[HN Gopher] Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus pro...
___________________________________________________________________
Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests
Author : gamblor956
Score : 514 points
Date : 2020-08-21 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| The one thing I did not see in article or comments is that
| Telegram will have a bigger target on its back. Governments are
| not fond of communication channels they are unable to control.
| throwawaynow716 wrote:
| Relatively long time Signal user (2+ years) from Belarus. Was in
| the city when internet blackout arrived.
|
| I don't want to waste your time on how i moved 30 people to
| Signal and preached about security and signal being the best pick
| on the market. Hell, even my family is on Signal.
|
| Now, let me tell you this. The `anti censorship switch` did not
| work during the internet hiccup. In a moment all that fancy stuff
| just ended up being.... useless.
|
| So check this out, i have family members living outside Belarus,
| they have Signal installed. But i am not able to message quite
| blatantly simple phrase "i am all right!".
|
| Next thing happened i fired up Telegram, hooked up SOCKS5 proxy
| and was capable to reach out my family members and asked friends
| to go on Twitter and get @signalapp's attention same evening
| outage started. Zero reaction.
|
| Signal was and is dead silent. This makes me think that, come on,
| people Signal caters to the USA users only. They won't care for
| others. Moxxie denouncing american police for their brutality,
| you've been to Chernobyl, you know what Eastern bloc looks like.
| Guys over here are three times more fierce than yours. But your
| company somehow makes a statement to accommodate local
| protesters, now what have you done to aid anything outside of
| cozy California?
|
| Lesson i've learned, that on the verge of something Belarus
| experienced last week, Signal has zero value.
|
| I even own the debug logs to send 'em so they will figure why the
| censorship circumvention wasn't working, but i'm drop dead sure i
| won't hear from them. Not being a hothead to get rid of Signal
| straight away but definitely i have to tell you my trust in
| Telegram's resilience grown
| aborsy wrote:
| Why not Signal? It's the way to go as far as messaging apps are
| concerned.
| casept wrote:
| Because the belarussian government doesn't have enough power
| over Telegram to force them to disclose messages, meaning that
| transport encryption is absolutely good enough for the
| protester's threat model.
| alextheparrot wrote:
| They probably have higher priority concerns than bike shedding
| messaging apps.
| eitland wrote:
| Signal seems to be more secure. I prefer it.
|
| Telegram is really really well made ux wise though, scales
| effortlessly and is in use anyway for everything else in
| certain groups so it is easy to reach for.
| Arubis wrote:
| My recollection (can someone verify?) is that Telegram
| continues to function in limited-connectivity environments,
| making it a good fit for situations where a state actor is
| limiting network access.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| I can confirm ;-)
| ourcat wrote:
| Don't they both require handing over a mobile phone number to
| use them? This is what has always confused me (and turned me
| off) about these privacy-focussed messaging apps.
| zzz61831 wrote:
| Sort of, there is pseudoanonimity layer in Telegram that
| doesn't show your phone number to others, so if you can be
| reasonably sure that Telegram isn't going to give you up to
| the police of your country - your privacy can be preserved.
| While Signal literally identifies contacts via phone numbers
| and there is no mass communication features anyway, so it's
| both less private and less useful for such purposes.
| kome wrote:
| > Signal literally identifies contacts via phone numbers
|
| that's so stupid.
|
| why people here keeps arguing that Signal crypto is safer
| when its architecture is SO unsafe?
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Because they are NSA spooks?
| samat wrote:
| Their crypto is state of the art, but their ops sec
| threat model does not include "we'll torture you or go to
| your mobile operator and their would cooperate fully". So
| signal is good for USA, not so good for 3rd world
| countries. This people making decisions in Signal live in
| a different world then most of the people who need secure
| comms. Well telegram have us covered. Sadly, if you stop
| trusting Durov - you are screwed. Signal is much better
| in that regard.
| eatitraw wrote:
| Telegram is more of a social media platform than a messenger.
| It has public 'channels' - read-only blogs without likes and
| comments. The biggest Belarusian channel 'Nexta' has 2M+
| subscribers.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Because it's down along with the rest of the internet. Because
| connection resilience is more important than encryption.
| zanny wrote:
| Matrix has comprehensive encryption now _and_ is decentralized.
| robertfw wrote:
| Matrix really does seem like the ideal future platform to
| build on, I've started poking around it and really like what
| I see. Does anyone with more experience want to chime in on
| what they've found using it?
| robjan wrote:
| I don't think matrix can scale to hundreds of thousands of
| users in one channel at the moment.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| @nexta_live, the main channel for Belarusian protesters
| has well over 2 mln subscribers.
| tryptophan wrote:
| It has the best protocol I'd say, but other than that
| everything else is worse.
|
| All the clients suck, features are missing/buggy, nobody is
| sure if it is supposed to be a discord/slack or whataspp
| replacement, giving a half-ass implementation of both, and
| confusing to users security stuff(asks random users about
| their keys).
|
| That being said, I still love the project and hope they
| sort out their UX problems.
| thekyle wrote:
| I really like the idea of Matrix, but in practice I don't
| have anyone to use it with. At least with Signal the on-
| boarding experience is super low friction, so I can just
| tell someone "message me on Signal" and they'll figure it
| out.
|
| Matrix on-boarding is more complicated and would probably
| require hand holding through which client and server to
| use.
| oehtXRwMkIs wrote:
| and federated, and way better for group chats, and actually
| cross-platform
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Because Signal is shit for anything other than 1-1
| communications. Group management is extremely cumbersome and
| large scale channels, while not impossible, require external
| assistance (with all the security implications).
|
| Signal is definitely more secure than Telegram, but the latter
| has a far better user interface, API, and social ecosystem,
| which gives rise to massive networks effects that are simply
| not available in Signal.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| There was also a very large Telegram channel where they were
| doxing riot police members that were participating in attacks on
| demonstrators. It was extremely efficient infowar since it was
| their home addresses, family photos, wife's cellphone number...
| RangerScience wrote:
| Wait seriously? Where can I find out more?
| myth_drannon wrote:
| https://t.me/terroristybelarusi
| RangerScience wrote:
| Neat. Can't read the language, but this reminds me of a
| scene near the end of Doctorow's "Walkaway".
