How Telegram's Founder Pavel Durov Became a Culture War Martyr
www.404media.co
Conservatives have spent months championing Telegram as an app that more closely aligns with their values than Signal.
  • Sem@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I heard that in USA Telegram is used mostly by conservatives, trans-haters and drug dealers. But in Russia where I was born and where I have been living until the war, Telegram was a single source of alternative news and the main tool for opposition to putin. I had a talk with an Iranian guy recently and he told me the same: in Iran Telegram is the only source of non-state-propaganda news.

    I do not care that Durov is just a billionaire who makes money on the trend of privacy. But I remember how Telegram successfully fought against attempt of blocking in Russia in 2018 by providing regular updates and using different techniques to avoid blocking. An attack on Telegram for me is an attack on the latest opposition to putin, khamenei, lukashenko and others.

    • sqgl@beehaw.org
      0·
      3 months ago

      Telegram successfully fought against attempt of blocking in ussia in 2018 by providing regular updates and using different techniques to avoid blocking.

      I too heard Russia blocked all social media for a couple of days except Telegram, claiming they could not. Sounds like a deliberate exemption to bolster its reputation. China has blocked it (apart from VPN’s).

      It seems Russia has a back door key into Telegram.

      • jarfil@beehaw.org
        0·
        3 months ago

        It may not be just the Kremlin. I’ve had several cases where I wrote about something in a Telegram chat, stuff I had never talked about before, and in a matter of seconds started seeing related ads on Facebook.

        Alternatively, it could be the keyboard leaking all text, or I could have some other spyware, but I’ve only had that happen to me between Telegram and Facebook.

        • sqgl@beehaw.org
          0·
          3 months ago

          Telegram group chats are unencrypted

          Not quite true. They are server-side encrypted, not end-to-end. Still bad and I had no idea until I looked it up just now (thanks to you).

          I use Gboard keyboard on my phone which undermines my Signal privacy. I could use my laptop instance of Signal to prevent leakage.

  • Lime Buzz@beehaw.org
    0·
    3 months ago

    and an attack on encrypted messaging

    lmao. It’s barely encrypted and what little of it that is (one-to-one DMs) have never been audited in a way where Telegram haven’t just either ignored the results or moved the goalposts.