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Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

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Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#151
post #14

Why not Signal? It’s the way to go as far as messaging apps are concerned.

Because the belarussian government doesn't have enough power over Telegram to force them to disclose messages, meaning that transport encryption is absolutely good enough for the protester's threat model.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#152
post #76

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…

No, you guys always miss the important things. It's that Telegram has social features. It's that Telegram operates under harsher network conditions. It's that other people have Telegram for these reasons.

This is the rsync v Dropbox of messaging applications.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#153
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prefer Signal myself too. It's a bit hard to switch over from WhatsApp and tried to use it at least with my spouse. One feature that Telegram and WhatsApp miss, is being able to send yourself a message. On Signal you can do this and it's very convenient for taking notes, sending passwords (laptop phone) and for saving bookmarks. I used to share interesting bookmarks from HN to my email, but that quickly got cumbersom…

Telegram has the saved messages chat which is a chat with yourself.

Agreed. This actually works incredibly well on Telegram to sync snippets and files between devices.

FWIW you can also create multiple groups with the same person(s) so you can keep one "group" chat with your spouse for chores, shopping lists etc and another for photos of the kids, birthday planning, funny stuff etc.

This probably works in most messengers though, but it is a nice hack anyway.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#154
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.

Wrong. Telegram worked actively for years towards such usage scenarios.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#155
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was reported that Telegram was the only thing that somewhat kept working when the internet was down country wide. Also, I installed Telegram for the explicit purpose of following the events in Belarus directly from sources. By doing that I noticed that apparently the local press in my country have done the same, as it seemed that most of the updates in online media have come from the same Telegram channels. So, it…

Uhhh how did it work when the internet went down ?

They didn't fully shut down the internet the entire time. I.e. at least for a while, apparently port 80 was still open when other things were blocked.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#156
post #148
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.

It's really disgusting!! It's like saying, not Trump is bad but twitter is...so US, it's not BLM but TSM (Twitter Shitstorm Matters)

You'd be more persuasive if you toned the language down. FWIW, I'm not up nor downvoting you, just sharing perspective as a mod with political sympathies.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#157
post #93
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally what one of the protestors called it. > “Telegram channels and websites that don’t belong to our government are the main source of information today as we cannot at all rely on state media,” said Roman Semenov, who follows the NEXTA channels and joined a rally in central Minsk on Wednesday evening. “It’s a Telegram revolution.” On top of that this is article detailing how this particular technology, ha…

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 far from being Telegram fan considering their custom crypto, lack of E2E by default, etc. Yet NEXTa channel here actually have 2 million of subscribers while Belarus population is less than 10 millions. Yeah of course there some % of people from abroad who follow the situation, but it's still a lot.

Also Telegram was more-or-less resistant to at least not leak any personal information of their users in ex-USSR. So it's works well enough for protesters threat model.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#158
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was reported that Telegram was the only thing that somewhat kept working when the internet was down country wide. Also, I installed Telegram for the explicit purpose of following the events in Belarus directly from sources. By doing that I noticed that apparently the local press in my country have done the same, as it seemed that most of the updates in online media have come from the same Telegram channels. So, it…

Uhhh how did it work when the internet went down ?

I believe the Telegram app has a peer-to-peer feature that allows communication to be routed through other devices rather than requiring communication with the Telegram servers

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#159
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah I see, so there's no extrapolation involved, only the raw numbers.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#160
post #44

Should the revolution fail, the digital trail left by these messages will give the government everything they need to hunt down every last activist. We saw it with the Green Revolution in Iran. We've seen it several times since. So long as messages are not encrypted, messaging apps are much more naturally suited as tools of oppression than tools of revolution.

I don't understand how they will get the chats except from individual phones. The convo is encrypted between telegram app and their servers and the servers aren't available to Bealrus' government officials, so how are they going to get the messages? Obviously they can if they're monitoring public group chats because all they have to do is join, but person to person or private groups, how are they going to get to those? Confiscate everyone's phones?
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