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| This is the biggest, but there are also others.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| > authorities shut off the internet, leaving Belarusians with
| almost no access to independent online news outlets or social
| media and protesters seemingly without a leader
|
| How are they using Telegram without internet?
| kaonashi wrote:
| That and the CIA.
| diimdeep wrote:
| 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/telegrambelarus/9
|
| In Belarus there is only 7.8 million eligible voters.
|
| Poll shows that 1,184 million choose to vote for new president
| Tikhanovskaya.
|
| Only 85'000 votes for current president Lukashenko.
|
| While official results is 80% for current, 7% for new, with 40%
| participation.
|
| This is obviously mind blowing picture for citizens.
| aprdm wrote:
| Is it possible to consider that either Telegram has a vested
| interest on it or someone can easily obtain a telephone number
| in Belarus and hack the results?
| severino wrote:
| 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.
| contravariant wrote:
| 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.
| HPsquared wrote:
| To be fair though, Telegram users aren't exactly an unbiased
| sample.
| dalbasal wrote:
| > Telegram users aren't exactly an unbiased sample
|
| It's not quite a Telegram problem, voters in a protest poll
| are not an unbiased sample. This is why elections where one
| side denies the legitimacy of an election "invalid," in the
| "we all accept the results" sense.
|
| Call it it petition, protest or public declaration. In that
| regard,the numbers are meaningful.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| 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.
| d0mine wrote:
| Sample size is not everything "Literary Digest poll was
| also one of the largest and most expensive polls ever
| conducted, with a sample size of around 2.4 million people"
| The large size by itself does not guarantee correctness htt
| ps://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.h..
| .
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Sample size is not everything "Literary Digest poll was
| also one of the largest and most expensive polls ever
| conducted, with a sample size of around 2.4 million
| people" The large size by itself does not guarantee
| correctness https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/
| lecture/case1.h...
|
| But isn't that really only the case when you're trying to
| use statistical inference to _generalize_ from a sample?
| It seems like the right way to think about this poll is
| as a direct measurement of a floor of support for the
| challenger (others have said that is >2x the her
| official vote count), and the right statistical question
| is to ask is what's the probability that the official
| results are true given that floor.
| pfortuny wrote:
| When a sample is greater than the census, you've got a
| problem.
|
| With the census.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > The large size by itself does not guarantee correctness
|
| That's true for "reasonable" poll sizes. As your poll
| size increases past a certain point, it does begin to
| guarantee correctness.
|
| An election is a poll with the size of all eligible
| voters.
| Alupis wrote:
| 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.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| 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?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| 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.
| asutekku wrote:
| I very highly doubt around double the amount of
| "official" voters would have a second belarussian number.
| lrem wrote:
| What kind of a statistical bias would explain having 1
| million Belariusian phone numbers claiming having voted
| for a candidate, that officially received around 0.5
| million votes total?
| gbrown wrote:
| You're ignoring the finite population and the actual
| numbers involved.
| kube-system wrote:
| It is simultaneously possible for the results to have
| statistical issues while also being good enough to
| provide utility as evidence for drawing some conclusions.
| You can both be right.
| jariel wrote:
| "An election is a poll with the size of all eligible
| voters."
|
| Not really though.
|
| An election is ostensibly 'perfect sample of the
| electorate' (assuming everyone voted), which is what
| makes it 'good'.
|
| It's very easy to get a 'very large sample size' that is
| still 'very inaccurate'.
|
| In this case, we're talking about potential numbers
| larger than literal voters, which makes it interesting -
| but the sample size again is not the issues if we're
| looking at a 'poll'.
| dstick wrote:
| Yeah I think Telegram, like Whatsapp, is adopted broadly
| enough not to bias too heavily in one direction.
| Definitely not 90%, and especially not if that "bias"
| matches the word on the street.
| kube-system wrote:
| 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 same
| conclusion.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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.
| iagovar wrote:
| Exactly, this is impossible to reconcile. Either there
| has been vote fraud or this people didn't actually go to
| the poll station. Or people can vote more than once.
| lqdc13 wrote:
| 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.
| kube-system wrote:
| This is certainly damning data, but having a telephone in
| Belarus does not necessarily mean that person voted in
| the prior election. This is good evidence, but not a
| mathematical proof.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The people can lie to Telegram, Telegram can lie,
| somebody can attack the communications, somebody can
| attack the telephones, somebody can impersonate the
| numbers, all the Telegram voters can be from those 60%
| that didn't vote...
|
| There are many ways that could happen. But it's pretty
| good evidence to add to the context, and the pile of
| evidence was already quite big.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Especially if your poll is showing extremely lopsided
| results.
|
| If a poll shows 80% for candidate A, you'd only need to
| hit 62.5% of the population to guarantee that candidate A
| would hit 50% of the vote _even if the remaining 47.5%
| voted for other candidates_.
| kube-system wrote:
| > As your poll size increases past a certain point, it
| does begin to guarantee correctness.
|
| > An election is a poll with the size of all eligible
| voters.
|
| I think you're oversimplifying the situation. 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.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > 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 actual
| election results.
|
| Good polling technique cannot mitigate fraud.
| kube-system wrote:
| 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.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| So what it it wasn't random, but captured 90% of the
| population?
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| "Official" election results were giving Tsikhanoyskaya
| around half a million votes while over 1 million Telegram
| users with Belarusian phone numbers already said that
| they voted for her.
|
| Se here https://t.me/telegrambelarus/9
| StreamBright wrote:
| Same story when people predicted Hillary's chances 99.9%
| based of Twitter polls. Your sample selection gives
| misleading predictions too easily.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| 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.
| jariel wrote:
| It's good people have a way to communicate beyond the reach
| of the authorities ...
|
| ... but doesn't really matter how big the poll sample was
| if the sample was not representative - the results don't
| have a lot of meaning.
|
| And it's pretty fair to say it was not representative.
|
| In fact, you don't even need remotely that size of a sample
| if the sample is representative.
|
| Polling is not about sample size, it's about the quality of
| the sample.
| kolinko wrote:
| Even in the worst case scenario, where each and every
| opposition voter took part in the poll, and literally
| everyone else voted for Lukashenko, this still prpves
| that the true result was at least 17% for opposition,
| which is more than the official results claim.
| jariel wrote:
| Teenagers don't have phones?
|
| Did all the eligible voters who phone-polled actually
| vote?
|
| Did they poll the way they actually voted?
|
| Some people don't have two phones?
|
| Can we trust that telegram doesn't have a flaw in the
| means by which it is measured? (i.e. register again with
| the same SIM, or something like that?)
|
| It's nice that there is a phone number as validation, but
| this doesn't 'prove' anything.
|
| Edit: I should add, apparently people are registering
| photos of their votes, which don't jibe with the tally,
| which is probably a much better indication of problems
| with voting [1]
|
| [1] https://belarus2020.org/
| pixelbash wrote:
| I can't tell if you are arguing that the original vote
| was less likely to be skewed than this one, or just that
| this one doesn't pass the highest bar that could be set
| for it.
