Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests • Hacker News Board

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#241

Post by ClumsyPilot » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

shawnz wrote: post #93

charia wrote: 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.

Signal is blocked along with the rest of internet traffic, case closed.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#242

Post by pixelbash » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

jariel wrote: post #233

kolinko wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the worst case scenario, where each and every opposition voter took part in the poll, and literally everyone else voted for Lukashenko, this still prpves that the true result was at least 17% for opposition, which is more than the official results claim.

Teenagers don't have phones? Did all the eligible voters who phone-polled actually vote? Did they poll the way they actually voted? Some people don't have two phones? Can we trust that telegram doesn't have a flaw in the means by which it is measured? (i.e. register again with the same SIM, or something like that?) It's nice that there is a phone number as validation, but this doesn't 'prove' anything. Edit: I should…

I can't tell if you are arguing that the original vote was less likely to be skewed than this one, or just that this one doesn't pass the highest bar that could be set for it.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#243

Post by newsbinator » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

ThinkBeat wrote: post #238

The encryption is not very good in group chat. All the security services need is to find one protesters phone force the person to unlock it and they have it all. I am sure all network traffic of any kind was heavily monitored too. It also becomes entirely useless when the authority turns off the internet. There is another one that can work with a Bluetooth mesh https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/johnko…

Yeah it's pretty annoying that group chat displays real names and profiles.

Also group chat has a search feature for all time.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#244

Post by Balgair » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

rectang wrote: 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 agree that the danger is tremendous, but that is all the more reason to participate in changing the government.

If you fear such a reprisal then in being afraid you have only your life to save. If you try and make it succeed then you have everything to gain.

It is total gamble, but there seems to be little choice now for the Belorussian people: a chance at freedom or worse reprisals.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#245

Post by newsbinator » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

democracy wrote: post #226

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why many protesters had kill swithes on their devices to whipe them out in case they are arrested.

...most of the detained people didn't have such switches and it's not easy to use it - just look at how quickly people get arrested - it happens within seconds, hardly enough time to even take the phone out of your pocket and unlock it.

Also they don't know they're about to be arrested. One second they're walking along a street, one of dozens of other random pedestrians, the next second six guys are literally carrying them into a van.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#246

Post by sulam » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

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.

Just keep in mind that the few non-governmental election monitors all had Lukashenko with less than 20% of the vote. This is not an isolated result.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#247

Post by dtech » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

jariel wrote: post #233

kolinko wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the worst case scenario, where each and every opposition voter took part in the poll, and literally everyone else voted for Lukashenko, this still prpves that the true result was at least 17% for opposition, which is more than the official results claim.

Teenagers don't have phones? Did all the eligible voters who phone-polled actually vote? Did they poll the way they actually voted? Some people don't have two phones? Can we trust that telegram doesn't have a flaw in the means by which it is measured? (i.e. register again with the same SIM, or something like that?) It's nice that there is a phone number as validation, but this doesn't 'prove' anything. Edit: I should…

With these numbers, there would need to be significant effort to fraud the Telegram poll. For no real benefit other than maybe propaganda.

Whom exactly benefits from that? It would have to be a nation-state, and they weren't exactly doing much about the situation before the "election".

What is more likely: that the existing dictator and his supporters made defrauded the election to keep power or that some unknown entity defrauded an Telegram poll for not much gain.

Unless Telegram poll's system was completely broken, but you'd expect other large polls to already have revealed that.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#248

Post by ClumsyPilot » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

shawnz wrote: post #178

renewiltord wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's that Telegram has social features. Yes, unencrypted social features that could just as easily be serviced by any other social networking app which hasn't been explicitly banned yet (and that could happen to Telegram at any time). > It's that Telegram operates under harsher network conditions. So their operators claim. But it's not clear why that would be true and I haven't seen any numbers to demonstrate it ei…

Of course you are not going to see them if you are not looking. Maybe you could loo at have literally an entire country where it's the only messaging app still working. And previous attempt to block it in Russia.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#249

Post by curiousllama » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

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…

Wow. For context, there are less than 10M people total in Belarus, and ~16% of the population is under age 15. In order for the numbers to tally, the protests would necessarily have to be made up (almost) entirely of children.

https://www.indexmundi.com/belarus/demographics_profile.html

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#250

Post by vasu_man » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

For a country ruled by a 'dictator', I'm surprised the Belarus' government hasn't blocked access to Telegram yet. Non-authoritarian democracies (well, at least on paper) such as Brazil and India, in past, have blocked WhatsApp to contain protests and spread of (mis)information.