy!
|
| It's unfortunately not that easy. For one, their promises of
| sharded keys is something we as users cannot verify, so we
| still just need to trust them here [0]. WhatsApp, on the
| other hand, at least attempts to have E2E. Secret chats are
| an option, but only the mobile clients support them [1] and
| you can't have them for groups at all. There's also some
| critique on mtproto, their roll-your-own encryption. I don't
| necessarily agree, but it's another strange point.
|
| Like you I like the UX a lot and I have some trust in Durovs
| motivations, but the security model is questionable.
|
| [0] They refuse to open source their servers, but I follow
| their argumentation in so far as that this would not help
| since we could not verify that the published source code is
| the one running on the servers.
|
| [1] At least the official Linux desktop client and the web
| clients don't.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > but only the mobile clients support them [1]
|
| I think my Mac Mini now allows me to create secret chats. I
| didn't test it but I am fairly certain I saw it less than a
| week ago.
|
| I just checked on my Windows laptop and that does not allow
| it. My Linux machines are upstairs but I think we can trust
| your observation.
| kmarc wrote:
| For [1], I saw in the yesterday update that the web version
| also can sync secret chats.
|
| I don't have my laptop with me (for another month), so I
| have to check this, but based on the redesigned devices
| dialog, I can imagine that this is now solved.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| I think Telegram for macOS (not to be confused with
| Telegram Desktop, which also supports macOS) supports
| secret chats, and on Windows you can use a third party
| client called Unigram. But it would be nice to have
| official support for it in Telegram Desktop as well.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| I also don't understand its security model, at this point also
| speaking about automatic message deletion it seems to me they
| have been over-optimizing something. XMPP messengers have
| encryption, can even support forward secrecy and don't keep
| messages among other features. Since Smartphones are anyway not
| the most secure platform, it makes little sense to provide a
| completely sealed off messenger on top of that.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Are the client and the protocol no longer open?
| omglolwtezz wrote:
| Not rooting = not owning. Fuck policies, fuck dmca, fuck google
| mcraiha wrote:
| I like the idea of "Log In via Call" since there have been some
| issues with SMS delays.
| yur3i__ wrote:
| I personally am happy about this feature, the main application
| for me will be to prevent the leaking of private information from
| smaller groups, obviously if someone was so determined they could
| easily get around it but for small groups of average users,
| removing the immediate option is good enough
| liminalsunset wrote:
| Just tested this. In a group with this enabled, indeed, the iOS
| app results in either a black, transparent, or otherwise missing
| screenshot of the area of the screen displaying the media. In the
| few minutes I played with it, I wasn't able to bypass it.
|
| However, the chat is viewable in Telegram Web (K). Web K even
| offers to download the picture, which actually downloads the
| file.
|
| Additionally, Telegram Desktop for Mac similarly allows
| screenshots as usual and isn't affected.
|
| In the past I have seen some other apps implement screenshot
| prevention on iOS usinf something that "cloaks" the screen when
| the button combination is detected, and when the OS is about to
| background the app. This is the method Fido My Account (mobile
| carrier in Canada) uses (current version allows screenshots, but
| blocks the info from the app switcher).
|
| The method Telegram is using appears to be rather seamless, as it
| does not show the screen going black or anything when the
| screenshot is taken. Stack Overflow seems to discuss two
| solutions, one using DRM video, and another using some password
| field hackery.
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18680028/prevent-screen-...
|
| This is the most likely case, as the behaviour is similar to what
| happens when you take a screenshot of DRM netflix; it appears it
| is drawn by the hardware and not in the OS framebuffer, and thus
| shows up as a black box.
|
| Of course this is not really security, but Telegram, despite
| being open source on the client, does have in the ToS that apps
| have to implement the "secure" features of secret chats properly,
| or risk being blocked. Recently they have been sending info out
| to bot developers that says apps that don't implement the ads in
| channels will be blocked as well, but I'm not sure if they will
| really enforce this.
|
| "We ask that you make sure that these sponsored messages are
| supported and properly displayed in your app by January 1, 2022.
| Unfortunately, Telegram cannot financially sustain apps that
| support Telegram Channels but do not display official sponsored
| messages - such apps will have to be disconnected."
| bottled_poe wrote:
| > Just tested this. In a group with this enabled, indeed, the
| iOS app results in either a black, transparent, or otherwise
| missing screenshot of the area of the screen displaying the
| media. In the few minutes I played with it, I wasn't able to
| bypass it.
|
| What about screen recording?
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| Screen recording is handled in an interesting way. If you
| start the recording while in the Telegram app, it just
| freezes after the 3-second countdown and never starts. It
| times out after about 10 seconds. If you switch to another
| app before that, it starts the recording, but if you try to
| switch back to Telegram the recording freezes halfway through
| the app switcher animation. Protected media is also blanked
| out in the app switcher.
|
| It's different from apps using DRM like Netflix, where it
| usually just shows a notification saying "failed to start
| screen recording".
| dewey wrote:
| I'd guess it just uses the same iOS framework parts that are
| used already for Netflix and other streaming services to
| blank out the content. In that case screen recording would
| also be taken care of.
| liminalsunset wrote:
| I just tested it again, and as the user below notes, it has
| some way of interfering with screen recording. However this
| is not 100% reliable. as I was able to create a screen
| recording of the media in the group's media overview page and
| zoom in as usual.
|
| The trick was to start the screen recording out of Telegram,
| open it (if you're on the actual page it will freeze the
| recording interestingly) but once you get to the media
| overview page, the screen recording works again and you can
| capture whatever you want. I have been able to record
| everything without problem once incl the chat, but this is
| probably only effective in some cases.
|
| As it turns out, regular screenshots also work on that page.
| My testing was not super thorough I suppose, for something I
| quickly did while trying to fall asleep...
| mimsee wrote:
| I wonder how they prevent a screenshot from happening on their
| desktop client or do I just not receive protected content on
| desktop.
| underscore_ku wrote:
| or if you use another phone to take a picture
| eitland wrote:
| I've worked a bit with a such system, from interpreting it at
| the policy level and down to creating a technical POC at one
| time.
|
| My conclusion and I think everyone elses too at that project
| was that despite the fact that Microsofts offering (Azure
| Information Protection, but not the the Sharepoint part of
| it) was almost brilliant it only solves involuntary leaks:
|
| - people forgetting to lock their machines,
|
| - forgetting that something is internal
|
| - etc
|
| If someone wants to leak information they can always take a
| photo of it.
|
| As someone who has had colleagues send screenshots of
| sensistive details, taking the effort to reply on BCC-ed
| mails and more and who has also managed to do a few things of
| my own I welcome this.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Pretty much. A sleezy guy at work would show off the nudes he
| got on his private phone from girls on Snapchat by taking
| pictures of the screen with his work phone.
|
| Life tip: never send nudes or any private information to
| anyone you don't completely trust, regardless of the privacy
| features the communication medium offers, as there's always
| an easy workaround.
| xwolfi wrote:
| Better tip: never send any information or opinion you
| wouldnt want the public, your parents, your colleagues and
| the police to associate your name to. I dont get the newish
| trend online to send BS you're ashamed of.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| How about you never take nudes in the first place?
|
| Data can leak in multitude of ways, earned trust can be
| broken, etc..
