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Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

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Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the media/government has been painting all those opposing the Covid measures as right Idk about you, but waving flags of the German Reich, following known Neo-Nazis and attending events of far-right organizations, while spreading lies and slogans that originate from right-wing conspiracy theorists, seems kinda right-wingy to me.

Never claim there are no such people. But to try to paint a picture as e.g. most of mainstream media did and some still do, that only such kind of people protest the measures etc. is not correct.

I remember lots of documentations on TV and interviews with social scientists that emphasize that the Covid protests in Germany are weirdly originating from a very broad spectrum, with lots of alternative and esoteric groups, which aren't right wing at all. The Verfassungsschutz even had to invent a new category: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/verfassungsschutz-querdenke...

Some examples of mainstream media that emphasize the heterogeneous nature of these protests:

https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/esoterik-impfgegner-c...

https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/corona-demonstrat...

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/corona-demos-zwischen-hi...

https://www.rnd.de/panorama/esoteriker-auf-corona-demos-tanz...

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/corona-proteste-q...

So I don't think your assessment is fair.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#122
post #115
post #3

Hi, German here. How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal. I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

I don't get why anyone uses Signal. Horrible UX compared to WhatsApp, no sync of messages between devices, walled garden like WhatsApp, you can't have your own custom client only thing: not Facebook & open source You can have all of that with a Matrix client (except good UX, that's unique to Telegram)

> why anyone uses Signal.

> not Facebook

Bingo!

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#123
post #118

Telegram is not a privacy-focused messenger. It is not a messenger at all, it is a dialog-based development platform, like WeChat. Most of its value is in public channels and groups, and bots. It is dead simple to build a useful Telegram bot; good luck doing this on Signal. Wire and Threema are serious privacy-focused messengers. They have all things necessary for good privacy: full E2E, pseudonymous IDs not linked t…

> Wire and Threema are serious privacy-focused messengers. They have all things necessary for good privacy: full E2E, pseudonymous IDs not linked to phone numbers, multiple accounts, ephemeral accounts, side-channel authentication, etc. Matrix offers all that, and bots and public channels

Matrix is good, too. It is not polished enough yet, and they need to work on content discovery, but otherwise I like them, too.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#124
post #50
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram seems to have captured some of thr discord market and seems to do "group" stuff a lot better UX wise.

To effectively capture discord usage telegram should add Group groups , that is to allow user to create an Organizations with some channels and groups. Also some kind of shared access policy. Could even be a pro feature.

I specifically like Telegram because it doesn't have group groups =)

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#125
post #3

Hi, German here. How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal. I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

>How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved.

This means no history sync, no seamless device switching, no contact discovery, no search. That's not what people want.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#126
post #50
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram seems to have captured some of thr discord market and seems to do "group" stuff a lot better UX wise.

To effectively capture discord usage telegram should add Group groups , that is to allow user to create an Organizations with some channels and groups. Also some kind of shared access policy. Could even be a pro feature.

Desktop client already has it, it's called 'folders'.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would prefer them to be clearer to say "we will redesign our systems so we no longer store IP addresses". "Change our data structure" sounds like they might just host the servers outside the country and use a "Telegram Deutschland Inc" company that doesn't have access to any user data to run the service.

Even if they don’t store it: if they get a court order, and it requires to turn on IP logging, they will have yours the next time you log in.

Better than a history, at least.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#128
post #57

Where are German users supposed to have received this message? I'm not German but my telegram account is registered with a German number and I haven't received anything

Via the chat labeled "Telegram" with the verification mark, the one you also get info about new features from when there's an update.

I don't know why, but the last info I got there was "Telegram surpassed 500 (https://t.me/durov/147) million active users. " from more than a year ago, and a few login codes

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#130
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would any court or government care about Telegram/Reddit saying that?

Well they would redesign systems so that they don't have any visibility into message or channel contents, and if they are notified of a channel with bad content, they would just say 'contact the moderator of the channel'. Rather like ISP's today aren't responsible for the web pages they deliver - the HTTPS encryption means they couldn't scan or block them even if they wanted to.

> Rather like ISP's today aren't responsible for the web pages they deliver - the HTTPS encryption means they couldn't scan or block them even if they wanted to.

ISP's can be required to in fact not deliver certain webpages, usually for copyright reasons. If Telegram redesigns its system like you suggested the courts may just shift to:

Do not broadcast, transmit or make available the channel with the ID XYZ. The channel might not be deleted of course, but if it's no longer accessible that would be essentially the same.

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