| jariel wrote:
| I'm arguing it's an 'online poll' and subject to all
| sorts of possible issues. It's probably a decent
| indication of what seems to be some otherwise obvious
| fraud at the polls, it's just not 'proof' of anything
| really.
| dtech wrote:
| With these numbers, there would need to be significant
| effort to fraud the Telegram poll. For no real benefit
| other than maybe propaganda.
|
| Whom exactly benefits from that? It would have to be a
| nation-state, and they weren't exactly doing much about
| the situation before the "election".
|
| What is more likely: that the existing dictator and his
| supporters made defrauded the election to keep power or
| that some unknown entity defrauded an Telegram poll for
| not much gain.
|
| Unless Telegram poll's system was completely broken, but
| you'd expect other large polls to already have revealed
| that.
| elsjaako wrote:
| According to the official numbers, of the 7.8 million
| eligible voters, 40% voted, and 7% of those voted for
| Tikhanovskaya. That's 218400 people.
|
| According to the telegram poll, 1.184 million people
| voted for Tikhanovskaya. That's over 5x as many as
| according to the official numbers.
|
| The sample size doesn't matter here, were talking
| absolute number. It seems pretty unlikely 5x more people
| (absolute number, not fraction) voted for her in a poll
| than in the real elections.
|
| (I have not checked the source for the numbers, I've just
| assumed the above poster used the right ones)
| throw38474 wrote:
| Do Belarusians have online voting?
|
| Voting online is low friction.
|
| Voting by mail is slightly harder.
|
| Taking time off to wait in line and vote in person is
| time consuming.
| jariel wrote:
| Your numbers don't match Wikipedia [1] which indicates
| that there was 85% turnout, Tikhanovskaya got 10% ~600K
| votes. But maybe I missed something.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Belarusian_preside
| ntial_e...
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| The turnout was high indeed. As for the rest of the
| Wikipedia article, it is woefully incorrect. I will add
| up-to-date information to the "Voice" section and I hope
| others will fix factual errors in the Death section and
| other parts of that article.
|
| Bear in mind that Wikipedia's policy is use "official"
| sources when in doubt. According to Wikipedia, Assange is
| a criminal. Snowden is a traitor.
| sulam wrote:
| Just keep in mind that the few non-governmental election
| monitors all had Lukashenko with less than 20% of the vote.
| This is not an isolated result.
| jetzzz wrote:
| Official election results give Tikhanovskaya 500k votes,
| Telegram poll - 1M votes, 2x more.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Ah I see, so there's no extrapolation involved, only the
| raw numbers.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| 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.
| BTCOG wrote:
| 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?
| hvis wrote:
| 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).
| troyvit wrote:
| Right, although the telegram results are still
| interesting enough to warrant a second look at the
| election from interested third parties (the media if that
| is free in Belarus, or the UN)
| safog wrote:
| It's a fair point, not sure why there are downvotes. I
| still think it's extremely likely that the official
| numbers are bogus but you can't really accept the
| Telegram numbers as truth either.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| "Official" figures have no ground in the reality. A
| crowdfunded campaign to check election results just
| produced a report, details are published in
| https://partizan-results.com/
|
| People behind this campaign are starting to reveal their
| names at last. I know personally one of them.
|
| My network says others are highly respectable as well.
| MrVitaliy wrote:
| There is no faith that the official polls use less bias data,
| or any data, really.
| phre4k wrote:
| There is no faith that the Telegram polls use less bias
| data, or any data, really.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Sounds like a great INFOOP opportunity by a foreign power to
| further sow discontent.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Wow. For context, there are less than 10M people total in
| Belarus, and ~16% of the population is under age 15. In order
| for the numbers to tally, the protests would necessarily have
| to be made up (almost) entirely of children.
|
| https://www.indexmundi.com/belarus/demographics_profile.html
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| why would that blow someone's mind? Obviously if you're on an
| "anti" communication channel with a revolutionary mindset of
| course the majority will be overwhelmingly high against the
| dictator. That's by definition what they are revolting against.
| notahacker wrote:
| Even allowing for the fact some Belarusians have multiple
| mobile phone numbers, as do some people who aren't eligible
| to vote for perfectly normal reasons, it's quite telling that
| somebody polled twice as many votes on a communication
| channel compared with the official 'count'.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| What about those who are underage? There's a surely a large
| internet-savy base with phone numbers who would otherwise
| be unable to vote.
| notahacker wrote:
| Underage people and foreigners are in the 'unable to vote
| for perfectly normal reasons' bracket. Extrapolating from
| census figures, you'd need pretty much every single
| person in the 13-17 age range to vote Tikhanovskaya to
| make up the disparity between Telegram and official
| tallies though. And if she got literally every teenager
| in the country to register a protest vote on a web app,
| there's a sneaking suspicion she might actually have got
| more than her 10% official tally with the adults too...
| damnyou wrote:
| Forget percentages, even the raw numbers show a mismatch
| between official and Telegram results.
| newscracker wrote:
| 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 changed in settings)
| by adding phone numbers to your contacts list to find out who's
| using it.
|
| And nope, Signal doesn't make the cut for the above reasons
| because it exposes your phone number to everyone else. WhatsApp
| is the same in this respect. Neither of them prevent enumeration
| attacks (they may slow that down a bit, but not sufficient enough
| to protect against state actors).
|
| Wire and Element (Matrix) are comparatively better than Telegram,
| Signal and WhatsApp because you don't need a phone number to sign
| up and they also have end to end encryption for all chats (with
| Element it's a bit more recent). Hopefully more people can soon
| ditch phone number based apps that cause them to be vulnerable
| because of that vector.
| postmodernbrute wrote:
| Exactly - Telegram can be used for public gatherings precisely
| because one can stay anonymous. It's more like Discord in that
| respect.
|
| Wire is a bit of a mess. Client is buggy, cross-platform usage
| is difficult. At least that's my memory of it.
| ffpip wrote:
| I love telegram. Great UI, feels natural to use it. And SO MANY
| features, it's hard to keep up.
|
| Unlimited storage helps too.
| smnscu wrote:
| Using Telegram is my guilty pleasure for sure. They just added
| video calling and it, like most of their other features, Just
| Works(tm).
|
| Just don't send your passwords or whatever to your Telegram
| buds and you should be alright. Funny enough, here in the UK
| Telegram is mostly associated with shady stuff like drug
| dealers.
| sneak wrote:
| I only see praise for Telegram, which is confusing, because it
| is unsafe snake oil.
|
| Don't use Telegram.
| asutekku wrote:
| It's no more unsafe as using whatsapp or some other similar
| service. To be fair, if most of my relatives would not use
| whatsapp, i would've turned 100% telegram already.