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> How about you never take nudes in the first place?_
|
| That's obviously the safest option, but sending and
| receiving nudes is an activity many sexually active
| people find arousing.
|
| Not having sex is also the safest option to preventing
| pregnancies and STDs, but people still engage in it with
| protections that are not 100% guarantee simply because
| it's an activity that most people need.
| afiori wrote:
| how about keeping always 50 meters away from any road? it
| is the safest way to avoid a car accident
| vestrigi wrote:
| The argument also quickly turns into blaming the victims.
| fsflover wrote:
| Or maybe just never get naked. Who knows where the
| cameras may be.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Ironically this is actually what it takes. So many airbnb
| hosts and landlords are getting caught with hidden
| cameras all over the place.
| fsflover wrote:
| Desktop already does not have the secret chats, so...
| AnonC wrote:
| Desktop does have secret chats, but it depends on the client
| app that's used. The secret chats are not synced across
| devices though.
| fsflover wrote:
| Which clients allow secret chats on Debian or Mobian?
| mimsee wrote:
| Well I guess that does it
| contravariant wrote:
| Personally I think preventing screenshots is a user hostile
| feature of an OS anyway (accidental screenshots aside, outright
| refusing to do something is the definition of user hostile).
|
| Applications _definitely_ shouldn 't get any say in which
| screenshots are allowed.
| Gigachad wrote:
| iOS doesn't allow preventing screenshots but it does notify
| the app when they happen. Apparently telegram has found a
| trick to block parts of the screenshot out. Android has an
| api which does block screenshots.
| anotherhue wrote:
| My favourite screenshot tool is the camera on another phone.
| paradaux wrote:
| And besides that, it's very easy to bypass those restrictions
| anyway. The most common would be to screen _record_ prior to
| opening, that usually isn't detected -- or alternatively, for
| us rooted users just use a screenshot app which ignores those
| soft-blocks.
|
| In short, this limitation is rather pointless.
| theon144 wrote:
| >The most common would be to screen _record_ prior to
| opening, that usually isn't detected -- or alternatively, for
| us rooted users just use a screenshot app which ignores those
| soft-blocks.
|
| According to other comments in this thread, this just freezes
| when switching apps, and fails. I'm not too surprised, given
| that the feature (at least on Android) is meant as a security
| measure (i.e. most of the banking and 2FA apps use it to some
| extent).
| orangepanda wrote:
| Thats why I always carry around two phones. To, once every
| three years, take a photo of something I cant screenshot.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Makes for really crap video copying though.
| Aachen wrote:
| ...in regular chats. It's always been there in encrypted chats.
| Or is that not what the editorialized title refers to?
| Scharkenberg wrote:
| The title is editorialized/sensationalized. Original title:
| "Protected Content, Delete by Date, Device Management and More"
| wffurr wrote:
| Yeah OP or mods please update the flamebait title.
| ur-whale wrote:
| So you'll just need a second phone to take a picture of the
| first?
|
| Why is this even a feature?
| blitzar wrote:
| The lock on your door just means someone has to break a window
| to get in. By your rationale you dont bother closing let alone
| locking your front door.
| guerrilla wrote:
| The Internet and computers just keep getting more and more
| annoying. Is this really what people want?
| johnisgood wrote:
| > prevents screenshots and limits the ability to save media
|
| I fail to see how this actually prevents what it is supposed to
| prevent. You can still take a screenshot on desktop, or you can
| take a photo with another phone of your phone with the "DRM'd"
| content. They just got rid of the "Save" button and probably
| revoked the permission for taking screenshots.
|
| Is the client open source? If it is, you can just modify it then.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| This has a bad title.
| sschueller wrote:
| So since the client is open I can just compile a version that
| does allow me to Screenshot....
| throwamon wrote:
| Which means the next logical step for Telegram is to make it
| closed source.
|
| You know, to protect its users' privacy.
| dejj wrote:
| Let me just fork the client and remove the anti-feature... oh
| wait.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| This reminded me of the video on DRM called C.R.A.P.(Content
| Restriction Annulment Protection) by David Berlind of ZDNET:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww65z8HuIJ8
| can16358p wrote:
| So, "Privacy by obscurity"? Who thought that was a good idea? And
| how do they plan to restrict screenshots on iOS anyway? This is
| wrong on so many levels. If someone has access to a material on
| their own device, Telegeam can only make it inconvenient (but not
| impossible) to save/forward content, and since it's not real
| privacy, this only makes people to move away from Telegram to,
| say, Discord or alternatives, just as me and many others around
| did.
|
| Good move Telegram. This is how you ruin your otherwise-great
| platform.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _"If someone has access to a material on their own device,
| Telegeam can only make it inconvenient (but not impossible) to
| save /forward content..."_
|
| Is this effectively true for media? Key concept is
| democratizing DRM. You as a digital person having digital
| rights and letting you manage them.
|
| Consider Netflix on iOS devices. Now consider if OnlyFans
| creators could have the same effective guarantees. Might they
| not adopt Telegram in droves?
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| Media DRM is not infallible either. Sure, it's a lot more
| inconvenient than a feature that simply blocks screenshots,
| but even the most secure hardware DRM used on Netflix, Amazon
| Prime Video etc. is regularly cracked, the methods are just
| not public. (Though they usually attack Google's Widevine DRM
| rather than Apple's FairPlay.)
| quaintdev wrote:
| > this only makes people to move away from Telegram to, say,
| Discord or alternatives
|
| I simply do not understand why people are even thinking of
| moving to another closed platform like Discord. We already have
| an alternative and I think it's time to embrace it: Matrix
| hLsvZHKd wrote:
| Matrix is good in theory but its UI is still confusing. I'm
| also bitter that my old account that was closed a long time
| ago cannot be retrieved or reset, which means that I cannot
| use my phone number again (it's stuck forever to the closed
| account).
| quaintdev wrote:
| What are you talking about? You do not need phone number. I
| self host matrix instance and all I did was create username
| and passwords for people I know and shared with them. They
| then logged in and changed their passwords. At no point the
| sign up workflow asked for phone number.
|
| Also, the UI has improved a lot recently. There are number
| of matrix clients that have appeared on app stores but I
| still prefer Element which gets regular updates and
| features.
| pferde wrote:
| You don't even need to create usernames/passwords in
| advance - you can just send your friends custom one-time
| URLs, which will allow them to enter their own desired
| usernames and passwords.
|
| https://zeratax.github.io/matrix-registration/
| _flux wrote:
| I'm sure you can contact the admins of matrix.org and ask
| for the phone number to be released. (I'm assuming you used
| that instance, as you mentioned nothing else.) I believe
| they are reachable at support@matrix.org .
|
| Rather seems like a bug.
| [deleted]
| gefhfff wrote:
| Matrix itself has as much as an UI as Email (even less)
| johnisgood wrote:
| What phone number? I use Element, and I never had to enter
| my phone number at any point.
| _flux wrote:
| You can provide it for the benefit of your friends (or
| possibly enemies or attackers) to use it to find your
| Matrix ID from their pre-existing contact phone number.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I see. Seems like an useful feature for many people.
| Eikon wrote:
| Because all Matrix clients are so terrible that they feel
| like beginners projects, even the official one is so slow and
| bloated that it's almost a bad joke.
|
| Comparing Matrix to polished apps like telegram or discord
| is... misplaced to say the least.
| quaintdev wrote:
| I least expected such a response here on HN. I can
| understand if this appeared on other communities but here
| we are.
|
| We all know how open source Software moves forward. It's us
| who can put up with little inconveniences of an open source
| app and maybe even improve it by identifying, reporting and
| implementing fixes. Those polished apps are polished
| because they have dedicated teams that get paid hefty $$$
| to ensure they do not loose existing user base. In matrix
| case the user base is very little but I think they have
| achieved something remarkable: a thriving community that is
| developing client and server Software required for matrix
| to work.
|
| I wonder if we had this kind of attitude in starting days
| of Internet, we probably would not have Internet today. By
| the way, when did you last use any matrix client?
| scrollaway wrote:
| The parent comment isn't complaining about matrix, but
| rather telling the plain reality of WHY people use
| discord instead of matrix.
