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Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

latimes.com

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Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#131

Post by voxic11 »

t0astbread wrote: post #77
mauflows wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure Signal at least doesn't encrypt at rest on your phone. So the drive would have to be encrypted as well, which is not default on Android

Apart from that, regardless if you're on Signal or Telegram if authorities get hold of a protester's identity on such an app and have the power to access the app's servers they can gradually uncover social networks by reading metadata (if I'm not mistaken).

I think you are mistaken. Before your text is sent to Signal your sender information is encrypted with the receiver's public key. So while Signal's servers can see who to deliver the message to they cannot see who sent it. Only the receiving client can decrypt and authenticate the message. This feature was rolled out in late 2018 and is called "sealed sender". It was developed to prevent leakage of any social network information via the message metadata.

But as far as I know Telegram has no equivalent feature.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#132

Post by FpUser »

ceeniwer wrote: post #64
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long-preparing revolutionaries need a way to communicate and coordinate with a bunch of people who suddenly see things their way. The government often tries to jam the lines of communication, so some alternate form of communication is often critical.

I wonder why is it that folks in Hong Kong, xinjiang and Tibet can’t effectively work together using telegram to start a massive nation wide riot. There are so many Folks in those regions who are oppressed (millions) and they are being organ harvested, forced to work in factories as slave labor, held in concentration camps, disappeared without trials, and tortured for democratic ideals. Or these folks can coordinate…

>"to start a massive nation wide riot"

- Keyboard warrior? This is a crime in any country including the the US. Can you imagine what it will do to you in a country like China?

>"Or these folks can coordinate with protesters in other parts of the world, to raise awareness and stop consumers from buying from a dictatorship."

- What prevents you from not buying from a dictatorship now? Do you need to be directed by people from Tibet about it?

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#133

Post by stjohnswarts »

ROARosen wrote: post #102
lordnacho wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook 2020 isn't the same as Facebook 2010. Their public image has changed a lot in between.

> Their public image has changed a lot in between. Keyword "public". It is the same useful for protests as it was then.

However they have only gotten worse over time. It's just now that they're willing to block some far right/far left groups trying to fraudulently dump info in the form of ads and memes on Facebook.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#134

Post by gjs278 »

skyyler wrote: post #127
shawnz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the journalist who gets paid to write a nice article about Signal will surely get a quote from the protestor who happened to use Signal and not Telegram.

I'm not sure why you've brought up Signal, they're completely different platforms. Signal focuses on secure communication, Telegram has a secure communication feature... But also a social network of group chats and channels that link to each other; and that's the focus of this article.

he brought it up because someone was paid to write nice things about telegram, so they found a guy using that

when signal asks for an article, someone will be quoted as how signal was helpful

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#135

Post by echelon »

75dvtwin wrote: post #108
soufron wrote: post #10

It's never "the work of a long-preparing revolutionnary crowd" revolution, but always a "latest fashionable technology" revolution. Tech propaganda at its best.

@soufron, I agree with you. It is shameful, to call uprising of suppressed -- against systemic unfairness -- as 'Telegram revolution'. This is akin to stealing valor (basically stealing medals and pretending to be the honorable). This type of valor stealing, is also happening when people call US border detention facilities as 'Nazi concentration camps'. For people whose family members went through a Nazi concentratio…

> This type of valor stealing, is also happening when people call US border detention facilities as 'Nazi concentration camps'. For people whose family members went through a Nazi concentration camp, hearing such a comparing is painful.

I was with you until this comment.

What the Jews went through is horrible beyond words.

What immigrant families are going through is also horrible.

They may not be systematically murdered like the Jews being sent to gas chambers, and they may not be sterilized like the Uighurs, but they are still suffering. Families are being separated forever. Lost children will never be given back to their parents. That's not okay.

Don't trivialize human suffering. Condemn it. Don't turn it into an analogy where you can praise those that suffered the most. Who are you to know how any of this feels? We're not trying to win some contest here - the result we're after is the end of suffering.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#136

Post by jetzzz »

HPsquared wrote: post #123
diimdeep wrote: post #118

Telegram created Belarus language public channel. And posted poll to vote for new president with some clever restrictions. Anyone can vote, but you can't choose options with candidates if your phone number is not Balarusian. "I am not from Belarus" is only available poll option to make your vote if your phone number is not Balarusian. There is currently 736'000 votes with that option. Telegram poll https://t.me/s/tel…

To be fair though, Telegram users aren't exactly an unbiased sample.

Official election results give Tikhanovskaya 500k votes, Telegram poll - 1M votes, 2x more.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#137

Post by stjohnswarts »

shawnz wrote: post #76
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long-preparing revolutionaries need a way to communicate and coordinate with a bunch of people who suddenly see things their way. The government often tries to jam the lines of communication, so some alternate form of communication is often critical.

Telegram provides, at best, equal security and ease-of-use to previously existing solutions like Signal and Whatsapp, and in many cases worse security. Telegram didn't do anything to make this kind of technology more accessible or available. So, the fact that it happens to be a popular solution for encrypted chat right now doesn't really speak to its necessity for any revolution like you and the article seem to be im…

Some of the features of Telegram are helping them to do this, some stuff that signal is definitely lacking. for small groups and one to one signal is great, especially security wise, but the location and room functions of Telegram here are overshadowing it, even if it has inferior security and is much more proprietary.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#138

Post by intpete »

75dvtwin wrote: post #108
soufron wrote: post #10

It's never "the work of a long-preparing revolutionnary crowd" revolution, but always a "latest fashionable technology" revolution. Tech propaganda at its best.

@soufron, I agree with you. It is shameful, to call uprising of suppressed -- against systemic unfairness -- as 'Telegram revolution'. This is akin to stealing valor (basically stealing medals and pretending to be the honorable). This type of valor stealing, is also happening when people call US border detention facilities as 'Nazi concentration camps'. For people whose family members went through a Nazi concentratio…

Well said! Sadly, the importance of your message seems to have been overlooked in the usual HN game of one-upmanship.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#139

Post by fsfellowship »

free messaging apps, like free software organizations, are just better at obfuscating their fascist overlords but the fascist overlords are still there pulling the strings somewhere as this clearly demonstrates https://fsfellowship.eu/matthias-kirschner-fsfe-nazi-compari...

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#140

Post by thekyle »

tryptophan wrote: post #106
robertfw wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix really does seem like the ideal future platform to build on, I've started poking around it and really like what I see. Does anyone with more experience want to chime in on what they've found using it?

It has the best protocol I'd say, but other than that everything else is worse. All the clients suck, features are missing/buggy, nobody is sure if it is supposed to be a discord/slack or whataspp replacement, giving a half-ass implementation of both, and confusing to users security stuff(asks random users about their keys). That being said, I still love the project and hope they sort out their UX problems.

I really like the idea of Matrix, but in practice I don't have anyone to use it with. At least with Signal the on-boarding experience is super low friction, so I can just tell someone "message me on Signal" and they'll figure it out.

Matrix on-boarding is more complicated and would probably require hand holding through which client and server to use.

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