Oh. People from English-speaking countries don’t sink you with downvotes immediately for criticizing that show anymore. Nice.

Even the broad strokes are, eh, how do you say it, eh … worse than Tom Clancy and that’s an achievement I’m not sure everyone is capable of measuring.

It’s funny though how such series about “USSR” talk in fact about something American. Reminiscent of the “17 moments of spring” series which were about a Soviet spy in Berlin in the last months of WWII, but mostly explored Soviet ideology and morality issues.

Telegram is not private. That makes the comparison to be infinity in favor of DeltaChat.

Friendly reminder that 10-15 years ago laws in this general direction were usually stuffed into leftist bottles.

Not anymore, but it would be a mistake to forget this.

You lose something … ? Tough shit, your problem, not mine.

Dunno, my cousins’ dad was a 17yo soldier. One can say it was a better time cause he was on the winning side, and now that has become the losing side.

Mass surveillance was more old-school, but governments were still pretty harsh.

They had Trump. He just was younger, Democrat and apparently popular.

They had AI in your spam mail.

Climate collapse … again, where half my family is from, war broke logistics in the 90s, so to have heat at winter people would cut down trees. A lot of forest lost. But one can say it was a better time because “the world” cared more about civilians suffering than about forests. I suspect now climate activists would act differently.

Dunno. Our humanity was born from 80s and 90s too.

It’s like being surprised that body armor doesn’t help against being gassed.

Telegram is not a privacy tool.

I mean, if he’s convicted for a privacy tool, while it’s not a privacy tool, we have a bit of ambiguity.

Arguably advertising something which is not a privacy tool as one is fraud. Maybe even phishing, since TG the company has in plaintext all the chat history of its users.

And this

The meaning of that word “complicity” seems to be revealed by the last three charges: Telegram has been providing users a “cryptology tool” unauthorised by French regulators.

in non-libertarian language means something similar, that is, that something not confirmed to be a privacy tool is being provided as a privacy tool.

I am a libertarian, but in this case they are consistent, if I’m reading this correctly. They are not abusing power, they are doing exactly what they are claiming to be doing.

Also maybe I’m just tired of Telegram. It’s engaging, and I have AuDHD, which means lots of energy spent, and I can’t drop it completely because work, and also some small communities are available as TG channels. Would be wonderful were they to move at least to WhatsApp, but it is what it is.

Still, ability to easily create a blog (what a TG channel really is for its users) reachable without bullshit is a niche in huge demand. LJ filled that at some point, Facebook did at another, TG does now.

Something like this is desperately needed. I’d say the solution should be complementary to Signal - that is, DMs and small groups should not be its thing. Neither should be privacy of huge chats and channels - they’d be public anyway. However, anonymity with means to counter spam should, so should be metadata of user activity.

If Signal was really as secure and private like everyone says it is then their executives would already be in jail and whatnot for “enabling criminal activities”.

It doesn’t have anything to do with what “everyone says”. We don’t do that with security. Well, Telegram users do, but Charles Darwin wrote about that process. Others look at what academics say or are competent enough themselves (no, you are not).

Or remember that you don’t have to be a wizard to

I mean, it’s almost fun thinking of how they’d react to my porn selection.

I’m actually sympathetic to anyone having an ideology not to help their identity, but trying to imagine a structure that works.

Ancaps are expected to be good in that regard, tankies are expected to be bad in that regard, but in general there are good and bad people in any group. I’ve met almost (the premise of racial difference in quality is still wrong obviously) reasonable Nazis, and not alt-rights at that, but real honest Nazis.

I’ve been excited about Trotskyism at some point, because while there are problems with their proposed ideal state (which is similar to what’s described in Norbert Wiener’s “Cybernetics”), they have a proposed mechanism and it’s been even tested in Rojava (their bigger issue is with armed apes around them though, and also with the USA abandoning them after not needing them against ISIS).

It’s a pleasing thought, of course, that an influential person may have morals and good goals (and nice looks).

But since there’s no way to know for sure, I think I’ll just stop trying to classify those names into good and evil.

Maybe the US government (or even “deep state” or something) has realized that making everyone use insecure devices for easier surveillance is as smart as forbidding fire exits so that people would be easier to arrest.

I haven’t heard too many bad things about Signal.

Various dictatorships want to simply read correspondence because the social graphs producing actual value and keeping stability in our world, and also protecting their embezzled value stored abroad, are all abroad too, and they won’t hurt these. Some politicians in the west want to invade privacy for the same reason - what they embezzle is stored in ways unaffected by insecure communications in their own countries.

But if you are part of some establishment, even if not well-meaning, you are interested to protect the system from outright erosion, meaning secure communications.

Other than that, WhatsApp and FB Messenger are owned by Zuck and he’s become too big to tolerate, Telegram is an African brothel with no protection and plenty of diseases, and in general it’s all corporate around.

Let’s please also remember that there are people of various views and interests in every organization and force.

A lot of software nowadays is doing a real disservice to their users by continuing to lie to them like this by selling them the notion that they can control their information after it has been sent. It’s really making people forget basic information hygiene. No app can guarantee that message won’t be intercepted or mishandled. They can only give you tools to hopefully prevent that, but there are no guarantees.

Oh, yes. These “deleted messages”, or these “hidden likes”, or whatever else.

I mean, there are fundamental things and algorithms allowing to create such a system, with blinded keys, ghost keys and what not, only these disgusting cheats have a centralized service where any employee can see everything, yet pretend that they have “a security feature”.

It’s actually sad, even though I’m a libertarian, tankies and in general marxists could have made a good input into our future. But if they can believe in Telegram being secure because of vibes and not even doing basic research, they’ve already lost.

It’s easier, but Telegram’s authors are from Russia. They psychologically can’t accept that “never have the keys” thing. They want to have control and they want to be able to tell “yes” to the investigator, possibly for something in return.

And it’s sad that it doesn’t. Because that’s why people use Telegram.

Media hosting - we-ell, I suppose something similar to bittorrent (or just sharing encrypted files over bittorrent) would do to back such a system?

Telegram’s channels are like blogs, they have reactions and comment links leading to a groupchat associated with a channel.

It’s basically a social network in an instant messenger format.

Telegram is socially , in terms of finding a market niche, the smartest thing of what’s happened in the Internet recently. Durov really is a good businessman.

Yeah, try telling your family, friends, colleagues, therapist to use Signal.

Telegram is a propaganda weapon in some sense, between two worldviews - one is “a good service doesn’t require trust, because they physically can’t sell you”, another is “a good service you can trust because they won’t sell you”. And Telegram helps the latter.

So frankly - kill it with fire. Sadly I’m in Russia and everybody uses it here.