|
| By not acknowledging the importance of polish, you only
| push to keep the status quo ... and the status quo is
| that the masses are not using matrix.
| unionpivo wrote:
| But here is the thing, its highly unlikely that open
| source app will have polish compared to Startup with all
| the funding in the world.
|
| There are very few open source application (desktop or
| mobile) that are as polished as commercial applications.
|
| This is unlikely to change, but I still think it's worth
| trying to get as many users to use open source apps,
| because more users an app has - higher chance of more
| developers - better app. Not to mention no ads or spying
| and other crap that commercial apps are riddled with
| (General opinion not just chat apps)
| scrollaway wrote:
| Feel free to keep advertising Matrix. I'm myself a strong
| supporter of it.
|
| But to get it into the mainstream, it needs to compete
| with other messaging apps such as Telegram.
|
| For that, it needs polish. Period. There's no way around
| it. So if the goal is to get it into the mainstream (and
| personally, I want it to be), then that is what it needs.
|
| There are loads of ways you can contribute to this:
|
| 1. Contribute time, code, designs, general help and
| volunteering
|
| 2. Contribute money via personal means or via work
|
| 3. Promote the use of Matrix to individuals
|
| 4. Promote the use of Matrix to businesses, eg. at work,
| or as a backing protocol for messaging where it makes
| sense etc.
|
| 5. Purchase products that make use of or contribute to
| Matrix
|
| etc. But in order for it to become popular _on its own_ ,
| and acquire a network effect (which it needs, because IM
| apps are a class of their own), friction to get new users
| needs to be reduced to near-zero. And for that... polish
| is needed. That's it.
| 4bpp wrote:
| Well, it's not just about polish. In the case of Matrix,
| a simple look at their "feature matrix" shows that the
| only client that seems to be making any appreciable
| effort at all to keep up with the feature sets that are
| touted as selling points of the protocol (encryption,
| modern UI, "Discord-like" experience) is the bloated
| Electron monstrosity, and independently I have heard from
| multiple sources that the Matrix _server_ software is so
| heavy that it struggles to support even a three-digit
| number of clients on commodity hardware.
|
| This tendency to render your project unusable by choosing
| inappropriate development tools (perhaps for their
| seeming friendliness towards inexperienced developer -
| maybe if the same developers were forced to write in C
| their code would simply crash all the time, whereas as it
| is it "merely" runs slowly and/or leaks memory) is
| manifestly _not_ an intrinsic feature of open source. If
| anything, in the old days, open source projects (such as
| Linux itself) stood out for being _more_ lightweight and
| performant than their commercial counterparts. In fact, I
| think the first time I remember encountering an open
| source project that was rendered unusable by its bloat
| was with Diaspora (an early attempt to make a federated
| Facebook /Google+ replacement, written using Ruby on
| Rails). Perhaps there is something to the fashionable
| "fix social media" sector that necessitates making
| development inclusive to those who are more activists
| than engineers, even if this comes at the cost of sound
| engineering decisions.
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| Not the OP, but I last tried every web/Desktop app on
| this list about a month ago:
|
| https://matrix.org/clients/
|
| I came to the same conclusion I have the past four times
| I tried. The same one as the person you're responding to.
| unionpivo wrote:
| Sure, apps with lots of paid developers have better gui,
| and flows than open source.
|
| I still prefer open source. Managed to convince a portion
| of friends as well.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I have wanted to like matrix for so many years now but
| every time I use it, it's unbearably slow and things like
| gestures seem incredibly clunky compared to telegram.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Matrix is terrible for hosting communities compared to
| Matrix. Matrix is only good if you are okay having a single
| group chat for everyone to put everything into. A single
| group chat does not scale, so it's better to use a platform
| like Discord.
| arm wrote:
| Matrix recently added a feature called 'Spaces', which is
| analogous to a Discord 'server':
|
| https://element.io/blog/spaces-blast-out-of-beta/
| charcircuit wrote:
| Spaces is just a directory of text rooms. Users don't
| just join every single room and rooms are independent
| from each other instead of having a single roles system
| shared between the whole server. In this model having an
| announcements channel wouldn't work since there will be
| people who didn't join the channel. Similarly people
| might not want to join a rules channel.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| ATM people will see suggested rooms, auto joining is in
| the works.
|
| However, don't see a problem. Why does it matter if they
| join each channel? you don't need to read a channel in
| Discord as well despite you are auto joined
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Why does it matter if they join each channel?
|
| Higher friction to visit other channels means that it
| will mean less people will visit other channels. I've
| been in a Nix / NixOS room for a while and I had no clue
| I was in a space and that space had other rooms until you
| commented that it existed. I never had this issue with
| discord. It was obvious there were other channels the
| first time I used it.
| Macha wrote:
| Matrix added spaces as a grouping of channels akin to a
| discord server back in september, so this problem is now
| solved.
| charcircuit wrote:
| A simple directory of rooms that you can join is still
| very far away from the way Discord works. Matrix is still
| focused around users joining rooms which where Discord is
| focused around users joining servers.
|
| At least in the mobile app I didn't even know this
| existed. To find this directory of rooms you need to open
| up the spaces drawer. The you need to open a menu for the
| space by clicking on a stack of three vertical dots. I
| thought this would have things like settings or something
| in it, but no this is the way to navigate to important
| information. Then you need to click on explore rooms. You
| now can see a list of rooms you can join. You can now
| join a room with a tap. Then you have to open the room
| with a tap. This is extremely convoluted and hidden.
|
| Meanwhile Discord doesn't need this whole process since
| you don't need to manually join rooms yourself.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| > And how do they plan to restrict screenshots on iOS anyway?
|
| iOS doesn't have the same system as Android that fully blocks
| screenshots within the app, but they can obscure part of the
| screen when taking a screenshot.
| [deleted]
| mihcsab wrote:
| you can use scrcpy for android screenshots
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Not on Android 12 any more, though (that is scrcpy as such
| still works, but it's no longer able to mirror "secure"
| apps).
| ushakov wrote:
| > This is how you ruin your otherwise-great platform
|
| They already ruined it with ads
| Daunk wrote:
| I've used Telegram for years, I'm part of about 20 groups and
| over 40 channels, and I have NEVER seen an ad. You won't ever
| see an "ad" unless you're part of huge channels, and then
| people can promote their posts as "ads".
| mimsee wrote:
| Not a telegram user so I'm interested in how are the ads
| displayed? Like banner ads?
| Daunk wrote:
| You won't see them in private messages. It's only in some
| big public channels that people can promote their posts as
| "ads".
| afiori wrote:
| can channels opt-out of having ads?
| ushakov wrote:
| Like chat messages
|
| https://promote.telegram.org
| pizza234 wrote:
| > Sponsored messages on Telegram are displayed in large
| public one-to-many channels with 1000+ subscribers and
| are limited to 160 characters. Sponsored Messages are
| based solely on the topic of the public channels in which
| they are shown.
|
| It's a stretch to define Telegram as "ruined by ads";
| this policy seems a reasonable compromise to monetize the
| product. The "famous competitor"'s way of monetizing is
| considerably more harmful, IMO.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Lol, have people learned _nothing_ watching software in
| the past decade? It always starts with the innocuous "oh
| don't worry, this is very limited and only a select group
| of people will be exposed to it!" line
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| Personally, I feel like I've seen just as much, if not
| more software I value ruined by it failing to afford to
| keep the lights on.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| you might even say most software is ruined by NOT having
| ads, I wish everything had even more ads, I say!
| jacobmischka wrote:
| Inconvenience is often good enough. This isn't intended for
| state secrets, based on the language it's intended for
| "creators" to "protect the content they publish on Telegram".
