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Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

nytimes.com

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Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

#11

Post by jonknee »

anderber wrote: post #8
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6

This is presently an accusation by Telegram, nothing more. Sample of reasons why Apple may be doing whatever they are doing: 1) Telegram is prevalently used by Syrian fighters [1]. (Why they chose Telegram over Signal beats me.) As the Syrian conflict winds down, these fighters are returning home. That creates a security imperative for many governments, including in the EU. 2) Telegram recently ran an ICO that, at th…

All this points to me is the risks of owning a phone whose only way to add apps is to go through one company's own discretion. Unlike in Android where you can easily install apps from other app stores or just download the file.

Installing apps outside an app store also introduces other risks, it's not exactly one better than the other. Personally I'd love to sideload apps, but seeing how big of a mess that was on desktops leads me to believe most users are better served by a gatekeeper.

Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

#12

Post by vhbit »

scosman wrote: post #4
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #3

I'm surprised that nobody is talking about how Telegram raised pre-ICO of billions of dollars even when it was obvious that this type of censorship will be possible. Mobile apps should not do ICO, period. It's irresponsible for someone to try stealing uneducated people's money while promising something that's impossible to achieve. Realistically speaking there are only two players in the market: Google and Apple, bot…

"you're basically promising the censorship resistant future" where did telegram say anything remotely like that? They did an ICO for a utility coin. They have been honest about being centralized. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you're putting words in their mouth and accusing them of theft for not meeting your fabricated expectations.

> They did an ICO for a utility coin.

One of the major selling points of that utility coin was that it'll be automatically available for 200M active users of Telegram. Frictionless entry point into coins is a huge step forward.

Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

#13

Post by Shank »

Honestly, I don't understand why there are still details missing from this story. Durov is willing to share that Telegram hasn't been able to ship updates, but not the full reason.

Have they been actively rejected (and thus, provided a rejection reason)? Or have Apple just stopped approving their updates silently?

If it's the former, I don't know what app store guideline says "well, Telegram is banned in Russia, and so no more updates." If it's the latter, then I can understand the frustration -- but we don't know which it is. This nuance is important.

For all we know, the answer is the former, and the app store rejection reasons are for completely unrelated issues. But as per usual, we don't know the full story.

Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

#14

Post by anderber »

jonknee wrote: post #11
anderber wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this points to me is the risks of owning a phone whose only way to add apps is to go through one company's own discretion. Unlike in Android where you can easily install apps from other app stores or just download the file.

Installing apps outside an app store also introduces other risks, it's not exactly one better than the other. Personally I'd love to sideload apps, but seeing how big of a mess that was on desktops leads me to believe most users are better served by a gatekeeper.

I should have specified, I meant risk to freedom/censorship.

Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

#15

Post by taurath »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #7
taurath wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Realistically speaking there are only two players in the market: Google and Apple, both of which will happily comply with governments and regulators since they have no business in allowing gray area businesses, and that's a good thing. I don't really consider that a good thing. Having government controlled gatekeepers that take 20-30% off of every app with platform lock-in is not a great thing. We rail constantly a…

I'm on the same page with you. I guess i should rephrase. I said "That's a good thing" from Apple and Google's point of view. They are public companies with shareholders who don't want them to contribute to potentially illegal behaviors. So it's a "good thing" for them to have the companies comply with the governments. But this phenomenon itself is not a good thing, so I do think decentralized projects should fix thi…

It certainly represents a sea change where the "leaders" in tech are now basically gatekeepers to new technology's viability. Thats been the case for a while, but now the players are the ones who were built on the relative freedom of the internet. It could absolutely just shut the whole distributed platform thing down, but the demand will still be there I think, so eventually new platforms could come take its place. Thats of little solace to ICO investors nowadays of course, because it could delay the rollout by a decade or more.

Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

#16

Post by sebleon »

This is likely a false accusation.