| throwaway12992 wrote:
| I find myself surprised that such a large percentage of people
| use Telegram in Belarus.
|
| One might wonder if perhaps some government who wanted nukes on
| Russia's border might expend some effort into discrediting an
| election of somebody who was blocking that objective.
|
| Telegram accounts can be made in an automated manner, for
| somebody sufficiently motivated.
|
| https://social.techjunkie.com/use-telegram-without-phone-num...
|
| https://www.voiplid.com/belarus-did-virtual-phone-number/
| danvayn wrote:
| That's a reasonable concern, but considering Belarus has had
| problems like these for a while, and given telegram's
| popularity, both as a messenger and as a tool to circumvent Big
| Brother, I'd say that the majority of those Belarusian accounts
| are legitimate.
| dirtnugget wrote:
| Still don't trust them. Loads of shady things, from them rolling
| their own encryption to the fact, that is not possible to encrypt
| group chats.
|
| IMHO red flags. However I still have not encountered a messaging
| app which does group chats with somewhat complete feature set in
| groups.
|
| Signal won't let you moderate groups for example. (No admin role
| where you can ban somebody or delete messages)
| nikivi wrote:
| Very curious how Telegram plans to monetize the app eventually
| given their crypto thing didn't work out.
| eitland wrote:
| Some of you might remember me as the guy who defends Telegram,
| and I still am: most of the claims I see here are less than
| well researched it seems.
|
| The thing you bring up here however is my main issue with
| Telegram: I want it to be sustainable line WhatsApp once was.
| WilTimSon wrote:
| Seeing how averse they are to putting any kinds of ads on the
| platform, I think they might find the middle ground by helping
| make ads in channels go through the official route. Basically,
| right now, some channels post "sponsored posts", which nets
| them some payment. By getting involved, they could probably
| help people not get ripped off, take a small cut of the fee,
| and make those sponsored posts integrated a bit better, maybe
| highlighted somehow. So no ads in the app, only in some
| channels, so that people can leave if they hate the ads.
| _ink_ wrote:
| I would make companies pay if they want to use these channels
| for promotions.
| johnisgood wrote:
| UI is neat.
| fretn wrote:
| And very responsive
| victords wrote:
| I honestly don't think they do.
|
| I really think that's just a personal project of a Russian
| billionaire that has enough free time and pretty much unlimited
| resources.
| mercacona wrote:
| Yeah, that's what their website claims. But it isn't.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Public estimates of his net worth are hard to believe.
|
| Not a billionaire, at most 2-3 hundred megabucks cash as
| his Russian assets are rendered effectively worthless, and
| he burned himself a lot trying himself in investments, real
| estate, and, in general, burning money on expensive things,
| including telegram, like no tomorrow.
|
| I am still very suspicious at how he managed to flout
| around Kremlin for so long.
| SXX wrote:
| > I am still very suspicious at how he managed to flout
| around Kremlin for so long.
|
| His first successful project (VK) was founded and gained
| popularity partially using money of really weird
| investors some of whom were related to Kremlin.
|
| Also keep in mind that Russia was just a kleptocracy
| until around 2008-2010 and only after 2012 when Putin
| decide to get back presidency everything started to go
| really sour. So it's not surprise they taken control of
| the company away from him shortly after.
| mercacona wrote:
| Why are the people is downvoting me? Did Durov create a
| non-profit or a foundation lately?
|
| Telegram it's currently a business and Durov keeps the
| control...
| nobodyshere wrote:
| Normally I'd ask you for some kind of proof, but I know you
| won't be able to output any of it.
| mercacona wrote:
| Proof? The ICO they did isn't enough? They act as a
| business, Durov keeps control, it did not create a
| foundation or a non-profit. What extra proof do you need?
| outime wrote:
| Compared to WhatsApp, they do have access to all messages from
| every person (except for the few people using secret chats) and
| group so I'd not be very surprised if they started to mine that
| data somehow if they really want the money.
| eitland wrote:
| Compared to WhatsApp that is owned by a massive megacorp that
| bought it for over $10bn and that has already tried to start
| mining metadata from it I would say Telegram still has its
| advantages.
|
| (FWIW: I prefer Signal.)
| outime wrote:
| How does attacking Facebook dismiss the fact that Telegram
| has your raw conversations and can monetize them?
| eitland wrote:
| It is only "attacking Facebook" as much as it is also
| just "stating again what is already publicly known about
| Facebook".
|
| This was all in the news: Facebook lying about not being
| able to connect WhatsApp and Facebook, then trying to
| weasel their way out of their previous statements.
|
| For all the problems Telegram has they don't seen to have
| our raw messages more than GMail has your raw emails.
|
| Yep: unlike WhatsApp and Signal they can, technically
| produce them. (Edit: I forgot to mention: WhatsApp chat
| logs gets uploaded _unencrypted_ to American Cloud
| providers. I have less against the police and Americans
| than many other here but lets not pretend end-to-end
| encryption helps for anything when you backup the data
| unencrypted with everyones favourite villain it seems:
| NSA)
|
| And yes: like with GMail if Telegram has done exactly
| what they said and done it properly it would probably
| take cooperation of at least two sysadmins on different
| teams and it woumd also probably trigger alarms east and
| west.
|
| At least that is my understanding.
| VMG wrote:
| What is the advantage when Telegram has less money and more
| data?
| eitland wrote:
| Same advantage as buying a car from someone you don't
| know versus buying from a known fraudster and bully?
|
| Yes: in Telegrams case I might possibly, maybe at some
| time be taken advantage of.
|
| In WhatsApps case it would surprise everyone greatly if
| one isn't - sooner or later - take advantage of.
| mbdesign wrote:
| Prefer Signal myself too. It's a bit hard to switch over
| from WhatsApp and tried to use it at least with my spouse.
| One feature that Telegram and WhatsApp miss, is being able
| to send yourself a message. On Signal you can do this and
| it's very convenient for taking notes, sending passwords
| (laptop <--> phone) and for saving bookmarks. I used to
| share interesting bookmarks from HN to my email, but that
| quickly got cumbersome to sort out.
| adishy wrote:
| OT but if it helps you, Whatsapp does actually allow you
| to send messages to yourself (sort of)! You can create a
| Whatsapp group with you and one other person in it, and
| then remove them from the group. The result is a group
| with only you in it that you can use to send messages to
| yourself.
| cabrapreta wrote:
| You can do it on Telegram chatting with the "Saved
| messages" pseudo-user.
| csydas wrote:
| Telegram has the saved messages chat which is a chat with
| yourself.
| eitland wrote:
| Agreed. This actually works incredibly well on Telegram
| to sync snippets and files between devices.