| Obviously any platform can't _completely_ prevent copying
| works, that 's how piracy exists, and always will. If I were an
| artist I would prefer a platform that at least made it slightly
| more onerous to copy my things with high quality. A photo of a
| phone is worth effectively nothing in this context.
|
| This seems like a fine change, people on HN just like to be
| angry.
| GeckoEidechse wrote:
| The issue though is that this will give the sender of a
| message the impression that what they are sharing will stay
| private, even though there are from a technical standpoint no
| such guarantees.
| afiori wrote:
| this is the definition of moving the goalpost (I know you
| are not GP)
| jacobmischka wrote:
| People aren't as stupid as you may think.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| "Inconvenience as a feature" perfectly sums up the state of
| the tech world right now.
| afiori wrote:
| inconvenience for abusers is a great feature indeed
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Use is abuse now? Actually, I almost agree with that!
| afiori wrote:
| To ab-use something you genereally need to be using that
| thing.
|
| It is impossible to prevent abuse, but it is necessary to
| contain it.
| endisneigh wrote:
| This trend to prevent others from saving content is stupid. Are
| people not going to read the content? It's already "saved" and of
| course doesn't stop people from using another phone to screenshot
| or simply typing up the contents
|
| **
|
| Oh and this is yet another kick in the face to people with
| accessibility issues.
|
| **
|
| As an aside, once AR is mainstream I expect that apps will only
| display encrypted text and some pair of smart glasses will be
| able to be configured to decrypt and display the play text all on
| the client (glasses) such that such issues are removed.
| snvzz wrote:
| New tools for harassment, then erasing the evidence.
|
| Or, more power for technical people to hold over those less
| able.
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| The trend is to stop "the masses" who only use their phones.
| It's an interesting trend, wonder what will be the side effects
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah. When PCs were the dominant platform, we were the ones
| in control. Now we're the ones being controlled.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| I'm not so sure about that. Perhaps during the hobbyist era
| of PCs, this was the case. But, I distinctly remember a
| world during the "dominance" of the PC that forced me to
| work with proprietary software just to be able to type out
| a document. There was really only one choice of computer to
| buy and one kind of OS to run on it. It was really hard to
| use a different OS on your computer, and it was risky too,
| since PC manufacturers would often not honor warranties if
| non-proprietary OS/software was used on the computer.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| PCs have unique advantages, they enable things like
| Napster, Torrents, in-premise storage, and all kinds of
| autonomous servers that could never work with mobile
| computers and the cloud.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Even in those days we had more power than we do today.
| You had to use proprietary software but that software
| still worked for you and did your bidding. The computer
| ran the software you told it to run without complaint and
| it didn't matter that some "rights holders" were losing
| money or whatever.
|
| At some point all of this changed... Software now works
| for the corporations and only allow us to do what they
| designed for us. If they don't like something, you just
| won't be able to do it anymore. You can't even program
| the computers anymore, that's now a privilege
| increasingly reserved only for "approved", "licensed"
| individuals.
|
| Typing out a document? I wouldn't be surprised if the
| office suites of the future started automatically
| checking your work against some "rights holders" corpus
| that you're not supposed to copy and then preventing
| saving or printing until you fix it.
| edpichler wrote:
| > This trend to prevent others from saving content is stupid.
| Are people not going to read the content? It's already "saved"
| and of course doesn't stop people from using another phone to
| screenshot or simply typing up the contents
|
| Building walls in physical world is also very stupid. It does
| not prevent people of using ladders hehe.
|
| Sorry about the joke. They want to create more friction so
| users can avoid people from 'easily' taking screenshots.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Though I see where you're going with this the situation is
| fundamentally different.
|
| With messaging inherently you are trying to share with
| others. If you're sharing why stop saving?
| charcircuit wrote:
| You may want to share an image with a group, but not to the
| whole world.
| qeternity wrote:
| So that they can't reshare? This is almost always why DRM
| is used. Just because I want to share some content with you
| doesn't mean I want you to be able to share it with someone
| else.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Just because you want to share something doesn't mean you
| should. You cannot control what people will do, nor
| should you be able to control their actions by limiting
| their freedoms. Either you trust them or you don't.
| jevoten wrote:
| > This is almost always why DRM is used.
|
| No, DRM is used to extend control to media players and
| manufacturers via licensing. The rest are just excuses.
| qeternity wrote:
| Given that most DRM these days is implemented in the apps
| that license the content, I'm not sure this is remotely
| true. Maybe in the disc era there was truth to this, but
| even then I'm not sure that it was a greater concern than
| lost revenues due to piracy.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why do you believe that once you share a message you
| should continue to have control over it? That's not what
| sharing means.
|
| Not to mention it won't work. If they read it nothing is
| stopping them from simply telling someone else, drm or
| not. This technology will not prevent anyone from simply
| handing over their phone - and your messages - to someone
| else.
| p49k wrote:
| This just goes back to what the original person said
| about "Building walls in physical world is also very
| stupid hehe"
|
| It's entirely reasonable to create a system designed to
| allow people to share things once, and indicate to others
| that they don't want it spread any further. It's
| reasonable to design software which attempts to honor
| such requests by introducing friction, making it 95%
| effective despite knowing that 5% of people will be
| able/willing to work around it.
|
| Most people are "path of least resistance" and are too
| lazy to work around something like this, which is exactly
| the point. Pretty much every person using such a system
| is aware that the recipient could just take a picture of
| the phone with a camera.
|
| Perfect is the enemy of the good.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I don't think it's reasonable at all. The wall example
| isn't the analogous situation.
|
| Is it reasonable that someone give you a gift and you
| cannot sell it or give it to anyone else?
| p49k wrote:
| Your analogy is not relevant at all to the situation.
|
| It's completely reasonable for someone to give you a
| letter or photo of a personal nature and ask you not to
| share it (or simply expect you to understand that it's
| not to be shared). In the physical realm, the honor
| system comes into effect. In the digital realm, there's
| nothing wrong with adding an imperfect layer of
| accountability/protection to greatly reduce the chance
| that it becomes shared.
| johnisgood wrote:
| > It's completely reasonable for someone to give you a
| letter or photo of a personal nature and ask you not to
| share it (or simply expect you to understand that it's
| not to be shared).
|
| Yeah, and because I am a good friend, I will not share
| those photos with anyone, especially if they ask me not
| to. :)
| p49k wrote:
| Yes and some people are somewhat bad friends, and will
| share them, but not if there's a small barrier to
| overcome, as it's not worth the effort.
|
| And people are terrible friends and will take the
| time/effort to bypass any measures necessary to share the
| photo.
|
| The feature is designed to address the "somewhat bad"
| case, not to be perfect.
| johnisgood wrote:
| > And people are terrible friends and will take the
| time/effort to bypass any measures necessary to share the
| photo.
|
| Exactly. They will pretty much bypass this one as well.
| p49k wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly what I said. The feature is designed
| to address the "somewhat bad friend" case, not the
| "terrible friend" case. Both of those kinds of people
| exist in the world.
|
| Reducing the chance of something that you didn't want
| shared from being shared by a factor of X% is better than
| nothing. Try to step out of black-and-white thinking for
| a minute. Just because something is not perfect doesn't
| mean it's useless.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I wonder how many people it actually stops from saving or
| sharing. If they want to save, they will. If they want to
| share, they will. I know you are talking about some
| people who want to save or share but is too lazy to take
| a screenshot or take a photo with whatever they can.
| feanaro wrote:
| I'm personally disgusted by tools which actively attempt
| to prevent someone from doing something which I myself
| can bypass just because I have the knowledge to do it.
|
| Yes, your example of trying to prevent someone moderately
| bad from sharing something personal to you which you
| don't want shared is reasonable. The trouble is, you can
| use the same mechanism for much less reasonable and more
| nefarious, corporate things.
