Hacker News Reader

Comment by theAkomolafe | Hacker News Reader

This is an insanely big developing story.

> This is an insanely big developing story.

For people in tech

Well.... it might (unlikely, but...) have implications for the Russian military forces in Ukraine, who are widely using it for communications (even for things like targeting artillery with drone spotters).

Interestingly (and understandably I guess, given the original nationality of the current CEO), the Ukrainian military are mostly using Signal, and the Russian military almost exclusively use Telegram.

Last I checked, Durov had some of his biggest companies confiscated by the Russian government, and he basically fled Russia, so it's hard to believe he would be cooperating with them. (But not impossible I guess, they might have scared him into cooperating ??)

Also, doesn't the Ukrainian military also use Telegram quite a lot ? (And what about the Israelo-Japanese Viber, also very popular in Ukraine?)

A lot of the mil bloggers / military analysis on both sides use Telegram, but the actual Ukrainian troops are mostly using Signal.

> widely using it for communications

it is hosted on Dutch and Western servers, and most chats are not e2e encrypted, especially group ones where you coordinate things like that. They are just incompetent and sloppy to use it for military, which probably already suffered for it greatly, but all the data was flowing unecrypted to closed-source servers in the Western Europe this whole time, so this has no new implications for anything.

Telegram is used by hundreds of millions in Europe and Middle East

And East Asia, especially Hong Kong since 2019.

Yep, and I have yet to see evidence of this being a huge story for those people. He's no Messi or Bieber or Swift.

Is Messi a "huge story"? I don't even know for what team he is playing. And as for Swift, I only know one of her songs name (pokerface, I guess?). As for Bieber, I never heard a single song and not interested to hear.

But in contrast, I have read lot of news about Durov.

Swift >> Messi >> Durov in popularity among the general population. Your unique interests may not generalize.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

Depends on how you measure popularity. Monthly listeners to Swift songs, watchers of Messi matches? way below 950 mln.

> I have yet to see evidence of this being a huge story for those people

Can you honestly claim that you keep in touch with those people?

I mean, this is an english-speaking us-centric forum. It is somewhat atypical for people here to actually know what happens outside this bubble.

> Can you honestly claim that you keep in touch with those people?

Nope, but maybe the data below can shed some light on it:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

Tons of journalists too. Isn't it where most of the news from ukraine war are sourced?

For 900 million active monthly users of Telegram. Not all of them in tech.

950 million users story.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com