|
| FWIW you can also create multiple groups with the same
| person(s) so you can keep one "group" chat with your
| spouse for chores, shopping lists etc and another for
| photos of the kids, birthday planning, funny stuff etc.
|
| This probably works in most messengers though, but it is
| a nice hack anyway.
| enkid wrote:
| Which would make me not want to use it if I was a
| revolutionary in a totalitarian state that could get access
| to that data.
| airstrike wrote:
| Telegram having access doesn't necessarily mean the
| totalitarian state gets access, though I see your point
| 1023bytes wrote:
| Signal doesn't make money either.
| baby wrote:
| Signal is a non-profit though no?
| conception wrote:
| Non-profits can and should make money. That's a common
| misconception and a big problem for charities are people
| think they are being greedy if they are making money
| regardless of the impact of that money.
|
| A non-profit just means profit isn't their goal.
| em-bee wrote:
| they still have to cover their cost somehow.
| MatthewMcDonald wrote:
| Signal was given $50M by Brian Acton (WhatsApp co-
| founder), I think they will be fine for a while.
| punnerud wrote:
| Payments with bots as an entrance. Trying to copy WeChat?
|
| https://core.telegram.org/bots/payments
|
| Update, from the doc: <<Telegram does not charge any commission
| for using the Payments API.>>
| dalbasal wrote:
| It's disappointing that this kind of thing is possible in
| relation to the sophistication and competence of a regime.
|
| Or maybe I should say that 2020 is a disappointment, from a 2005
| perspective. The internet was supposed to be free. The ability to
| use it for political change democratically was supposed to be
| built in, innate.
|
| This wasn't supposed to be a rare and fortunate blip, a soon-to-
| be-closed loophole in an app that . Internal security office
| around the world are currently reviewing their susceptibility to
| Telegram-based "attacks."
|
| Even in democratic countries, we're increasingly seeing the
| internet's ability to lead to political organizing as dubious...
| something that must be controlled.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| https://gun.eco/
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| The encryption is not very good in group chat.
|
| All the security services need is to find one protesters phone
| force the person to unlock it and they have it all.
|
| I am sure all network traffic of any kind was heavily monitored
| too.
|
| It also becomes entirely useless when the authority turns off the
| internet.
|
| There is another one that can work with a Bluetooth mesh
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsi...
|
| That Bluetooth is easy to notice and I'm the past was easy to
| listen in on. I presume that is better now.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Yeah it's pretty annoying that group chat displays real names
| and profiles.
|
| Also group chat has a search feature for all time.
| newscracker wrote:
| > Yeah it's pretty annoying that group chat displays real
| names and profiles.
|
| Don't use real name in profiles. You can also set Telegram to
| show your profile picture only to your contacts and also
| choose to not share it with specific users or groups in the
| privacy settings.
|
| > Also group chat has a search feature for all time.
|
| This is managed by the group administrator when setting up
| the group to either limit history to new members or provide
| all history to new members.
| newscracker wrote:
| > All the security services need is to find one protesters
| phone force the person to unlock it and they have it all.
|
| This is true for all apps regardless of how good their network
| encryption is. With Telegram it's possible to delete messages
| for everyone. Not so in some other apps.
| democracy wrote:
| Actually there are reports that riot police was specifically
| looking at ones telegram channels to decide on the degree of your
| immediate punishment (yes, old school batons). And it was easily
| decrypted (phone unlocked) with a threat by the cops. I am in
| Belarus at the moment and can confirm telegram was not available
| without vpns/proxy just like any other resource. And why wouldn't
| it be?
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| This is why many protesters had kill swithes on their devices
| to whipe them out in case they are arrested.
| democracy wrote:
| ...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.
| newsbinator wrote:
| 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.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway4747l wrote:
| Ctrl-F "Signal": 10 instances
|
| Seriously, it'd be nice if we could have _one_ thread about
| Telegram without S-advocates showing up and complaining about
| "security". Yes, we know Telegram isn't as secure, yadda yadda
| yadda. Now if only Signal provided _half_ the features Telegram
| does, maybe non-cryptonerds would have heard of it.
| dang wrote:
| The problem with a comment like this is that it adds to what it
| is complaining about.
|
| While I have you: Could you please stop creating accounts for
| every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This
| is in the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't
| use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community,
| users need some identity for other users to relate to.
| Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community,
| and that would be a different kind of forum.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...
| throwaway4747l wrote:
| I try to maintain some consistency (as you probably noticed)
| but as I switch devices I honestly can't be bothered to
| remember the throwaway handle I last used. If that's really
| an issue, I'll try to stick to a handle that's easy to
| remember, or keep this one.
|
| Out of honesty however, I should tell you that I value my
| anonymity and don't want an extensive posting history to be
| used to track and identify me. As pg said, keep your online
| footprint small, yadda yadda. So I can space out the
| intervals at which I make accounts but I can't promise I
| won't vanish the identity I created after a while.
| maccam912 wrote:
| Yeah honestly I just scroll right past them. I use telegram for
| my "Can you pick up some bananas on the way home?" messages. If
| I ever had a confidential tip for some investigative journalist
| I'd use signal. But it gets annoying if every post with the
| word "telegram" in the title gets the same "But signal is more
| secure!" response unrelated to the content of the article.
| prajjwal wrote:
| It's amazing that technology is empowering these protestors, but
| I'm not sure a vulnerable group of people such as this should be
| leaving identifying information on these servers.
|
| - You cannot sign up for Telegram without your phone number (even
| if it isn't public). - End to End encryption exists but is
| limited to 1-1 chats. - Telegram cooperates with data requests
| from law enforcements.
|
| The kind of risk this puts them in cannot be overstated.
| eitland wrote:
| > Telegram cooperates with data requests from law enforcements.
|
| It is not that black and white:
|
| AFAIK and IIRC it is more like this:
|
| - yes: Telegram gives data about members of public
| groups/channels
|
| - no: Telegram does not give out information from closed groups
| / personal chats, and they go to great lengths to prevent that
| information from becoming available. We might be sceptical all
| we want about the custom crypto, but I've seen no credible
| source that I can think of that have backs you statement except
| the limited example I gave above.
|
| Happy to learn more though.
| postmodernbrute wrote:
| You can cloak your phone number & not allow others to reach you
| via your phone number. Which means that the authorities cannot
| match your phone number to your Telegram identity, even if you
| posted in a public chat. This feature was implemented last year
| during Hong Kong protests to protect against government efforts
| to identify protestors by enumerating the limited phone number
| space in HK. There is also a password option to protect against
| SMS surveillance.
