France's love-hate relationship with Telegram | Hacker News Reader

France's love-hate relationship with Telegram

politico.eu

12 pointstosh11 comments

>French security officials had already warned the Macron camp about their Telegram use. "They told us we were being watched, that we were at risk of hacking and that we had to be careful with Telegram, which is a Russian app," a Macron adviser was quoted as saying by newspaper Libération.

I think this is what's missing from most convos re this. Commenters focus on whether platforms have responsibility for user content or the encryption vs surveillance debate way too much, ignoring the fact that Durov is a Russian tech oligarch that was allowed to sell his vk userbase to an authoritarian state and is neither in a Siberian labor colony or having a taste of novichok/plutonium poisoning.

It's only prudent to suspect that he is as free-speech-loving, unbiased and not working for an authoritarian dictatorship as his platform's defaults are private and secure.

> (...) ignoring the fact that Durov is a Russian tech oligarch that was allowed to sell his vk userbase to an authoritarian state and is neither in a Siberian labor colony or having a taste of novichok/plutonium poisoning.

Adding to that, note the outrage expressed by high-level Russian officials regarding Durov's arrest. Not only are they ok with a private business running a supposedly confidential messaging service within Russia, they also go to bat for him to try to protect it. This, in a regime so hostile to free speech and personal liberty such as Russia.

Nah. They jumped on a rare opportunity to present themselves as the proponents of the free speech. And surely there is an ulterior motive to gain more control over Durov and Telegram.

Telegram's premier feature are channels and there are multitude of popular ones deeply critical of the Putin's regime (and there are a lot of pro-government or state-controlled ones).

Telegram is de facto the biggest (meta) source with at least a modicum of free speech in Russia.

>his platform's defaults are private and secure

You can't be serious.

To clarify: what I meant was that Durov is as untrustworthy as Telegram's marketing is deceptive. i.e., the defaults are not private and secure, therefore it's prudent to suspect that his claims are false re free speech, being unbiased or not working for/with Russia. Hope this clears it up.

I have a love/hate relationship with it as well; I cannot find anything better from a usage perspective; the rest is either or all of; slow, lacking in features, stability on sketchy/slow internet (try driving around while talking on, for instance, Slack and Telegram; Telegram will chug along even on trickle, Slack will just have annoying banners say NO SIGNAL and even though it's back already, it still hangs for way too long), not having the people I want on it and more. But yes, for the simple reason of no default e2e, I use multiple chat apps, but Telegram is simply the most comfortable; if it had proper (by default) e2e for everything, I would 'live' in it. I don't mind (I find it better) to store a key somewhere like Threema and Element, but these things are unusable UX wise (and very slow...). Then whatsapp with it's restrictions bound to your mobile and unencrypted backups anyway is not good and as well, it's just worse.

It's comfortably the best messaging software I've ever used and shows how good modern software built by small development teams can be.

The ready access to the first hand war footage (both sides'), as well as Russian news channels, has been revelatory.

> MPs and cabinet members were encouraged to use lesser-known French alternatives.

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38481403

> Related discussion:

Not really related though, other than being messaging services.

One can't simply ignore the fact that a Russian oligarch controls Telegram. That's a far bigger issue than anything in that threat you linked, which focuses on Signal and glances over the link between Telegram and the authoritarian regime that threatens the free world as part of their daily business. In fact, this very submission points out that those expressing outrage over the arrest are high-level Russian officials and people openly compromised by Russia, which even bans YouTube for posing a threat.

russian oligarchs are a lower threat to me than US equivelants

> russian oligarchs are a lower threat to me than US equivelants

I don't think so, given "russian oligarchs" already manipulated the US electorate to elect one of their own useful idiots as president and are doing their best to elect the same compromised stooge the second time around.

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