Blocking a large messaging platform because a minority of people are using it for piracy, of all things, seems extremely disproportionate
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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And it is pointless too as there are countless other messaging apps that can be used and countless others ways that can be created to circumvent. Law makers clearly do not get tech.
The other messaging apps offering better privacy on top of that, making it harder to control.
I mean Telegram has been blocked in Russia before and it didn't stop their operations for too long. At best now some engineer at telegram has one more ticket and things will be back to normal.
and it didn’t stop their operations for too long
You had to change proxies regularly, so it did. With some ISPs, at least.
I think it wasn't for really blocking it, just to test whether they can block it if they need it, during some big events.
Honestly, Telegram sucks. Use Signal for private communications and Matrix for groups/communities.
Telegram is great for nothing related to privacy.
It's not great if security is your main goal for organizing, but it has a better user experience than most chat apps. Especially if cross platform chatting is important to you.
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Matrix is good for personal communications too The us companies made you to use phone numbers for chatting Id's are convenient
I mean, sure, you can use Matrix for personal chats. It's perfectly secure, but it's not as easy to use as Signal. For example, if I told my grandma to install Element and send me her Matrix ID, she would be really confused. Signal is very easy to use, and the user experience is basically the same as on mainstream platforms like WhatsApp. I also don't think that the phone number requirement is a US thing, as Telegram also has it. Signal only requires phone numbers to prevent spam, but they recently introduced usernames, so you don't have to give people your phone number in order for them to message you.
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Does Telegram have anything that torrents and usenet don't?
It indeed empowers common people by distributing full seasons of series all in one place in a somewhat user friendly way without "10 chicks in 10mt" popups.
A bunch of my friends, who don't even know how to install an adblocker, have a very rich catalog of things there.
Also, it is more difficult for a telegram channel to be banned than a website.
It's normie-accessible
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Good luck ban it, Telegram runs everywhere without playstore and with proxy.
Truly Spain without the S
My buddy in Spain says the block it pretty easier to get around at least.
You know Telegram is secure when every government in the world is trying to ban it.
Just use Signal if you want an easy, relatively privacy friendly and secure messenger.
Telegram hands over data to goverments, is infested with spammers and scammers and its encryption is not end to end for group chat which lets Telegram access those chats.
Edit: Telegram is great for lots of things like big groups, communities, piracy, drugs etc but its just not the place where you should expect secure communication.
I'm not using Signal as long as Signal Foundation is based in the US. Also Signal is not on FDroid, so I can't use it anyway.
I installed Signal via Obtanium. Just use this URL when searching/adding the app
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This might not be relevant because you have other reasons not to use Signal, but you can get android signal directly from their website and via aurora store (on fdroid)
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But RusSSian/UAE-based Telegram is fine? 😂
Also, it really doesn't matter where Signal is based, as long as it's client code is open source and it uses E2EE by default. Telegram doesn't encrypt chats by default, and even if you enable 'secret chats' it uses a pretty weak encryption protocol.
Btw the official version of Telegram isn't available on F-Droid either, only a fork called Telegram-FOSS. You can get the exact same thing for Signal from a 3rd-party repo: https://www.twinhelix.com/apps/signal-foss/, or use Molly.
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Signal releases their own self-updating apk on their site, and this release doesn't use Google services for push notifications. There are legitimate reasons why publishers sometimes avoid f-droid.
Also there's Molly, which is a signal fork that allows database encryption; or Session, which doesn't require a phone number for account registration and is decentralized. Both of these forks have repos that you can add to f-droid.
I do understand the hesitance to use a platform that has its infrastructure in the US, but I will say that international compliance with the US is a problem even if the infrastructure is located elsewhere. Session is a really promising option, since it's decentralized, and I'd love to see more people using it.
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The CEO is a Russian, the company is based out of Dubai, and messages aren't encrypted by default. In fact, only private messages can be encrypted, group messages cannot. Telegram is not a trustworthy platform and a champion for user privacy like most people think, Signal is what you're looking for.
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Spain? Really? I thought they had a pretty left government?
This is one of the rare things where the Spanish left and right agree, for different reasons.
Simplifying a lot:
- The left generally supports culture, actors, theatre, writers, Spanish made movies. They see piracy as a threat to the earnings of those people.
- The right has historically cut any sorts of subsidies to the "culture creators", but they see piracy as a threat to the publishing, TV (...) industries.
They both support SGAE, which translates cleanly to the General Society of Authors and Editors, who protects their interests by charging fees to everyone who dares look at copyrighted work.
- You own a bar and you play TV, Radio, or Spotify? You have to pay SGAE.
- You buy a computer, part of the money goes to SGAE.
- You buy a blank CD, DVD, Hard Drive, you pay SGAE (because they know you will put copyrighted material there, and if you don't, well, fuck you)
It's a fucked up system and I don't know if things have changed in the past few years as I don't live in Spain anymore. But it honestly feels like a prosecution of the population who is so evil and trying to destroy Spanish Culture.
Tbh switzerland has a similar system to the SGAE, where there is a "hidden tax" on all devices that you can load with data. And in turn the downloading of media (with the exclusion of computerprograms and games) is legal. Only the upload of copyrighted material is forbidden.
Not a bad system imo, the tax is so small that you dont really notice it so its a pretty consumer-friendly and piracy-friendly solution. Altho I assume the swiss government gets away with it because it would be too expensive to lobby/legal for a copyrightsholder-favoured system compared with the small amount of people (let alone pirate) who live here.
That's different, we also have a "canon digital" which means you pay an extra tax on all copying and storing devices. But that has nothing to do with the SGAE, which is a corrupt organization that funnels money to their artist list, instead of giving it to the actual artists that are being played.
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They do, but this is coming from a right-dominated tribunal known to be extremely conservative and reactionary in nature.
You dont have to boil down everything to "left vs right" especially not in Europe. Because if you do, blocking a chat app is by definition a leftist thing to do because of the government interference.
Please keep the American team vs team culture away from Europe.
What is the relationship between the government ideology and the court system? Both are independent from each other.
Lol.
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