Hacker News Reader

Comment by sega_sai | Hacker News Reader

Except that law does not apply for these elections that last several days https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4800223 The law allowing campaigning was passed in May 2021.

View on HN

Your link contradicts what you're saying, no?

>Согласно закону, предвыборная агитация должна быть завершена в 00:00 по местному времени первого дня голосования.

I think you are right. I was incorrect. Indeed that implies that campaining was prohibited from Friday on.

actively asking a bot to provide information upon initiated request is not campaigning.

I agree. But it's debatable. And since it's the law none is to blame for accepting the requests from law enforcement agencies

As I understand the article, it used to be that campaigning has been disallowed as early as one day before the voting day.

Now it's disallowed starting from the voting day.

Is that not so?

tangential and not against your point, but isn't this proof that relying on applications provided by private companies for politics and public sensitive matters, is the best way to end like this?

especially when the only way to get the app is through a bunch of privately held "stores"

A directly downloaded versions of the app for Android and Windows are much more relaxed on the censorship. For example, they are able to access adult content blocked on iOS version. But they were unable to access voting bot.

Yes, and this is the most puzzling lie in Durov’s post.

He knows he’s lying. Personally I think he’s found a common ground with Kremlin behind the scenes.

I kinda doubt that part. If he was in their good graces again I think we'd hear more about it But I think Russia is a much bigger market for Telegram than Iran was. It's where they started after all.

I'm pretty sure that'll play a part in it too. Easy thing to throw away 0.5% of your marketshare, another when it's 20%. Ps I made those numbers up :)

When Russia wanted some kind of encryption keys he could not hand over because they dont exist, Telegram was banned in Russia but people found ways to use it anyway. So I dont think Russia has anything to "force" Durov other than via Apple/Google. He doesn't live there or owns anything there and according to past posts of him and there are no Telegram servers there either. + The proxy stuff to circumvent Russia's ban is already implemented if they would block the IPs again.

It seems very likely that Apple/Google is actually the problem here. I encourage everyone to download the app from the website or F-Droid not form Google.

Family

There is a sideloaded version of Telegram for Android which can be installed from it's website and even is able to auto-update itself. It allows access to content blocked on iOS. But it was unable to access voting bot.

I dont think bots have the flags for blocking only in some apps like channels and groups have.

The bot runs on someone else machine and telegram most likely just temporary disabled the token to disable the bot from communicating with the telegram bot API. This then ofc affects all front ends/apps.

Client was showing something like "this content is illegal" instead of bot answers. It is now showing the original answers instead of these placeholders, which means the data was always there, it was just replaced on the fly for accounts with Russian registration.

Then they apparently did not turn off the bot itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com