Blocking a large messaging platform because a minority of people are using it for piracy, of all things, seems extremely disproportionate
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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I mean Telegram has been blocked in Russia before and it didn't stop their operations for too long. At best now some engineer at telegram has one more ticket and things will be back to normal.
and it didn’t stop their operations for too long
You had to change proxies regularly, so it did. With some ISPs, at least.
I think it wasn't for really blocking it, just to test whether they can block it if they need it, during some big events.
Does Telegram have anything that torrents and usenet don't?
Lots and lots of sticker packs.
Sticker packs are a gateway drug to, well, drugs. Which you can buy on telegram too of course.
:)
I make my own thank you very much. Sticker packs are a right of passage to navigation on Telegram. We also have the gif game.
I think we've lasted 20mins of replying in gifs to each other, in context. Is a very hard "game".
It's normie-accessible
Probably not, but Telegram is very easy to use.
It indeed empowers common people by distributing full seasons of series all in one place in a somewhat user friendly way without "10 chicks in 10mt" popups.
A bunch of my friends, who don't even know how to install an adblocker, have a very rich catalog of things there.
Also, it is more difficult for a telegram channel to be banned than a website.
Actually, yes, there are a few groups with unique niche content that isn't available anywhere else.
You know Telegram is secure when every government in the world is trying to ban it.
Just use Signal if you want an easy, relatively privacy friendly and secure messenger.
Telegram hands over data to goverments, is infested with spammers and scammers and its encryption is not end to end for group chat which lets Telegram access those chats.
Edit: Telegram is great for lots of things like big groups, communities, piracy, drugs etc but its just not the place where you should expect secure communication.
I'm not using Signal as long as Signal Foundation is based in the US. Also Signal is not on FDroid, so I can't use it anyway.
This might not be relevant because you have other reasons not to use Signal, but you can get android signal directly from their website and via aurora store (on fdroid)
It's more the attitude that bothers me. Signal's refusal to support alternative appstores and clients is very disturbing. It gives the impression that Signal is a honeypot.
You seem to have really high standards around who you trust and in the same moment you call Telegram secure. I feel like you should atleast use the same amount of scepticism for Telegram that you use for Signal.
Signal releases their own self-updating apk on their site, and this release doesn't use Google services for push notifications. There are legitimate reasons why publishers sometimes avoid f-droid.
Also there's Molly, which is a signal fork that allows database encryption; or Session, which doesn't require a phone number for account registration and is decentralized. Both of these forks have repos that you can add to f-droid.
I do understand the hesitance to use a platform that has its infrastructure in the US, but I will say that international compliance with the US is a problem even if the infrastructure is located elsewhere. Session is a really promising option, since it's decentralized, and I'd love to see more people using it.
It would be better even if they just hosted an F-droid repo for their app. If they don't trust the f-droid organization with building the app, that's fine I guess. But as I'm aware, they had said no to allf of what is f-droid.
You can side load.signal though from their website
It's Signal Foundation's hostility to open and non-Google platforms that is very disturbing.
But RusSSian/UAE-based Telegram is fine? 😂
Also, it really doesn't matter where Signal is based, as long as it's client code is open source and it uses E2EE by default. Telegram doesn't encrypt chats by default, and even if you enable 'secret chats' it uses a pretty weak encryption protocol.
Btw the official version of Telegram isn't available on F-Droid either, only a fork called Telegram-FOSS. You can get the exact same thing for Signal from a 3rd-party repo: https://www.twinhelix.com/apps/signal-foss/, or use Molly.
The CEO is a Russian, the company is based out of Dubai, and messages aren't encrypted by default. In fact, only private messages can be encrypted, group messages cannot. Telegram is not a trustworthy platform and a champion for user privacy like most people think, Signal is what you're looking for.
All of that is more reliable then an entity based in the US.
WTF is this ignorant "I know what they want but I'm smarter" crap, if you don't know how it works you know nothing, and "what they want" you get from news.
I know of a few governments not trying to really. Like the Russian one.
Read something about its internals before saying something as stupid.
XMPP with OMEMO is secure (not for targeted attacks, in that case you'll just get a trojan on your Android device via some unclosed vulnerability and finita la comedia, or rubber hose cryptanalysis will be applied).
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Good luck ban it, Telegram runs everywhere without playstore and with proxy.
Spain? Really? I thought they had a pretty left government?
This is one of the rare things where the Spanish left and right agree, for different reasons.
Simplifying a lot:
- The left generally supports culture, actors, theatre, writers, Spanish made movies. They see piracy as a threat to the earnings of those people.
- The right has historically cut any sorts of subsidies to the "culture creators", but they see piracy as a threat to the publishing, TV (...) industries.
They both support SGAE, which translates cleanly to the General Society of Authors and Editors, who protects their interests by charging fees to everyone who dares look at copyrighted work.
- You own a bar and you play TV, Radio, or Spotify? You have to pay SGAE.
- You buy a computer, part of the money goes to SGAE.
- You buy a blank CD, DVD, Hard Drive, you pay SGAE (because they know you will put copyrighted material there, and if you don't, well, fuck you)
It's a fucked up system and I don't know if things have changed in the past few years as I don't live in Spain anymore. But it honestly feels like a prosecution of the population who is so evil and trying to destroy Spanish Culture.
Tbh switzerland has a similar system to the SGAE, where there is a "hidden tax" on all devices that you can load with data. And in turn the downloading of media (with the exclusion of computerprograms and games) is legal. Only the upload of copyrighted material is forbidden.
Not a bad system imo, the tax is so small that you dont really notice it so its a pretty consumer-friendly and piracy-friendly solution. Altho I assume the swiss government gets away with it because it would be too expensive to lobby/legal for a copyrightsholder-favoured system compared with the small amount of people (let alone pirate) who live here.
That's different, we also have a "canon digital" which means you pay an extra tax on all copying and storing devices. But that has nothing to do with the SGAE, which is a corrupt organization that funnels money to their artist list, instead of giving it to the actual artists that are being played.
I'd actually agree with it IF they also didn't bother harassing piracy. So fuck 'em until then.
Yeah, true. Charging a tax on downloaded copyrighted material can be kinda okay if you don't actively chase it. It's not right to charge people a penalty for doing something but then prevent them from doing it. You can't have it both ways, if it's not right you can chase it, but don't make me pay for doing something I'm not allowed to do! That would be like having to preemptively pay traffic fines before you actually drive over the speed limit, just in case.
They do, but this is coming from a right-dominated tribunal known to be extremely conservative and reactionary in nature.
You dont have to boil down everything to "left vs right" especially not in Europe. Because if you do, blocking a chat app is by definition a leftist thing to do because of the government interference.
Please keep the American team vs team culture away from Europe.
What is the relationship between the government ideology and the court system? Both are independent from each other.
Lol.
It's a monarchy
Eh, the tech-illiterate come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors.
As if this is something good.
Infinitely better than a hard-right government.
Truly Spain without the S
My buddy in Spain says the block it pretty easier to get around at least.
Honestly, Telegram sucks. Use Signal for private communications and Matrix for groups/communities.
Telegram is great for nothing related to privacy.
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