|
| As to whether Telegram itself would cooperate with data
| requests from your government - that depends on which
| government it is, and in the end is up to personal judgement. I
| don't think there's any reason that Telegram would betray me to
| the Chinese government, for example, while I won't at all trust
| Facebook for that. Facebook, and Zuckerberg himself (for how
| long did he stick to that Wuzhen avatar?), tried hard to
| appease the Chinese government for such a long time.
|
| International megacorp are generally the worst to trust in that
| respect. To many of us in authoritarian places, the illegality
| of Telegram is itself an attraction.
| exabrial wrote:
| Telegram needs a p2p mode via wifi or bluetooth. If the
| government forces an outage or implements a great firewall,
| they'd be dead in the water.
| muzika wrote:
| Yes!
| x87678r wrote:
| Wasn't Telegram restricted in Russia? I'm surprised Belarus can't
| turn it off whenever it wants as well.
| iillexial wrote:
| They tried to block it but didn't really succeed. It continued
| working although with some glitches.
| nitrogen wrote:
| If any technical details of that block and why it failed
| emerge, they would be fascinating reading. It also kind of
| makes one wonder if there's a non-technical reason why
| blocking it failed.
| iillexial wrote:
| They tried to block all IP-addresses that Telegram app
| uses. It failed and many of other services also stopped
| working(Google, Github, Twitter, FB).
|
| What Telegram did: 1. Started sending pushes from Google
| services with new IP addresses for their app. 2. They
| started using IPv6, turns out gov cannot detect them. 3.
| Also, they added support of SOCKS5 proxy to their app.
|
| Source:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_Telegram_in_Russia
| Russian version has more details.
| diimdeep wrote:
| Telegram constantly pushed new settings and routes to users
| with native Apple and Google push services.
| SXX wrote:
| Real reason is simple: Russian government never actually
| tried to block it for real. Kremlin could easily force
| Apple and Google to block the application itself or it's
| push notification for Russian users, but they never did
| that.
|
| Of course there was a lot of technical shenanigans going to
| block their IP addresses and proxy servers, but everyone
| understood that's is very fruitless attempt.
|
| Oh and they fully unblocked it when Durov's TON network was
| destroyed by SEC in the US. Very soon after event Telegram
| official representative went to Kremlin and poof: Telegram
| is unblocked.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Sour grapes much?
|
| They have asked Apple and Google to remove Telegram from
| appstore. -
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/29/17406178/russia-
| telegram-...
|
| Thousands of essential services have stopped working and
| internet in the country came to a standstill for days.
| Many were pissed off and loosing money, including folks
| working for the government, so it was not tenable to
| continue.
|
| Do you have any proof for the Kremlin visit is it as
| unsubstantiated as the rest of your post?
| vasu_man wrote:
| For a country ruled by a 'dictator', I'm surprised the Belarus'
| government hasn't blocked access to Telegram yet. Non-
| authoritarian democracies (well, at least on paper) such as
| Brazil and India, in past, have blocked WhatsApp to contain
| protests and spread of (mis)information.
| samat wrote:
| Telegram is notorious for censorship circumvention. They have
| successfully defeated such an attempt to block telegram by
| Russian government. Russia used sophisticated DPI, nuked
| substantial portions of AWS and Cloudflare IP subnets for
| Russian users and still failed. This guys know how to do
| censorship circumvention and they are motivated.
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| When Facebook does it over here it's called "Cyber war"
|
| When Telegram does it over there it's called "Liberation"
| kozak wrote:
| Considering that the app has been created by Russians (albeit
| ones who claim to oppose the current government of Russia), and
| it is popular mostly in countries that surround Russia, this is
| not surprising at all that it's the default choice for young
| people in Belarus. Telegram is a strong indicator of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_world these days.
| hojjat12000 wrote:
| To be fair. It's the best messaging app out there (feature-
| wise). It got banned in Iran because it was so influential in
| the protests. The channels are great for being up to date on
| the latest news and seeing what is happening in different
| cities. Groups are awesome for coordinating gatherings. It
| allows you to send huge files and documents. It has bots (which
| people used to get info on the current police location, or get
| VPN and proxy information). It's a great app. I wish the people
| behind it and its security was more transparent.
| samat wrote:
| The word 'platform' is being abused so much it does not mean
| anything today, but telegram is a platform indeed: 1. Bots
| allow you to develop automations and services inside 2.
| Channels allow publishers to have very easy to use blogs 3.
| Chats (with bots! Admin bots!) allow unlimited collaboration.
| Have you ever seen tens of thousands people in a chat? Public
| chats with anonymity protections?
|
| It is a real platform.
| [deleted]
| chromedev wrote:
| You forget to mention the desktop and mobile apps both are open
| source, so anyone can build their own network.
| [deleted]
| kozak wrote:
| I have never seen anyone actually doing that. The popularity
| of Telegram consists 100% of the popularity of its own
| network.
| chromedev wrote:
| If for some reason they were caught doing something worthy
| of changing the network, then I could see it happening.
| With their recent addition of video messaging, they pretty
| much have the best messenger app to date.
| luckylion wrote:
| A nice thing is that you're allowed to use that network
| without using the official client. Unlike Signal, they're
| okay with third party clients, and there are libraries for
| multiple languages to help build your own client.
| adityasaky wrote:
| Unfortunately (this may have changed in recent times), they
| often don't update the public repos in line with their
| releases. They put them out all at once later. Also, last I
| checked only the clients are open source? Has that changed?
| chromedev wrote:
| You can find the releases here, and if there is a delay it
| is only a few days at most:
|
| https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-
| FOSS/releases
|
| Only the clients are open source, but anyone could use the
| source code to create their own network.
| saagarjha wrote:
| This repository has been notoriously bad at doing this:
| https://github.com/overtake/TelegramSwift
| literallycancer wrote:
| Without server source? Might as well start from scratch
| and use something like matrix.
| rectang wrote:
| Should the revolution fail, the digital trail left by these
| messages will give the government everything they need to hunt
| down every last activist.
|
| We saw it with the Green Revolution in Iran. We've seen it
| several times since.
|
| So long as messages are not encrypted, messaging apps are much
| more naturally suited as tools of oppression than tools of
| revolution.
| [deleted]
| BTCOG wrote:
| Telegram polls are anonymous. Messages are encrypted.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I don't understand how they will get the chats except from
| individual phones. The convo is encrypted between telegram app
| and their servers and the servers aren't available to Bealrus'
| government officials, so how are they going to get the
| messages? Obviously they can if they're monitoring public group
| chats because all they have to do is join, but person to person
| or private groups, how are they going to get to those?
| Confiscate everyone's phones?
| laksdjfkasljdf wrote:
| sadly, very easy:
|
| 1. arrest person.
