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Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a voting app

telegra.ph

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Re: Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a voting app

#11

Post by kstrauser »

echelon wrote: post #4

This is why apps suck. Steve Jobs got us into this mess by trying to monopolize the iPhone processor (and only allowed the web to bootstrap his platform). Complete control can be strong armed by dictators, and our spineless capitalists will bend to their will. The W3C needs to develop a standard for non-DOM, immediate mode painted, fully WASM apps that can access all of a device's hardware. Storage, cameras, network,…

I could go along with the idea of it, but the idea of the US mandating what I'd have to include in a browser is a bridge too far for me. If the US, EU, and Asia (like, all of Asia, en bloc?) want features, they can develop 'em themselves.

Re: Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a voting app

#12

Post by cnst »

A very objective article, actually, and goes well to explain how this request to block the "voting app" isn't at all as controversial as portrayed in the Western MSM:

> Second, this particular demand of the Russian authorities wasn't obviously unconstitutional, as they referred to a law that restricts campaigning after people start casting their votes. Laws against political campaigning while voting is underway exist in many countries and the Russian counterpart had been introduced a long time ago. Had we received a similar demand from any European country, we would have complied with it. On the contrary, had Russia or any other country demanded something that is in clear violation of human rights, we would rather face an outright ban of Telegram in that country than compromise our values.

Re: Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a voting app

#14

Post by jeroenhd »

echelon wrote: post #4

This is why apps suck. Steve Jobs got us into this mess by trying to monopolize the iPhone processor (and only allowed the web to bootstrap his platform). Complete control can be strong armed by dictators, and our spineless capitalists will bend to their will. The W3C needs to develop a standard for non-DOM, immediate mode painted, fully WASM apps that can access all of a device's hardware. Storage, cameras, network,…

What's even the point in making native apps work over the web? Just use native apps, period. You can install native applications on most operating systems already (iOS notably lacking support for persistent "sideloading").

If you want, I'm sure you can cross-compile WASM into some kind of native application or even just leverage a WebView component to make your "app" an HTML page with just a .

All of this is already possible today, and yet this problem still persists. Open access to your own hardware is important, but it doesn't solve political problems like these. Web applications can quickly be blocked by censors as China and Russia have shown. The technology arms race doesn't solve the political root cause of the problem.

Re: Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a voting app

#15

Post by echelon »

echelon wrote: post #10
webmobdev wrote: post #3

> First, without support from Apple and Google, any fight with a local regulator is lost before it starts ... Our website that hosts Telegram Web and the standalone Telegram app for Android would be blocked by local telecoms in a matter of minutes. Even existing users would lose access to Telegram once Apple and Google turn off notifications for the app (which are used not only to deliver messages to users, but also…

Who is downvoting you? We should never support censorship or the erosion of privacy. Preservation of these two is essential for our democracy and freedom.

I've just lost the ability to edit posts.

I was in the middle of an edit to add more commentary, and it failed. This hasn't ever happened to me on HN before.

Can a moderator explain what is going on or why I'm being targeted?

Edit button is completely gone on the above post. https://i.imgur.com/BnYuqx6.jpg

Re: Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a voting app

#16

Post by cybernautique »

echelon wrote: post #4

This is why apps suck. Steve Jobs got us into this mess by trying to monopolize the iPhone processor (and only allowed the web to bootstrap his platform). Complete control can be strong armed by dictators, and our spineless capitalists will bend to their will. The W3C needs to develop a standard for non-DOM, immediate mode painted, fully WASM apps that can access all of a device's hardware. Storage, cameras, network,…

I agree with the spirit of your post; however, I don't understand why it needs to be drive-by, browser-delivered-and-run apps. It almost seems like you're proposing a cross-platform sandbox and app store, which I'm all for! but I'd like it to stay as far away from modern web browsers as possible.

Re: Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a voting app

#17

Post by raman162 »

I understand their choice, their hands were tied by the distributors; apple and Google. At least for Android phones they make it easy to sideload an apk so I'm little less empathetic on that end but for iOS, you're pretty much at the mercy of apple.

Re: Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a voting app

#18

Post by vbezhenar »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #8
noxer wrote: post #2

There was recently comments about this with questionable reasoning. There is an official statement now so everyone can make their own educated opinion. Please don't start a "telegram is not encrypted by default" shitstorm like in every other comment section about anything related to Telegram.

I think for open group chats it doesn't really matter. Because anyone can join anyway. Nobody complains that IRC isn't E2E encrypted and still many people use it every day :) That usecase doesn't benefit from it at all. For closed (invite only) group chats and 1:1 chats I think it should be encrypted by default though. Like WA and Signal. There's the secret chats of course but they only work on one device and not on…

I trust Telegram E2E implementation more, than Whatsapp. I'm sure that there are no cloud backups (for me and for other person), I'm sure that there's no sync happening (any sync is potential threat to security). All data stays on device and that's about it. It's true end-to-end. Whatsapp and Signal implementations are not End to End. They're something like User to User or Account to Account, with some encrypted copies floating around. They have many ends. That blurs responsibilities.

I hope that their implementation will stay as it is. I'm all for implementing better security for ordinary chats, but they should keep secret chats feature as a restricted high-security channel.

Re: Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a voting app

#19

Post by Y_Y »

cnst wrote: post #12

A very objective article, actually, and goes well to explain how this request to block the "voting app" isn't at all as controversial as portrayed in the Western MSM: > Second, this particular demand of the Russian authorities wasn't obviously unconstitutional, as they referred to a law that restricts campaigning after people start casting their votes. Laws against political campaigning while voting is underway exist…

But Telegram doesn't distribute apps, they blocked a "user" related to the app from using their network.

The article does seem very reasonable, but I'd disagree that it's objective, since the author, Durov, runs Telegram and is writing to justify their actions.

Re: Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a voting app

#20

Post by raman162 »

jefftk wrote: post #13

This is why the web is so important: no app stores to pressure. It looks to be like this particular telegram bot could have been a web site?

The web is not open for everyone some countries block certain traffic. I guess one can use a VPN, thankfully that's becoming more mainstream.
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