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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

#501

Post by catears »

Krasnol wrote: post #352
BTCOG wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not going to get them, and the people saying otherwise don't use Telegram, and/or do not know what they are arguing over;pedantry. Telegram works well. Anyone can start a private chat encrypted end-to-end, those messages only stay on the device, and you can set them to auto-delete from BOTH user devices in 3 seconds, 5, 10, 30 second, 1min, 1 hour, 1 day. Nobody at all is going to get those messages. Go ahea…

> Anyone can start a private chat encrypted end-to-end, those messages only stay on the device, and you can set them to auto-delete from BOTH user devices in 3 seconds, 5, 10, 30 second, 1min, 1 hour, 1 day. Sure they can encrypt E2E but they don't. Most chats on Telegram are unencrypted. Huge channels like the one mentioned above are full of agents and nothing prevents them from taking screenshots. Don't spread fals…

I recently found this out. You need to specifically create a "secret chat" in order for telegram to actually use E2E. I originally chose Telegram because I wanted a messaging app that respects my privacy and E2E by default is pretty obvious in that case.

Maybe I'm stupid for not realizing or looking it up before chosing Telegram. Luckily there are a lot of other apps out there in the same space that do this better. Have switched to Signal now and really like it! Privacy should never be an opt-in feature like in Telegram!

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#502

Post by read_if_gay_ »

maqp wrote: post #478
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they “magically” updated and improved tons of stuff in the last four years. So I think it’s not unreasonable to consider whether their encryption improved too. But yes, not having encryption on by default speaks poorly of them. OTOH it’s not concrete proof that the encryption still sucks as of now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the E2EE encryption itself is flawed. I'm saying it's not being used at all by default. And I'm saying it's not possible to use it for groups or desktop clients. That's _the_ travesty, and the proof that this is the state of things is so obvious people don't realize how serious it is. And my concern is that will lead to a tragedy.

Yeah, it’s true that not having E2EE makes Telegram a bad choice for the purposes of the protesters. Convenience and inertia wins out though. And when you have groups of hundreds of thousands of people, there aren’t too many choices in the first place.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#503

Post by ric2b »

selectodude wrote: post #500
ric2b wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share some examples of large infringements on freedom of speech that happened in well developed European countries? Given the examples of police brutality related to protests that I've seen in the US just this year I doubt you'll be able to provide any examples that are more worrying than that.

The UK’s insane libel laws are a good example.

Do you have any specific examples that show how insane they are? Because the US also has libel laws.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#504

Post by Pyramus »

bennysonething wrote: post #481
atoav wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably from the US, they didn't sign the human rights treaty and are a bit.. underdeveloped at that front.

On the human rights front? Compared to most of the rest of the world they are extremely developed. At least free speech is protected which is more than can be said for most common of Europe now.

You will be hard pressed to find an index that aims to measure Human Rights where the US scores better than the main European countries such as Germany, UK, France, Italy, Netherlands etc.

Press Freedom Index [1]: Nope Human Rights Scores & Human Rights Violations [2]: Nope and nope

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index [2] https://ourworldindata.org/human-rights

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#505

Post by tw04 »

lqdc13 wrote: post #301
marcosdumay wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biases are irrelevant. If you look a the numbers, there are more people saying they voted for the opposition on the Telegram pool than votes on the official pool. About 5 times as many.

What about the people under 18 who I assume could take the poll and also people who didn't go to vote but took a few seconds to take the poll on Telegram? Also what about all the babushkas who most likely voted for Lukashenko but don't have a smartphone? This is not to say that more people didn't vote for the opposition than the official numbers state. But Lukashenko still could have won.

We'll say Belarus has 1m people that are old enough to both have a smart phone and be under the legal voting age (and that's being extremely gracious). Unless you're saying literally EVERY ONE OF THEM voted in this poll AND voted for the opposition, there are STILL more people of voting age in the telegram poll who voted for the opposition than "officially" voted for the opposition. The numbers are nearly impossible to believe unless Telegram is intentionally fudging the numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Belarus

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#506

Post by longtom »

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…

Telegram has a weird contact syncing default option. I had two accounts with separate phone numbers, but it would nonetheless advertise newly joined Telegram users associated with the respective other account. I think people were also able to view the profile pics of both accounts(?).

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#507

Post by avodonosov »

hippich wrote: post #497
avodonosov wrote: post #345

I'm not sure how crucial it is. The main news portal tut.by is also fueling protests.

Tut.by was down during 9-10 events, while telegram appeared to work with some kind of VPN workaround (Belarusian, but living in the USA)

In Beltelecom network when using Opera browser VPN I read tut.by. In A1 network Opera VPN didn't help.

Actually, availability at 9-10 does not really matter, people were already intended to protest by that time.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#508

Post by kube-system »

tripzilch wrote: post #458
kube-system wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram? 5% of the world uses Telegram. And I bet the 50+ age demographic is heavily underrepresented in that subset. Significant sample bias shows up in US polling using mediums that are exponentially more widespread. Nonetheless, I don't doubt the validity of these particular results, because I think we have enough corroborating evidence. We don't have to justify the rigorousness of a Telegram poll to come to that…

People in different parts of the world differ HUGELY in what instant-messaging communications platform they use. For instance people in the US still use text-messaging to a significant percentage. That's hard for me to believe as well. It's no use looking at Telegram's world usage, that's for sure.

Maybe Telegram is popular in Belarus, but there is one thing that is true all over the world: rates of technology literacy and access is lower for the old/poor/rural.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#509

Post by Marsymars »

stilisstuk wrote: post #436
Marsymars wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, the lack of bidirectional deletion is one of the reasons I prefer Signal. Nobody other than me should have the ability to delete data on my device.

There are two parties in a conversation. Both 'own' the conversation. Both have a 'veto' right.

I disagree. I see my phone as an extension of my brain. If I have an in-person conversation, the other party can't force me to forget the conversation, and they shouldn't have that ability for my phone either.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#510

Post by Robin_Message »

ric2b wrote: post #503
selectodude wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK’s insane libel laws are a good example.

Do you have any specific examples that show how insane they are? Because the US also has libel laws.

Simon Singh was successfully sued by the British Chiropractic association for pointing out they are quacks. (Edit to add: I just checked and he appealed a point of law successfully and then they withdrew — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Chiropractic_Associati... — but as I understand it such a case would be laughed out of a US court.)

Although I'd agree with the general point that whilst America has good theoretically human rights, the EU is better at actual rights (and in particular, rights against corporations).

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