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Comment by iqanq | Hacker News Reader

On an unrelated note - Telegram is already heavily censored on iPhones because of app store policies and the team refuses to put out an uncensored IPA file that we can sideload to our phones. If someone from the team reads this (I doubt it, since they are very disconnected from western media) please consider it. You already do it for Android!

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Don't buy a phone where a single company can decide what software you are allowed to run.

I haven't. I can sideload apps just fine. But Telegram doesn't provide me with the app file to sideload.

As another comment says, I could compile it myself, but that is hard for someone with no expertise. Not to mention that I wouldn't trust an IPA that someone else put out. It's better if telegram themselves built and host that IPA file.

you can always build your own app from source IF that's an option. The app itself is open source. https://github.com/TelegramMessenger/Telegram-iOS

Out of curiosity what do you mean by censored? Are there groups that cannot be listed on the iphone app?

Exactly, channels, groups, and bots.

Interesting I had no idea. So, there’s groups that would work on the web client presumably but not the app. What happens if you join that group using your browser and attempt to see it in the app?

When you tap on the group, instead of the contents, you see a message like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Telegram...

The exact message you see is "Unfortunately, this channel couldn't be displayed on your device.". It doesn't say anything about the app store because apple policies don't allow apps to say that contents are censored because of apple guidelines.

Holy shit! This is crazy!

Apple censored channels supporting Belarusian protests because they were publishing personal information of state actors, like judges, KGB and police officers.

These same channels survive on Android so far.

It is not possible to do what you are asking for on iOS. They do it for Android because it is possible to sideload apks, but they cannot do the same for iOS.

You can sideload apps on ios without even being jailbroken using sideloadly or altstore.

So you need Apple Developer account and these apps sign ipas using your own key?

No, I don't need an apple developer account. Any regular apple id works.

Yes, they get signed with my own self-generated key.

Wouldn't they be kicked off the app store for that?

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