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Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

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Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#551
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe there are any western nations that want non-locally-backdoored messaging of any sort But that's what exactly they want no? EU is literally implementing a regulation that will allow to "circumvent end-to-end encryption to address child sexual abuse material". I believe it failed to pass recently, but they will try again - and nothing stops countries to implement it independently. I think France is th…

To be clear, the legislation in France and in the EU that is most likely behind this arrest is that companies have to at least try to do some moderation. There is an understanding that not everything can be moderated (obviously, the entire Internet would be banned otherwise) but there has to be a genuine attempt. Which every company does more or less. The fact that Telegram doesn't reach this extremely low, very low…

Telegram is not a behemoth like Facebook so doesn't have their resources to moderate everything. Even Facebook isn't particularly good at it. They mostly rely on software which often produces false positives.

This arrest is completely preposterous and is just an attempt to get Durov to play ball with France's privacy destroying authorities.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there? By your logic, the owners of every ISP that provides a pathway for those criminal bits also should be in jail. Every single organization in that pathway would be liable from the registrars to the developers of web libraries or other app services. The governments themselves would be liable in many cases where the government has nationalized internet services. There is a principle in the free world that…

> Why stop there? Because we want to, and we can. I don't get how HN consistently fails to understand the actual social and political process by which regulations are made. I constantly see this argument which effectively boils down to "if you ban a thing, you will also need to ban everything else, which is absurd, so you shouldn't ban anything". But in real life we can choose what we ban. Everything is a trade-off;…

> If you get caught driving a getaway car for an armed robber, you are going to jail.

Bad analogy.

Better one is that your a taxi driver and someone who committed a crime hops into your car for a ride, then you’re found guilty by association.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah! Life would be great if the EU's problems started with von der Leyen

Where did it start out of curiosity?

Some say it began as a CIA project.

> Declassified American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement.

> The documents confirm suspicions voiced at the time that America was working aggressively behind the scenes to push Britain into a European state. One memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA.

> The documents were found by Joshua Paul, a researcher at Georgetown University in Washington. They include files released by the US National Archives. Washington's main tool for shaping the European agenda was the American Committee for a United Europe, created in 1948. The chairman was Donovan, ostensibly a private lawyer by then.

> The vice-chairman was Allen Dulles, the CIA director in the Fifties. The board included Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA's first director, and a roster of ex-OSS figures and officials who moved in and out of the CIA. The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organisation in the post-war years. In 1958, for example, it provided 53.5 per cent of the movement's funds.

https://www.quora.com/Was-the-European-Union-a-CIA-project

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#554
post #326
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that every social media/forum/messaging app should be banned then and every CEO in jail. Bad actors will use anything they can.

The Telegram fanatics for some reason are unwilling to hear it but we'll say it again: the reason why we still have an Internet in 2024 is that all those services at least attempt some form of moderation. With more or less success, sure, but they can at least say there is an attempt and they do take down stuff. Durov pretty much brags about not doing the bare minimum. It's that simple.

The internet of 2024 is much different than the internet of the 20th century.

It’s become centralized and controlled by the hands of the few.

This is not an improvement.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Telegram has much less E2EE than Signal or Whatsapp. It's not on by default, works only between 2 devices, they both have to be online at the same time and you can't access anything from the web. And group chats don't support it at all. Private chats are not end to end encrypted by default and it's actually quite clumsy to encrypt them so almost nobody uses it. It's really weird that Telegram is singled out li…

I can't tell if it's just uninformed grassroots mistrust of big tech, or the result of astroturf PsyOps to get more people to use the app with weaker encryption.

Encryption is really not the main issue here. I think nerds may not fully grasp Telegram's security model: it's essentially stateless, not tied to any particular country. Its infrastructure is distributed across various jurisdictions, with no official representation in many countries—no subsidiaries, nothing.

As a result, it doesn't respond to authorities because it doesn't have to. However, this approach is unsustainable and unacceptable for many governments, both in the East and the West. That's why he's being accused in France: he is not "cooperating with law enforcement".

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#556
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion you are thinking about is neither dead nor flagged. Overly active discussions get downranked automatically: „ Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action. “, see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

so. why not this one?

General understanding is that the flamewar detector is triggered when posts exceed 20 comments and total comments exceeds votes:

https://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-reall...>

It's not perfect, but it really does often correctly identify flamewars. If you feel a post has incorrectly triggered the flamewar detector, email mods at hn@ycombinator.com.

As I write, this thread doesn't trigger the criteria.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I would love for LinkedIn to be banned. I just play along there because it's the only option if you want to get a job. But the people repeating sickening corporate PR and marketing crap there making me nauseous. It's 100x more fake than Facebook. I really hate it. If it'd be banned I could do without it because nobody would have it.

So a website you don't like you would ban for everybody else as well just because you decided that it is merely marketing crap there making you nauseous. So you then conclude it should be banned for everyone else? How do you think the world would look if everybody had the power to ban things with similar reasons? We'd have nothing left in the world. Scary.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#558
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe there are any western nations that want non-locally-backdoored messaging of any sort But that's what exactly they want no? EU is literally implementing a regulation that will allow to "circumvent end-to-end encryption to address child sexual abuse material". I believe it failed to pass recently, but they will try again - and nothing stops countries to implement it independently. I think France is th…

You might be surprised to learn who's doing the pushing: https://www.wired.com/story/europes-moral-crusader-lays-down... https://www.statewatch.org/news/2024/july/police-should-have...

Durov 2024 interview, https://www.happyscribe.com/public/the-tucker-carlson-podcas... [text] & https://tuckercarlson.com/the-tucker-carlson-interview-pavel... [video]

> Telegram has been used by protesters in places like Hong Kong, Belarus, Kazakhstan, even in Barcelona back in the day. It's been a tool for the opposition to a large extent. But it doesn't really matter whether it's opposition or the ruling party that is using Telegram. For us, we apply the rules equally to all sides. We don't become prejudiced in this way.

> It's not that we are rooting for the opposition or we are rooting for the ruling party. It's not that we don't care, but we think it's important to have this platform that is neutral to all voices because we believe that the competition of different ideas can result in progress and a better world for everyone.. You don't want to be geopolitically aligned. You don't want to select the winners in any of these political fights.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#559
post #435

https://x.com/christogrozev/status/1827450631462048023 > I wonder what caught up with him first: the undisturbed sale of hard drugs vIa telegram, or the undisturbed recruitment of freelancers for GRU's terrorist attacks across Europe. Seems there could be some truth to the accusations.

>christogrozev

Well, if this guy starts damage controlling, this is definitely a CIA operation

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#560

the EU is becoming a parody >we've got to save democracy by restricting free speech and enforcing laws and regulations created by unelected officials

[flagged]

Free speech is not something they value. Individual rights aren’t valued.

Nonsense. Of course Europeans value those things, but they're also mindful of the fact that such freedoms can be abused, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

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