|
| So the end result is that we're not to have moderately
| nice things, lest they be used as a weapon against user
| freedom by a mega-corporation.
| endisneigh wrote:
| It's perfectly relevant. It's literally the analogous
| situation. There's nothing special about the so-called
| digital realm.
|
| The same expectations and honor system you described can
| be upheld in the "digital realm". The only difference is
| that people have the arrogance to try to force things
| upon "digital" users because they can.
|
| And also, I never said the gift was physical in nature.
| spoiler wrote:
| It's not just about messaging. Although, I'm not sure I
| agree or disagree about your idea of message ownership,
| or lack of it; I've got mixed feelings about it.
|
| I think it also comes down to wanting to own the
| "distribution" chain.
|
| Example scenario (made up, so might have flawed
| reasoning): If I have an official following on Telegram
| where I post my art, and there's a fan/knock-off Twitter
| account reposting my art without my permission. I don't
| have many ways of stopping them. I could send a DMCA
| notice, but that's slow and doesn't prevent someone from
| reopening their knock-off distribution channels. DRM
| creates friction for most people that they won't even
| bother _thinking about_ setting up a sidestepping
| distribution channel that fragments my audience.
|
| Also to add (edit): being perfect isn't the point. I
| mean, most habits or ways we do things _every day_ aren't
| even close to optimal; much less perfect. If we threw out
| everything that's not perfect, we'd be left with nothing.
| endisneigh wrote:
| You don't really need an example scenario - just take
| YouTube, the largest source of creator content - it does
| nothing to prevent you from sharing the videos.
|
| Ultimately if you feel like you're being wronged DMCA
| should be used and not a programmatic approach simply
| because a program has no notion of who was right to begin
| with.
|
| So in your example you say "my art", but what if it were
| not? Should you not be able to post "your art?"
|
| I believe people should handle people issues and
| computers handle, well, the other stuff.
| p49k wrote:
| There is an enormous difference between a tie rack (or
| any commodity, including digital ones) and a letter or
| photo of a personal nature. There is nuance in this
| situation that has to be understood and recognized in
| order to evaluate why the feature exists and if it
| provides value.
| mctaylor wrote:
| There's an enormous difference between a physical object,
| which has inherent scarcity; and information, which does
| not. We strongly enforce property rights on physical
| objects because since they are scarce, theft is possible
| (if a person acquires a physical object then someone else
| acquires it, it is necessary that the original acquirer
| no longer possesses it - therefore either it was a gift,
| or it was paid for in some manner, or the second
| acquisition was theft). The notion of theft of
| information was invented by politicians due to an utter
| lack of creativity with respect to how to incentivise the
| creation of a non-scarce resource. While physical
| property rights are rights in the positive sense (they
| grant owners of physical objects the right not to have
| those objects removed from them without due
| consideration), intellectual property rights are rights
| only in the negative sense (they grant the owners no
| inherent abilities they did not already have, instead
| they only restrict the freedom of others by limiting
| their rights to acquire something that would otherwise be
| limitlessly abundant).
| endisneigh wrote:
| You're still not getting it. The "gift" I describe can be
| a letter or photo of personal nature. My point stands.
|
| Grandma gifts you a photo of her and her partner. Do you
| believe that you shouldn't be able to show your own
| family their ancestors picture?
|
| It's obviously not reasonable. She could explicitly ask,
| but ultimately the choice is yours.
| p49k wrote:
| > Grandma gifts you a photo of her and her partner.
|
| Which is a contrived example that conveniently sidesteps
| the two most relevant factors: the personal/intimate
| nature of the communication and the consequences of
| sharing it against the person's will during a timeframe
| in which it would have an effect on the person's life.
| [deleted]
| johnisgood wrote:
| Exactly. When you share something, that information is
| out and you have no control over of it. Plus, why would
| my friend want to share and then un-share something, or
| why would I want to do that to someone? The answer is
| that it is not for the regular people, it is to protect
| creators and such, not some regular Joe. Telegram is
| targeting a particular audience with this change. That
| said, I am pretty sure it will not be successful because
| I have access to a lot of creators' stuff through the
| Internet, be it music or books. If people want to save or
| share stuff, they will find a way.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| s/creators/rights-holders/g
| toyg wrote:
| It's not about sharing, it's about proof of provenance.
|
| If I say "Alice told me this", there is no proof that it
| actually happened; Alice can deny it. If I forward the
| message or show you a screenshot, then the case that the
| communication happened is significantly stronger. (Of
| course screenshots can be doctored, but that's another
| problem)
|
| That's mostly what this is about - reducing the chances
| for accidental or willful disclosure to third parties.
| feanaro wrote:
| > If I forward the message or show you a screenshot, then
| the case that the communication happened is significantly
| stronger. (Of course screenshots can be doctored, but
| that's another problem)
|
| How is it another problem? If the method purports to be
| able to strengthen claims of veracity, but immediately
| after you demonstrate it to be vulnerable to spoofing,
| then it offered nothing in the first place. It's exactly
| the same problem.
| endisneigh wrote:
| And if someone uses the telegram web client or simply
| hands over the phone?
|
| And it is about sharing - that's how communication works,
| no?
| ben_w wrote:
| Many things are shared in confidence.
|
| While I an certain the current state of affairs of having
| DRM and personal privacy is unstable in the face of even
| the tech we had 10 years ago, we still have a strong
| personal need for control over our information and our
| works.
| mctaylor wrote:
| Not true! We have no personal need for control over our
| information, as the utter lack of legal protections for
| personal privacy and personal information collection make
| abundantly clear. And works? Are you kidding me? Have you
| seen a typical corporate IP assignment agreement? This
| has nothing to do with persons (which the laws are making
| increasingly clear are irrelevant), and everything to do
| with corporations and their shareholders.
| ben_w wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or attempting a
| joke here?
|
| The EU, where I live, absolutely does have legal
| protections for personal privacy and personal information
| collection, hence GDPR and all the cookie popups[0].
|
| And even if the law was silent, that wouldn't itself be
| evidence of a lack of need, as people died from lack of
| workplace health and safety regulations well before there
| were laws about that.
|
| And while IP assignments are an interesting suggestion to
| raise, I counter that I have also seen a forum of users
| who didn't read the T&C and suddenly realised
| $corporation had the eternal right to reproduce whatever
| they wrote on that forum (kinda necessary but clearly
| non-obvious to most normal people), which demonstrates
| that people definitely feel strongly attached to even
| really dumb and low-value works if they are those works
| are their own.
|
| [0] that they adhere to the relevant law about as well as
| all the YouTube videos saying "no copyright intended"
| adhere to IP laws is an enforcement problem, not a lack
| of rights
| skinkestek wrote:
| > With messaging inherently you are trying to share with
| others. If you're sharing why stop saving?
|
| Some others, not all.
|
| Otherwise, tell me the point of all the effort that has
| gone into products like Signal, protocols like TLS etc.
| endisneigh wrote:
| There's really no connection (no pun intended) between
| this and TLS. With signal the same criticism applies.
| zo1 wrote:
| If by TLS you mean the whole encryption and signing of
| http content etc, then I would argue it's the same. The
| purpose is to have an immutable and untamperable pipeline
| of data straight from the "server" to your "eyeballs".
| The cat definitely came out of the bag with tech enabling
| so much that was difficult in the real-world, and now
| they're busy scrambling to put it back, and I would
| argue, using "privacy" and "safety" as a Trojan horse.
|
| Edit. Side note seeing as I don't think I 100% addressed
| your point. If we allow data to be viewed, and relayed
| with the potential for altering, then they no longer have
| 100% control over the content being changed/recorded. So
| viewing and sharing (with potential edits) is akin to
| tampering with the pipeline. Sharing is not at issue,
| it's you being able to intercept and have control over
| the data on your device.