|
| 2. torture until you get the chat app unlocked. (which is
| readily verifiable and very practical to get with torture).
|
| 3. arrest everyone else based on the chats after cross-
| referencing telegram accounts and phone company records.
| bagacrap wrote:
| doesn't work if they've enabled disappearing messages
| BTCOG wrote:
| 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 ahead and wireshark your connection and start using
| Telegram.
| ldarby wrote:
| > wireshark your connection
|
| This isn't good advice for trying to show someone their
| messages aren't being sent in clear text. It could be
| encrypted using a weak cipher or have other implementation
| bugs that make it trivial for a nation state to decrypt it.
| You need to be able to look at the application's source
| code to tell what encryption it's using and if it's secure
| enough.
| eitland wrote:
| Group chats can easily be obtained as long as you have
| someone inside in the group.
|
| People who join later only see messages from a while before
| they joined though so that helps a bit but only a bit.
| fuzxi wrote:
| >People who join later only see messages from a while
| before they joined though so that helps a bit but only a
| bit.
|
| This is customizable and can be disabled, so that new
| members do not see any messages from before they joined.
| wintorez wrote:
| Telegram has a feature that I really like. It allows you to
| delete your messages from other people devices as well.
| shawnz wrote:
| Whatsapp also has this useful feature, and it also provides
| always-on E2E encryption unlike Telegram.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| But there is an open source client. So it should be trivial
| to not actually delete, but instead log every attempt to
| delete.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. Sure, maybe
| this doesn't help you in a channel, but one on one? Or
| small groups? Most people don't run custom apps and you're
| probably going to know if your friends do. The biggest use
| I see of bidirectional deletion is if you see your friends
| be picked up by a nefarious actor and you can delete the
| messages. This reduces the chance of self incrimination
| because you can probably delete the messages before the
| phone is cloned or the messages are saved in some way.
| saagarjha wrote:
| It has everything to do with this when the conversation
| is if the government is going to use your messages in the
| unencrypted channel to come after you. If your friends
| are picked up by a nefarious actor, you would have to
| know that they were-and also, you'd have to ensure that
| Telegram isn't keeping some sort of deletion log.
| godelski wrote:
| I want to repeat
|
| >> Sure, maybe this doesn't help you in a channel, but
| one on one? Or small groups? Most people don't run custom
| apps
|
| The bidirectional part is helpful in the non-public
| channel context.
|
| How does this help? Why does this matter? Well you can
| keep a public face and a private face. Private channels,
| group chats with friends, or one on one messages you can
| be more open and use this tool. But this is normal.
| Everyone shows a different face in public than what they
| show to friends (offline!).
|
| > If your friends are picked up by a nefarious actor, you
| would have to know that they were
|
| Sure. But they're your friends. I don't know how you
| interact with your friends, but usually when I'm out with
| them I'm physically near them and know what they are
| doing. _Chances are_ pretty high I 'd know within a few
| hours if they got arrested/abducted.
|
| > you'd have to ensure that Telegram isn't keeping some
| sort of deletion log.
|
| This is a different issue and FWIW that's why I don't
| personally use Telegram. There's no verification so no
| trust. But that doesn't mean that the deletion tool _can
| be_ useful in _certain contexts_ if the implementation is
| correct. No reason to throw the baby out with the bath
| water. It is about the _probability_ of reducing self
| incrimination, not guaranteeing.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I certainly do not know what my friends are doing 24/7,
| perhaps not even within a day or two. And that's plenty
| of time for law enforcement to install a third-party
| client on their phone, or just read the messages. I agree
| that having it is better than not having it, but I would
| not put too much faith in it being useful against law
| enforcement. Perhaps retracting a mistakenly sent
| message, but not much more than that.
| godelski wrote:
| I feel like you're being needlessly dense. The threat
| scenario is being at a protest with your friends, not
| some midnight abduction. And I'll I'm arguing is that it
| is better to have it than not have it because _there 's a
| __chance___. When it comes down to it every aspect of
| security and privacy is probabilistic. Security walls
| aren't impenetrable, but unlikely to be penetrated in a
| given time-frame. If it doesn't reduce the floor on
| security or privacy but increases the probabilistic upper
| bound, why not? So my complaint to Signal is why shoot
| yourself in the foot by limiting this to 1 hour? (24 if
| you run a custom app)
|
| There's a reason big companies/government employers want
| root access to your phone and will wipe data if it is
| lost or stolen. Because it reduces the _chance_ that
| company /state secrets. No one thinks it is a guarantee.
| But if given the choice of "revealing a secret" vs
| "rolling a dice to see if I reveal a secret or not" I'm
| going with the latter no matter the odds.
| godelski wrote:
| 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...
| this is probabilistic privacy, not guaranteed)
|
| - My device, my data (okay?)
|
| - Some people run custom apps that save everything (how does
| that apply here? Funny enough, a sibling comment said
| something similar)
|
| - Just own up to your typos (-_____-)
|
| - Don't use Signal for communication then because you can't
| be guaranteed privacy (great, I'll use smoke signals with my
| friends to organize)
|
| To be fair to Signal, the devs did not get into the forums.
| To also be fair, Signal is taking the same position and is
| going to only allow deletion an hour after a message was
| sent. As much as I love Signal, it is my preferred messaging
| app, I think they are not in touch with the needs of people.
| We should look at why people are turning to Telegram when
| protesting. What can we do to better preserve the privacy of
| people protesting in HK, Belarus, America, etc? Everything is
| probabilistic security and privacy when it comes down to it.
| But what tools would help these people the most? I would
| argue that bidirectional deletion to reduce the chance of
| self incrimination is one of them. The other is group
| messaging, channels, and anonymous messages (so your phone
| number isn't visible in channels). Emojis are nice and fun
| for day to day use, but it is getting more and more important
| to push these other features (yes, I know they are extremely
| difficult to do and actually preserve privacy to the standard
| Signal currently does. I think many would be fine if it was
| an incremental increase in privacy with these newer
| features).