If Apple acquiesced to Russia’s demands, Apple would have: 1) removed Telegram from the App Store in Russia, and 2) prevented Telegram from using the Apple Push Notification Service to distribute non-blocked IP addresses to clients.

More likely, updates are being rejected for another infraction. Telegram should publish the App Store reviewer’s criticisms publicly, and provide more context before making public denouncements.

Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

#17

Post by madeofpalk »

djrogers wrote: post #9
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6

This is presently an accusation by Telegram, nothing more. Sample of reasons why Apple may be doing whatever they are doing: 1) Telegram is prevalently used by Syrian fighters [1]. (Why they chose Telegram over Signal beats me.) As the Syrian conflict winds down, these fighters are returning home. That creates a security imperative for many governments, including in the EU. 2) Telegram recently ran an ICO that, at th…

Based on history, it’s by far more likely that it’s #3. Have we ever seen Apple prevent updates to an app globally due to government request (any government)? No... What we have seen are plenty of other reasons that Apple has rejected updates - like including new features that violate policies. This really makes no sense on its face - if this is real Apple responding to Russian demands, why is Televram even available…

We've also seen Apple just pull apps all together from countries at the request of the government, so I don't understand why Apple would only reject updates at the request of a government, rather than pull the app completely.

Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

#18

Post by ocdtrekkie »

anderber wrote: post #8
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6

This is presently an accusation by Telegram, nothing more. Sample of reasons why Apple may be doing whatever they are doing: 1) Telegram is prevalently used by Syrian fighters [1]. (Why they chose Telegram over Signal beats me.) As the Syrian conflict winds down, these fighters are returning home. That creates a security imperative for many governments, including in the EU. 2) Telegram recently ran an ICO that, at th…

All this points to me is the risks of owning a phone whose only way to add apps is to go through one company's own discretion. Unlike in Android where you can easily install apps from other app stores or just download the file.

Android is almost as locked to Google Play as Apple is to the App Store, to the effect that no vendor has made a successful business selling phones without the Play Store. While they've finally fixed it, for years, they used scare tactics to prevent sideloading by insinuating it as a security risk, requiring you allow "less secure apps" in order to sideload. Most applications won't run without Play Services even if you do sideload them, and Play Services can remote uninstall an app from every device anyways, should they choose to employ it.

Yes, you can roll your own with a ROM and limit yourself to the tiny selection on F-Droid, but you enter an increasingly niche area. While it's "technically possible", it isn't really supported well enough to justify holding it as a benefit over a competing platform from a mainstream sense.

Bear in mind, when faced with a technical question revolving around making a backup of APK files, a core Android engineer said they "didn't support piracy", which was... a pretty hefty accusation to throw around for an innocuous backup of apps for being able to sideload should they be pulled from the then-called Android Market.

Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

#19

Post by taurath »

Shank wrote: post #13

Honestly, I don't understand why there are still details missing from this story. Durov is willing to share that Telegram hasn't been able to ship updates, but not the full reason. Have they been actively rejected (and thus, provided a rejection reason)? Or have Apple just stopped approving their updates silently? If it's the former, I don't know what app store guideline says "well, Telegram is banned in Russia, and…

The certification process tends to only look for things that are Bad for Apple or Google, as almost anyone who's tried getting a big app update certified. Meanwhile, 1000 iterations of shareware calculators that you have to pay $4 to unlock the number 9 are accepted frequently. There's so many clearly crap apps out there that don't get a second look.

Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia

#20

Post by wetpaws »

sebleon wrote: post #16

This is likely a false accusation. If Apple acquiesced to Russia’s demands, Apple would have: 1) removed Telegram from the App Store in Russia, and 2) prevented Telegram from using the Apple Push Notification Service to distribute non-blocked IP addresses to clients. More likely, updates are being rejected for another infraction. Telegram should publish the App Store reviewer’s criticisms publicly, and provide more c…

Knowing Apple I would be very surprised that it is a false accusation.
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