|
| Now I'll go scurry off and take my tin-foil hat off for
| the day.
| skinkestek wrote:
| The connection is simple in my eyes:
|
| > With messaging inherently you are trying to share with
| others. If you're sharing why stop saving?
|
| When sending packages to the Internet you are inherently
| trying to share with others. If you're sending, why stop
| receiving?
| endisneigh wrote:
| > When sending packages to the Internet you are
| inherently trying to share with others. If you're
| sending, why stop receiving?
|
| Except this isn't the analogous situation.
|
| TLS is more like three people in a room, one of which
| cannot be removed, and you want to say something to one
| person without the other person hearing.
|
| Ultimately the person who the message is intended for can
| do whatever they want with the message.
|
| If all chat communication was public in a single thread
| I'd agree with you.
| [deleted]
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| I think the idea is that messaging follows typical human
| offline communication patterns.
|
| If I tell you something in person, you may remember it for
| some time, but it's not recorded forever. It exists only in
| your and my mind. I may misremember or forget it, you may
| too, and there's no way to know the original message. And
| there's no way to share that communication. Showing a
| screenshot of what someone said, is entirely different from
| saying someone what you heard from someone else. That's why
| we have contracts because "I said, you said" was never
| meant to be permanent or enforceable.
|
| This is a feature, not a bug. If human conversations were
| to be permanent, they would be much less said or written.
| Messengers, especially private messengers, are a loophole,
| in a sense that they keep forever what people still
| unconsciously think of as ephemeral communication, and it's
| good that Telegram is trying to address it; though I'm not
| confident how effective it may be.
| kuschku wrote:
| A friend sent an expiring 5-second photo to me in 2018,
| and to prove a point, I redrew that 1:1 a few weeks ago
| and showed it to her, because I think expiring messages
| are bullshit.
|
| In the real world, I won't forget the messages you tell
| me either, the memories are forever. Why should a digital
| message expire when memories don't? I can still remember
| what my first day of school was, why shouldn't I be able
| to see the messages I got sent last week?
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29483659
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >Why should a digital message expire when memories don't?
|
| I'm curious if you understand that _your_ memories don 't
| expire, but that almost all other people's do? I'd be
| interested to know if you think the platforms should
| conform to how your brain works, or if you think most
| brains work like yours. Just so you know, most people
| can't remember 99% of conversations verbatim that are
| years old.
| darkwater wrote:
| That's YOU. Not everybody (I would say the majority) can
| do it, there will always be some doubt as the OP said.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| > hy should a digital message expire when memories don't?
|
| In that case, why do you need a digital message if you
| remember everything? You also don't have any extra
| recording on personal communication except your (and the
| counterpart) memory, why it should be any different for
| digital messages?
| endisneigh wrote:
| > This is a feature, not a bug. If human conversations
| were to be permanent, they would be much less said or
| written. Messengers, especially private messengers, are a
| loophole, in a sense that they keep forever what people
| still unconsciously think of as ephemeral communication,
| and it's good that Telegram is trying to address it;
| though I'm not confident how effective it may be.
|
| If this premise were true encrypted unscreenshotable apps
| would be the norm for communication.
|
| They are not. Not even close.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Not yet.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I'm not sure it is. I think it's the same principle that things
| like GDPR are based on. It's not that you want to prevent the
| entity from having access to that data at all. It's that you
| don't want that data sitting around forever which becomes a
| security liability where the attacker is _not_ the recipient of
| the message.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| The fact that iOS plays nicely with apps that ask to prevent
| screenshotting is a foundational bug. Does such an ability
| exist on stock Android? Either way, it's best practice to root
| & jailbreak.
| makiftasova wrote:
| Yes, it also exists on Android too[1][2]
|
| [1] https://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/Wind
| owM... [2] https://stackoverflow.com/a/30618030
| clawoo wrote:
| > The fact that iOS plays nicely with apps that ask to
| prevent screenshotting is a foundational bug.
|
| In fact, iOS does not provide any tools to prevent
| screenshotting, on the contrary, this feature requires some
| nasty hacks to pull off.
|
| One of them is actually even patented and it requires
| rendering whatever you want to protect (text, image, etc)
| into a one frame DRM protected video and rendering that
| instead.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I'm imagining another method whereby you have a high frame
| rate video that only displays part of the image on any
| individual frame. Because of the high frame rate, the
| individual frames appear to merge together as a single
| image to the human eye.
|
| Any screenshot would only get one frame. You may have to
| stitch together multiple frames to get any useful data.
|
| I wonder if this would work.
| clawoo wrote:
| I actually tried something like this at one point but I
| always ended up with something seizure-inducing.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Apps like Tor and private tabs in Firefox ask Android to not
| allow screenshots when they are open.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Thankfully Firefox can be configured not to do that. Brave,
| on the other hand, imposes it.
| afiori wrote:
| on Android there isn't a screenshot permission, there is an
| allow screen capture permission.
|
| for example private Firefox tabs do not show a preview in
| the system activity preview, it is a general "do not let
| the content of the screen escape the control of this app"
| sobkas wrote:
| > The fact that iOS plays nicely with apps that ask to
| prevent screenshotting is a foundational bug. Does such an
| ability exist on stock Android? Either way, it's best
| practice to root & jailbreak.
|
| When I used feature "screen cast" and tried to cast Firefoxs
| private tab, I just got black screen.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Apparently, these app vendors go to a lot of trouble to
| protect the screenshot blocking ability. They test for rooted
| iOS devices and make decisions on how to even allow the app
| to launch if rooting has been detected as they know that part
| of the use of the rooted OS is to get arround screenshot
| detection.
| globular-toast wrote:
| These kind of features give more power to technically minded
| people, like the people who implement them. I see similar
| things with Outlook users being able to "recall" emails or
| being able to delete messages on Teams etc. There are certain
| people, usually less technical people, who actually think those
| features delete data that has already been sent. It is an abuse
| of power to give less technical people a false sense of
| security.
| polycaster wrote:
| No, it's not stupid because it works pretty well. But
| preventing you from saving content is not the actual intention
| behind DRM. It's just the easiest way to hinder you from re-
| distribution.
| iSnow wrote:
| >because it works pretty well.
|
| How do they enforce it on the web client?
| johnisgood wrote:
| They cannot.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Something working pretty well (which this doesn't since it's
| not respected in all telegram clients anyway) doesn't mean
| it's not stupid.
|
| And again, this doesn't prevent redistribution.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| The lock on your front door doesn't prevent me from
| entering if I really want to, but it's a deterrent and a
| clear signal of your intent, that I'm not to enter without
| your permission.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Not the analogous situation.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| You keep saying that, but I think that maybe you could
| make a better effort to understand other people's
| analogies, even when they don't map neatly to the mental
| model you have in mind.
|
| My point is that a prevention mechanism can have utility
| for those employing it, even if it's trivially
| circumvented by those who really want to. It does not
| have to be a binary thing, where either it works
| perfectly 100% of the time or it's useless. It's obvious
| to me that this feature could have a stifling effect on
| spread of content, and that might be well enough to have
| fulfilled its purpose.
|
| Mind you, ideologically I do not necessarily agree with
| it, but that's another matter.
| polycaster wrote:
| Actually it fits quite well.
| polycaster wrote:
| Well, as I said, it hinders you from redistribution - it
| doesn't need to shut it down completely to fullfill its
| goal.
|
| Also I assume it's working in a the way intended. It may be
| a stupid thing to do from your or my perspective because it
| doesn't work towards our benefit - but the rational behind
| it is sane. That's what I meant with ,,not stupid".
