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Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

netzpolitik.org

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Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#81

Post by kache_ »

delecti wrote: post #55
thgaFa wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's pretty "no true Scottsman". Some of the Ottawa protesters are waving swastika flags. If it walks like a duck and waves duck flags. Sources citing the presence of swastika flags, (linking multiple because a couple are paywalled): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/canada/ottawa-truck... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/thousands-protest-covid... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ottawa-covid-trucker-…

The properties of a member of a set is not indicative of the entire set. Having ideological sacred cows is convenient for people who wish to discredit a section of the population, one that is underrepresented. You just identify one violator, and you can use the emotional reaction it invokes to carry forward that designation to the whole "problematic" group.

I went out yesterday night and met many of the protestors; I was in town. They're just rural workers who are largely disenfranchised. I'm ethnic, and I was welcomed warmly. Maybe don't rely too much on platitudes built on political intent as a canonical source of information.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#82

Post by YEwSdObPQT »

colechristensen wrote: post #19
jevoten wrote: post #9

Avoid censorship with this one weird trick: Print the information in a book, and put it in a library, or even on a school curriculum, if you can. If anyone tries to remove the book, then we are back to the dark ages of book banning or even burning. You know who else burned books, right? On the other hand, if the book is prevented from being published or stocked in the first place, if school or public libraries simply…

Germany bans things like Holocaust denial and certain things about far right political parties. It’s not the American way but I’m quite ok with Germany doing this.

> It’s not the American way but I’m quite ok with Germany doing this.

Why? Germany has literally criminalised thinking the wrong things and denies people to associate freely based on the things that they happen to think.

It doesn't stop those people thinking those things and it doesn't stop people from associating with each other.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#83

Post by mschuster91 »

martin_a wrote: post #42
kmeisthax wrote: post #23

Can't read German, but I'm going to assume the channels in question are full of neo-Nazis. If that's the case then this isn't anything particularly new; Germany's constitution explicitly denies freedom of speech to Nazis. I don't find this particularly objectionable on it's own; Nazis and neo-Nazis never believed in free speech to begin with. However, we should still remain wary of false positives or scope creep beyo…

It's an unholy mixture. It started with critique against the restrictions due to Covid 19, but it escalated from that point on. Comparison of unvaccinated people and jews under the Nazi regime are what's happening in some of those Telegram channels these days and that's against german law, yes.

Many of the Telegram channels of the covid-deniers actually escalated to open calls for murder, not just antisemitic comparisons (which are bad enough on themselves).

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#84

Post by EGreg »

sva_ wrote: post #69
EGreg wrote: post #17

This is what happens when you have a centralized software. Germany can just get the app removed from app stores: https://voi.id/en/technology/114013/senior-german-official-a... And this is true of other centralized software: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/18/the-freest-platform-...

Hmm, but if your app was decentralized, they could still remove it from the app stores? Which would effectively prevent 95% of people from using it, probably.

No, decentralized distribution is achieved for example when you have widgets hosted on many sites, which all have https so you're not sure what they're hosting for private visitors unless you create an account.

It's hard to ban all those sites. Telegram actually has such widgets, but they prefer to rely on everyone downloading their main app. Moxie also complains that decentralized stuff is slow to change.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#85

Post by pessimizer »

skrause wrote: post #70
pessimizer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably makes sense. I'm not super familiar with Telegram, but to know a channel is doing stuff that's against German law probably means that someone with access to the channel reported it to authorities. Germany is also one of those countries that blanket bans particular groups/parties in general, which the US didn't really do until after 9/11. Banning a group chat isn't much different.

> Germany is also one of those countries that blanket bans particular groups/parties in general You make it sound like Germany is constantly banning political parties. There have been exactly two bans of political parties in the post-war history of Germany: A nazi party in 1952 and a communist party in 1956. Also don't forget who occupied Germany in this decade and made a lot of its decisions.

But there are many banned named groups. Germany is not unique in this. That's a thing foreign to the US that Americans may not understand, which is why I mentioned it. I can start a group called the "Destroy The Government Now Neo-Nazis" in the US with no fear that it will ever be banned.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#86

Post by jeroenhd »

Aeolun wrote: post #27
pepesza wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram does not have any meaningful e2e encryption (apart from 1-1 on-demand stuff nobody uses). So yes, everything is visible to Telegram.

I don’t quite understand what the point of telegram is then? Is the only benefit it isn’t owned by Facebook?

> I don’t quite understand what the point of telegram is then?

It's UX is far superior to any cross-platform competitor. On top of that, its client is open source and the servers have easy and free bot APIs. It also has channels, which broadcast your messages to followers and many secure competitors don't have such functionality.

It's not encrypted, but as it turns out most people don't really care about that in practice. If they would, texting wouldn't be popular in places like the USA. That's probably why people go to Telegram instead of Signal, ease of use is more important than privacy for most, especially in group chats that are generally about what's for dinner.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#87

Post by Spivak »

pessimizer wrote: post #59
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to do business in a country you usually have to follow the laws of the country. If you are not following these laws and you get booted out of their respective markets you can't cry censorship it's that easy.

You can definitely cry censorship. Having a government process of censorship doesn't mean you can insist it's not censorship. Plenty of government groups responsible for censoring have the word "censor" in the name.

Yes but you cry censorship to the German government, not to Telegram.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#88

Post by theshrike79 »

Aeolun wrote: post #27
pepesza wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram does not have any meaningful e2e encryption (apart from 1-1 on-demand stuff nobody uses). So yes, everything is visible to Telegram.

I don’t quite understand what the point of telegram is then? Is the only benefit it isn’t owned by Facebook?

Having E2EE in a large Telegram channel would be like having an E2EE Facebook group, subreddit or even a web forum.

If something leaks, it's through users, not through someone listening in or MITMing the communication.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#89

Post by frollo »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #18
tazjin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram has ads as of a few months ago, because Durov can't personally fund it anymore at its current size. https://promote.telegram.org/

I haven't seen a single ad at all for some reason in the multiple groups I am in.

At the moment, ads are only displayed in public channels with at least 1.000 users, so they are still pretty rare to come by (like, I use Telegram regularly and only see them every other day). Plus, I've heard that some clients aren't supporting them yet (even if Telegram's stance is that every client should), so maybe you'll never see them.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#90

Post by Longhanks »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #10

Why do the German people allow their government to do this kind of stuff? Do they want it?

Because Germany is a representative democracy where you cannot change the minds of a few elected leaders for at least 3 more years, once elected.

Also, Germans aren't really the kind of people to protest on the streets. They'd much rather complain and complain and maybe change the position of their cross on the next ballot to a party just a small tip further left or right, only to then start complaining that nothing ever really changes and readjust their cross in the opposite direction in the following election. This cycle repeats since about 70 years.

So yes, if the Germans really did not want this kind of stuff, they would have to drastically change their votes. And bear in mind that the current government, which is the most dramatic change (to the left) in the last 16 years since the Merkel era, has already lost the goodwill according to surveys, with people already again favoring the Merkel party (e. g. said readjustment).

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