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So, Telegram is blocked. But Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are still online. Hence, this is pushing users of a (relatively) country-neutral service, towards more American services. Seems like a weird move for Russia.
Why block Telegram and not .. all the others? Whatsapp, Signal, Viber, ... Are they objecting to the use of encryption? Because everyone uses encryption almost all the time for everything everywhere. The cat has been well and truly released from that bag. Are they just going to turn off the internet altogether?
That's what's going to happen. Various localities will shut off encrypted passageways altogether because they control the pipes. They will create a corporate-like intranet where they monitor everything.
So, Telegram is blocked. But Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are still online. Hence, this is pushing users of a (relatively) country-neutral service, towards more American services. Seems like a weird move for Russia.
Why block Telegram and not .. all the others? Whatsapp, Signal, Viber, ... Are they objecting to the use of encryption? Because everyone uses encryption almost all the time for everything everywhere. The cat has been well and truly released from that bag. Are they just going to turn off the internet altogether?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One argument might be "because Signal * has (almost) no tests, * has no CI (at least I could find none), * lacks some basic features competitors have, * sometimes doesn't ring when you call, and * they just closed all 1100 open issues without reading their contents [1]." Don't get me wrong, I think Signal is a great idea and have contributed some code to it, but these look like some red flags to me. Obviously hard to…
Question: What do tests and CI have to do with the usability and usefulness of a program? I agree that the other issues could be worrying, but those first two throw me for a loop.
The grandparent poster also wrote about security/privacy, for which I think tests are pretty important.
Finally, having CI would allow the developers/contributors with limited time to spend more time on usability and usefulness instead of on issues like "master doesn't build, anybody else have this problem?" (when I wanted to PR something to Signal, master did not build).
"For the last 24 hours Telegram has been under a ban by internet providers in Russia. The reason was our refusal to provide encryption keys to Russian security agencies. For us, this was an easy decision. We promised our users 100% privacy and would rather cease to exist than violate this promise.
Despite the ban, we haven’t seen a significant drop in user engagement so far, since Russians tend to bypass the ban with VPNs and proxies. We also have been relying on third-party cloud services to remain partly available for the rest of our users.
Thank you for your support and loyalty, Russian users of Telegram. Thank you, Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft – for not taking part in political censorship.
Russia accounts for ~7% of the Telegram user base, and even if we lose that entire market, Telegram’s organic growth in other regions will compensate for this loss within a couple of months. However, it is personally important for me to make sure we do everything we can for our Russian users.
To support internet freedoms in Russia and elsewhere I started giving out bitcoin grants to individuals and companies who run socks5 proxies and VPN. I am happy to donate millions of dollars this year to this cause, and hope that other people will follow. I called this Digital Resistance – a decentralized movement standing for digital freedoms and progress globally."
Why block Telegram and not .. all the others? Whatsapp, Signal, Viber, ... Are they objecting to the use of encryption? Because everyone uses encryption almost all the time for everything everywhere. The cat has been well and truly released from that bag. Are they just going to turn off the internet altogether?
Why block Telegram and not .. all the others? Whatsapp, Signal, Viber, ... Are they objecting to the use of encryption? Because everyone uses encryption almost all the time for everything everywhere. The cat has been well and truly released from that bag. Are they just going to turn off the internet altogether?