|
| I just realize I sound like this sickening utilitarian tone
| you find in HN discussions so often. Sorry for going that
| way. Basically I'm with you, it's stupid when you take a
| step back.
| centrinoblue wrote:
| Web3 will fix it
| trutannus wrote:
| Just so long as nobody screen shots the NFT.
| miki123211 wrote:
| A fun way to easily circumvent this:
|
| 1. Hey Siri, turn Voice Over on.
|
| 2. Tap the message once, making Voice Over speak its contents.
|
| 3. Tap the screen four times with three fingers. When Voice
| Over is on, this gesture copies the last spoken phrase to the
| clipboard.
|
| 4. Hey Siri, Turn Voice Over off.
|
| There's no way to block this without breaking accessibility.
| You could split a message up into multiple items, which
| partially solves your problem, but the more items you have, the
| more annoyed actual Voice Over users become.
|
| A similar (although more involved) attack could be used to
| extract Kindle books. There's no way for Amazon to prevent
| this, one of the primary screen readers for Windows uses GPL
| without a CLA, so a proprietary accessibility API is out of the
| question.
| turminal wrote:
| > There's no way to block this without breaking
| accessibility.
|
| Then sooner or later someone will break accessibility just to
| prevent this. And everyone will follow.
| miki123211 wrote:
| It's not that easy any more.
|
| In modern iOS versions, Voice Over has an AI-powered screen
| recognition module that does not rely on the accessibility
| information that the developer provides.
|
| As far as I know, it's not possible to prevent the use of
| this module, not without making the text on the screen
| unreadable to any OCR engine.
|
| This module isn't perfect, in fact, it's far from perfect,
| but for something as simple as extracting a bunch of text
| that already appears on the screen, it would probably work.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Wouldn't that be illegal under the ADA?
| miki123211 wrote:
| It depends.
|
| There's nothing in the ADA (or any similar legislation)
| that says that all services ever created need to be
| accessible. Whether such legislation applies to you
| depends on a lot of factors, whether your software is
| used in workplaces, government and education being the
| most important (but not the only) ones.
|
| Sometimes it's the organization that's only allowed to
| pick accessible software, not the developer that needs to
| make the software accessible. Sometimes it's okay to use
| inaccessible software as long as an accessible
| alternative exists and can be used by those who need it.
|
| If someone cared enough to break accessibility this way,
| they could implement a switch that conditionally disables
| accessibility where legally permitted. I believe Kindle
| already lets publishers do this, come to think of it.
| no_time wrote:
| >There's no way for Amazon to prevent this
|
| Correct, however they can randomize certain words in your
| copy to watermark it and trace it back to you if it ever
| finds its way to the public internet.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Rumor has it that Polish ebook publishers do exactly that.
|
| In Poland, there's no single E Ink reader company, so
| there's no DRM standard that would be compatible with all
| devices that you might want to read your books on. As a
| consequence, offering unprotected epub files is standard
| practice here, but all kinds of watermarks, from divs that
| are 1px by 1px, to subtle modifications of your book's
| cover, are pretty common.
|
| You can beat this kind of watermark pretty easily by
| getting three copies of the book and comparing them with
| diff. You need 3, not 2, so that you know which variant is
| the original when you notice a difference.
| yuuta wrote:
| This is misleading. The new privacy protection features in
| Telegram are not DRM at all. They are just to prevent users from
| forwarding information outside of private chats or saving them,
| not related to copyrights at all (which is what DRM is meant to
| protect). Also, DRM is not mentioned in the changelog.
| depingus wrote:
| I expected more from HN. If anyone bothered to read the article
| (which, btw, was posted with a disingenuous title...shame on you
| OP), you would see that Protected Content is only available in
| Groups and Channels, and is not on by default.
|
| It seems a lot of people don't realize that Telegram is used for
| more than chatting with your contacts. Telegram Groups and
| Channels serve as a content delivery system, with access often
| restricted behind some kind of pay system like Patreon or
| Telegram's own Payments API (think OnlyFans and private
| Discords). This is a boon to content creators as it protects
| their payed Telegram content from being easily shared into other
| Telegram Channels.
|
| Telegram quietly transcended beyond chat app and into the social
| media arena a while ago. It's about time HN caught up.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > which, btw, was posted with a disingenuous title...shame on
| you OP
|
| How is it disingenuous? They introduced DRM. Call it "protected
| content" if you want,but that honestly seems more disingenuous
| than simply calling it "DRM".
|
| > This is a boon to content creators as it protects their payed
| Telegram content from being easily shared into other Telegram
| Channels.
|
| No it doesn't. DRM doesn't work. End of story. Telegram has a
| public API and a Free Software client. All someone has to do is
| fork the client and disable screenshot / screen recorder
| blocking. _At best_ they can block "forwarding" so you can't
| actually see what user originally sent the message. Once you
| send someone content on Telegram, you have no technical
| capability to stop them from doing what they want with it.
| afiori wrote:
| story time: in some country poultry farmers are given based
| on selling prices of their products, except that for this
| particular case there is no market consult so the farmer is
| asked "how much would have people payed for your stuff" and
| he or she guesses some number.
|
| obviously everyone cheated that question to get more money; a
| year they essentially changed the module to add a "are you
| lying?" question and suddenly this lowered significantly the
| overestimated prices farmers declared
|
| ---
|
| this does not apply 1-1 to DRM in telegram (they removed the
| download option, not just added a warning), but I find it a
| relevant story to a broad interpretation of "DRM doesn't
| work"
| nine_k wrote:
| While this should work against unsophisticated users, the
| "analog hole" cannot be really plugged: the user has to see or
| hear the protected content. At that moment, the content may be
| grabbed (in a bit-perfect way, with some luck).
|
| So, this can curb sharing but not really prevent it. Will it be
| a net positive? Let's see.
| afiori wrote:
| in general even if decent copies are easy drm can be
| effective: not in preventing copies but in making paying
| users feel they got their worth.
|
| I am generally of the opinion that piracy is a net positive,
| but I am ok with pirated content being slightly degraded,
| analog copies often meet this criteria
| nahqz wrote:
| The problem here is not that Telegram disallows you from taking
| screenshots but that the OS, which should be on the side of the
| user, allows apps to disallow you from taking screenshots.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| The OS probably doesn't disallow any such thing, but several
| apps have found workarounds such as briefly setting the screen
| dark when it detects a screenshot, or various other forms of
| trickery.
|
| The result is that the screenshot still gets taken (they have
| no way of disabling that), but the photo is unusable.
| nahqz wrote:
| Also, the OS shouldn't tell the foreground app when a
| screenshot is being taken.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| Agreed, but there'd probably be an uproar from the content
| providers, and neither Apple nor Google has an incentive to
| be on the users side on this one :/
| lapinot wrote:
| I wonder how this fares with android rooting, ios jailbreaking
| and generic desktop reverse engineering. Surely i can capture the
| screen video buffer in some way or another. And most probably
| someone dedicated enough would find the encryption scheme and key
| from the binaries to extract source media.
|
| Back in the days there were apps in cydia to get a hold of all
| the snaps you received since they were just lying unencrypted
| inside a private sandbox.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I had a rooted android and still found it hard to get around
| it. The only way was with the xposed framework thing and you
| have to install a module that disables the secure flag thing.
| It wasn't compatible with my device so I couldn't see any way
| to do it.
| amelius wrote:
| It might not stop everyone, but it could stop most people.
|
| Hell, I even stopped trying to use developer tools to extract
| facebook videos because they made it more difficult, and
| stopped using youtube-DL because Google is now throttling it.
| Main reason is that it's not worth the trouble anymore.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Last I did FB video downloading like a year ago I had to
| write a script that converts and stitches video fragments
| together.
