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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

#321

Post by contravariant »

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…

Just in case anyone is wondering. The 'official' vote count for Thikhanovskaya is 588,622.

So regardless of how unbiased a sample it may be the Telegram poll shows over 2x as many people (or phone numbers to be exact), willing to vote for Thikhanovskaya (at the time of writing).

Use this information as you wish.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#322

Post by sam_lowry_ »

newsbinator wrote: post #245
democracy wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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.

The kill switch is used to wipe the phone when the pin is extorted from the protester. Enter a kill pin once and bye-bye.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#323

Post by snovv_crash »

kube-system wrote: post #296
nordsieck wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clearly, sample size alone doesn't have that much of a correctness guarantee, or according to your own statement, we'd be able to trust the official results. People are not complaining because the election is a biased sample of the population (not possible because by definition an election is open to all eligible voters). People are complaining because they believe the government is not truthfully reporting the act…

Yes, this is the point I am making. Sample size is but one of many factors that influence the reliability of a poll, and it is not the only consideration for good polling technique. A large sample does not mitigate those factors. If there is an issue with the underlying polling technique, making the sample larger does not guarantee more correctness. You simply end up with a larger set of bad data.

So what it it wasn't random, but captured 90% of the population?

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#324

Post by _dark_matter_ »

StreamBright wrote: post #313
huhtenberg wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2.3M voted in a poll, 59% from Belorussian phone numbers. That's 1.36 M or 17% of the eligible voter pool. 51% of these are for the secondary candidate. This doesn't reconcile with the official numbers regardless of how you massage them.

Same story when people predicted Hillary’s chances 99.9% based of Twitter polls. Your sample selection gives misleading predictions too easily.

That is not what the OP is saying. They are indicating _not_ that the oppo party would win, but that the party in power is clearly lying about the results. If they are lying, then that calls for a new election.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#325

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

newscracker wrote: post #271
godelski wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been frustrated with Signal on this. I pitched that it is a good idea because of a scenario: > You're protesting with people. Cops pick them up, but not you. You can delete their messages and it is likely that you are able to do so before the police can clone your phone or copy the messages (screenshot, whatever). I got a few strange responses back: - Deleting messages doesn't mean they can't be saved (yeah...…

> I think they are not in touch with the needs of people. Sadly, this has been true of Signal for a long time. Signal marches only to its own beat, and is quite slow to address real needs of most people.

I don't know why you're getting down-voted. It's an accurate statement that many loyal Signal users can attest to. Signal has been my primary messaging app for years now, but that's my main issue with them outside of group MMS issues still being problematic all these years. Their slow response or lack of care was especially apparent after the huge outcry over constant nag notifications for verifying PIN, setting a profile name, and asking contacts to join Signal. It's like they don't understand how badly they need better adoption for Signal to be effective. If 90% or greater of my contacts don't use Signal, then what good is that? They need to start listening to their users better.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#326

Post by hvis »

BTCOG wrote: post #207
_-david-_ wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know how many people who voted in the Telegram poll actually voted. Maybe only a quarter of the people in the Telegram poll actually voted. Its possible that some of the people in the Telegram poll are not eligible to vote (due to age or whatever). There could be other issues like people changing who they voted for in the election after previously voting in Telegram.

Well, maybe that's simple enough to explain. Maybe scared citizens don't want to go and publicly vote for fear they're going to get the shit kicked out of them?

There is no need to invent scared citizens when corrupt election officials suffice.

From what I've seen of reporting in Belarus, nobody watched over the shoulder as people filled in their ballots. It's still a secret who any specific individual voted for (unless they choose to tell you).

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#327

Post by kube-system »

snovv_crash wrote: post #323
kube-system wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is the point I am making. Sample size is but one of many factors that influence the reliability of a poll, and it is not the only consideration for good polling technique. A large sample does not mitigate those factors. If there is an issue with the underlying polling technique, making the sample larger does not guarantee more correctness. You simply end up with a larger set of bad data.

So what it it wasn't random, but captured 90% of the population?

Where are you seeing 90%?

The poll itself says 59% of the 2.3m respondents were people who voted in the election.

That's 1.4m people, which is 15% of their population and 21% of their eligible voting population.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#328

Post by vbezhenar »

thereare5lights wrote: post #294
Alupis wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we have here is a Sample, and in statistics (of which Polling is a discipline) you require a Randomized Sample of the Population before you can draw any meaningful conclusions. Telegram users are not going to pass any "Randomness" scrutiny. For all we know, Telegram User A asks Telegram User B to take the poll, etc. That's not random, and can introduce all sorts of statistical bias.

What does that have to do with the fact that the number of telegram users that voted for the opposition candidate exceeds the official number of voters that voted for the opposition candidate?

Phone number is not an unique identifier. There are plenty of people who use multiple phone numbers.

While I don't believe in Belarus official results, that Telegram evidence is not a real evidence. It's just a hint.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#329

Post by severino »

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…

This is great, maybe we can use Telegram for the actual election, because if we're absolutely sure that this poll is clean and we use it to ask for a new election, why don't we just take the results officially? If we don't, well, maybe we should make no assumptions about the results either.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#330

Post by sneak »

newscracker wrote: post #264

It's not surprising that every time Telegram pops up here, many comments miss the fact that Telegram has a great UX, a great feature set and also provides the kind of privacy protestors value, i.e., not having their phone numbers flashed to every random stranger in groups or to random channel owners whose channels you've subscribed to. With Telegram you cannot even do a phone number enumeration attack (this can be ch…

I only see praise for Telegram, which is confusing, because it is unsafe snake oil.

Don’t use Telegram.

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