|
| It was still doable, but quite inconvenient.
|
| Simpler to just record screen with OBS.
|
| I lost a favourite video of mine from youtube, fortunately
| someone reupled it, so I quickly ripped it with OBS, as the
| youtube downloaders had trouble downloading the audio part.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > stopped using youtube-DL because Google is now throttling
| it
|
| Had the same problem. Switched to yt-dlp. Now I do not have
| the problem.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| You know, I think this is the right call. A lot of people have
| this instinct to screenshot and share things from private groups.
|
| Making people jump through hoops means only the most egregious
| stuff would still be shared.
| mimsee wrote:
| This reminds me of old websites blocking right clicking on a
| webpage since that's how you viewed the source code, yet there's
| always a way to get the source. Same in this case, there's always
| a way to capture the "protected" content.
|
| Edit: granted, not only old websites do this. Instagram lays a
| full width/height transparent div atop the picture to prevent
| right-click copying of the image.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Some legislations have pretty rubbery rules about
| "circumventing effective DRM" to tack extra charges onto you if
| you find a way to save content the content creator does not
| want saved. I would argue that a DRM that can be circumvented
| is no longer "effective", but lawyers and judges might think
| differently about that.
| moooo99 wrote:
| I recently came across a fairly modern looking website that
| blocked my right click and displayed an alert "you're not
| allowed to view this sites source code". I could not help but
| to laugh out loud
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| Chrome did introduce a configuration feature to block viewing
| source code recently.
|
| Javascript hijacking right click is prevented by shift-right
| click in Firefox.
| Macha wrote:
| Note that this is an enterprise policy and not something a
| website can enable, only your computer's administrator (you
| on your personal device, a school admin or employer in the
| intended case)
| Gigachad wrote:
| For now
| pythonaut_16 wrote:
| Seems pretty impossible to enforce otherwise with how the
| web currently works.
|
| At some point the website is sending you HTML and JS to
| be interpreted on your computer.
| fsflover wrote:
| Same as with the Telegram's DRM.
| hbn wrote:
| The difference between an enterprise device management
| feature and a web API are... pretty massive.
|
| It doesn't seem particularly unreasonable that a company
| dealing with sensitive data would want to prevent their
| less computer-educated employees from falling for self-
| XSS attacks
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-XSS
| floatboth wrote:
| 500px at some point started to use the right-click-blocker even
| on Creative Commons licensed images (!) -- I quit the site over
| this. IIRC they eventually dropped the option to select a CC
| license entirely :/
| Gigachad wrote:
| Except the platforms are getting better at it. Android has an
| API which allows apps to completely block the screenshot
| functionality. For the average android user, there is no way to
| get around this. Computers are getting locked down more and
| more to the point where these kinds of restrictions actually
| start working.
| 323 wrote:
| Windows has that API to. If you try to screenshot the Netflix
| app or video on some websites you get a black rectangle where
| the video is.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| How DO you get around this screenshot block? I never figured
| it out and I am probably not average.
| vmception wrote:
| With another device that takes pictures
|
| I'm glad I'm privileged enough to have multiple devices
| with cameras
|
| Its a low bar, but I was told to check my privilege and I
| do love doing that now
| RMPR wrote:
| One trick is to use scrcpy then make the screenshot with
| your computer instead
| arsome wrote:
| Xposed modules (can even be targetted at specific apps in a
| root-less way using Taichi), patching system libraries with
| smalipatcher to disable the "secure flag" system wide or
| root screen capture tools like scrcpy.
| tyilo wrote:
| Do you know how Tai Chi compares to VirtualXposed?
| ddalex wrote:
| > these kinds of restrictions actually start working.
|
| This - it didn't use to be true because most computer users
| were literate enough to bypass simple restrictions, and if a
| platform was restricted, others were available.
|
| With the latest changes in Windows, Android, and
| demographics, now a vast majority of users cannot easily
| bypass restrictions; the war on general computing has been
| won. Yes, a small number of highly skilled people can easily
| dump binary data through hacked devices, but in the grand
| scheme of economics, that doesn't matter.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's not just demographics. With the hardware
| attestation/safety net and locked bootloaders today. I
| don't even know how to bypass these restrictions.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Yeah, and it is pretty sad. :/
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| iOS has the same bug. That feature should be removed out of
| respect for the users.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah, it's so tiresome. It's my device, I should be able to
| do anything if I want to. Then Android comes up with some API
| to let apps subvert my will. Who cares if the app doesn't
| want to be screenshotted? I'm the user. What the app wants
| doesn't matter, it's never mattered. I could fight this by
| rooting my phone and using custom implementations that lie to
| the apps and only pretend to be secure. Then Google comes up
| with hardware attestation and now there's no way to fake
| things anymore. It's like we're the enemy that the phone is
| being secured against. I barely have words to describe how
| much I hate these companies and the way they try to control
| me.
|
| We have free software everywhere _except_ phones. I wonder
| why organizations such as GNU aren 't working on free
| software clients for these popular services like WhatsApp and
| Telegram. The potential for a positive impact is enormous.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| > It's like we're the enemy that the phone is being secured
| against. I barely have words to describe how much I hate
| these companies and the way they try to control me.
|
| I've had enough of it, too. Ordered a Librem 5 and can't
| wait for the day it arrives - so I can finalize my divorce
| from the Apple ecosystem.
|
| > I wonder why organizations such as GNU aren't working on
| free software clients for these popular services like
| WhatsApp and Telegram.
|
| Regarding WhatsApp, it looks like it's against their TOS,
| and Meta goes out of their way to detect usage of third-
| party apps and ban your account [1].
|
| Regarding Telegram: not only do they allow third-party
| implementations, they even link to them [2]. Besides,
| Telegram's own desktop client is FOSS under GPLv3 [3].
|
| [1]: https://www.cultofmac.com/314343/use-a-third-party-
| whatsapp-...
|
| [2]: https://telegram.org/apps#unofficial-apps
|
| [3]: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| All Telegram clients are already fully open. (The server
| side is not, but there are third party implementations).
|
| https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop
|
| https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram
|
| https://github.com/TelegramMessenger/Telegram-iOS
|
| Plus a few web frontends, I am way too lazy to find them
| all.
|
| https://github.com/zhukov/webogram
|
| WhatsApp forbids third party clients IIRC.
| eloeffler wrote:
| Haha yes. I think I first saw this on social media websites, so
| it's a very close comparison.
|
| This introduced me to developer tools and the funny 3d view of
| html layers that Firefox had.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| dang, please change the title of this post! This is far and away
| editorializing (with a deeply negative connotation) the original
| announcement.
| detaro wrote:
| if instead of adding yet another comment complaining about the
| title you instead emailed dang, it would actually improve the
| chance of it happening.
| sparkling wrote:
| They are not preventing anything, they are just making it harder.
| Croftengea wrote:
| I wonder how do they handle DRM content in the open-source
| version of Telegram - Telegram Desktop
| (https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop).
|
| Also, Telegram Desktop is licensed under GPLv3, which is an anti-
| DRM license. Something doesn't add up here...
| Gigachad wrote:
| Telegram has a ToS which blocks any client which does not
| comply with the same restrictions as the app. They have used it
| in the past to block apps which do not send the "seen" status
| on messages.
| mimsee wrote:
| The editorialized title says DRM but I believe "protected
| content" in this context means restricting the sharing and
| screenshotting of content in the app via normal measures, not
| that they applied tons of cryptography like more a mainstream
| meaning of DRM would.
| fsflover wrote:
| DRM does not mean "tons of cryptography" and never did. It
| means anything restricting users' freedom to do what they
| want with the data.
| Croftengea wrote:
| I see, thanks. So the title is totally misleading then.
| [deleted]
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