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I was pitching the following idea to a friend of mine
| yesterday:
|
| - the UI should hide e2e/"reallyprivate" conversations by
| default - as in "not visible anywhere" (edit: unless the
| app is in the foreground and you are chatting of course)
|
| Unless you:
|
| - do the "add a new user/conversation" - then instead of
| adding mail/GUID/phone you add a whatevercanberemembered
| number/emoji/sentence that unlocks the private conversation
| you initiated long before
|
| There should be no trace in the UI that private
| conversations are going on.
|
| What does HN think ? Why hasn't it been done before ?
|
| Edit: there could even be notifications disguised as
| another app (news subscriptions, medical reminders, battery
| low, etc.)
| indigo945 wrote:
| This doesn't give you plausible deniability if law
| enforcement gets their hands on your unlocked phone, as
| they can see that the file size of the encrypted message
| logs doesn't match the visible content. If the phone is
| jailbroken and the key for the message logs is leaked, it
| doesn't help at all.
|
| Security by obscurity is never a win.
| godelski wrote:
| Wouldn't the solution here just be to allocate a larger
| disk space and encrypt that? Then when the space is
| filled up you expand again? I've seen this done before.
|
| Rather I'd change the GP's solution to having a secret
| vault in an already encrypted chat system (so you can do
| the above), essentially making it two layers. Just the
| second layer isn't a button that says "look at me, I'm
| where all the real secret shit is."
|
| I agree that security through obscurity isn't a winning
| solution, but it is part of the toolkit. It would just be
| dumb to rely on your security solely being obscurity.
| Encrypted steganography is still a powerful tool, hackers
| obscure code, and real spies use obscurity all the time.
| It just isn't the dominant factor.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > This doesn't give you plausible deniability if law
| enforcement gets their hands on your unlocked phone, as
| they can see that the file size of the encrypted message
| logs doesn't match the visible content.
|
| Hmmm. What about from the get-go saying that the app
| allocates 100Mbytes of space and fills it randomly at
| regular time until some encrypted content is generated.
| That'd put a 100Mbytes log/message limit to conversations
| but that'd be by design and nobody could be sure those
| bytes are random or genuine messages.
|
| > If the phone is jailbroken and the key for the message
| logs is leaked, it doesn't help at all.
|
| Why would the key get leaked if it's never stored ?
| newscracker wrote:
| > 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.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| 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.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| So disappointing that true anonymous communication is
| technologically feasible but is only unavailable due to
| government intervention and public apathy.
| suby wrote:
| D
| huhtenberg wrote:
| The main issue is that any form of anonymous communication
| gets instantly abused for things that very few people are OK
| with. It's a classic Catch-22 and a very well-known at that.
| Balgair wrote:
| I agree that the danger is tremendous, but that is all the more
| reason to participate in changing the government.
|
| If you fear such a reprisal then in being afraid you have only
| your life to save. If you try and make it succeed then you have
| everything to gain.
|
| It is total gamble, but there seems to be little choice now for
| the Belorussian people: a chance at freedom or worse reprisals.
| rectang wrote:
| Let's differentiate between the heroic individual activists
| striving against all odds, versus the technologists whose
| market-driven decisions ensure that the activists are
| betrayed to their oppressive governments.
| pvg wrote:
| That can happen anywhere and not just with Telegram - imagine
| what a repressive government can do with a dump of GMail.
| Iran's a much bigger country with a regime much more capable
| and willing to use violence.
| sneak wrote:
| Imagine how hard it must be to run a presidential campaign in
| the US when your incumbent opponent in an election controls
| the systems that get to read any message in GMail.
| mbowcutt wrote:
| I don't know too much about Telegram but isn't it encrypted?
| mauflows wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Signal at least doesn't encrypt at rest on
| your phone. So the drive would have to be encrypted as well,
| which is not default on Android
| t0astbread wrote:
| Apart from that, regardless if you're on Signal or Telegram
| if authorities get hold of a protester's identity on such
| an app and have the power to access the app's servers they
| can gradually uncover social networks by reading metadata
| (if I'm not mistaken).
| voxic11 wrote:
| I think you are mistaken. Before your text is sent to
| Signal your sender information is encrypted with the
| receiver's public key. So while Signal's servers can see
| who to deliver the message to they cannot see who sent
| it. Only the receiving client can decrypt and
| authenticate the message. This feature was rolled out in
| late 2018 and is called "sealed sender". It was developed
| to prevent leakage of any social network information via
| the message metadata.
|
| But as far as I know Telegram has no equivalent feature.
| t0astbread wrote:
| Oh, that's nice! I didn't know that.
|
| Ammendment to my above statement: This does not apply to
| Signal.
| seanieb wrote:
| Signal is encrypted at rest. It uses a special encrypted
| version of Sqlite. https://www.zetetic.net/sqlcipher/
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Android has encrypted storage by default since a few years
| ago. Of course, by default it uses a default key. But, the
| point is, enabling "encryption" just means changing that
| key, not reencrypting the entire device.
| voxic11 wrote:
| Signal does encrypt your messages locally. Also Android
| supports file encryption you don't need to use full disk
| encryption anymore. Also I think the policy has changed in
| Android 10.
|
| > All compatible Android devices newly launching with
| Android Q are required to encrypt user data, with no
| exceptions.
| upofadown wrote:
| Signal traditionally had an easy to get encryption key
| for the local encryption. Now there is a PIN but I don't
| think it is any protection against having access to the
| disk. The signal people would prefer that that you deal
| with the end point security yourself, because they really
| can't do much there.
| polyomino wrote:
| Not by default.
| dgellow wrote:
| Not by default, no, because that has UX implications (e.g the
| chat will only be available on one on your device instead of
| being synced between all your devices). Though it's quite
| easy to start an encrypted chat, and you can decide to have
| auto destructive messages.
| lol2143651 wrote:
| Well it's server software is closed-source, so you would
| never really know who has a backdoor.
|
| There are much better options than Telegram if you want real
| security. Signal for one.
| BelleOfTheBall wrote:
| It is encrypted by default but end-to-end is only for calls
| and Secret Chats (one-on-one). You can delete any message at
| any time without a trace for both sides, which protesters
| often do, really don't think the government needs messages to
| pin a crime on them. Hell, they've pinned crimes on people
| for literally no reason before.
| vel0city wrote:
| So when you try and go tell the other person's device to
| delete your message, how does it go into their iCloud
| backups and delete that message, or some other backup?
|
| Don't depend on asking someone else's device to delete the
| data as that data being gone.
| BelleOfTheBall wrote:
| Telegram doesn't store messages on the device, you don't
| need to "tell the other person's device" anything, it's
| deleted from the Telegram cloud.
| throwaway8941 wrote:
| It is stored locally, although only temporarily. I rarely
| connect my phone to the internet and still can scroll
| through quite a bit of message history.
| input_sh wrote:
| By default it's no more encrypted than HN (as in, traffic to
| their servers uses TLS, messages on the server are not
| encrypted at all).
|
| There's Secret Chats feature which they claim to be end-to-
| end encrypted, meaning that it's no more secure than
| Facebook's Messenger (also end-to-end encrypted in Secret
| Conversations). Even less so considering that they roll their
| own encryption (MTProto), while Facebook's Messenger uses
| Signal's protocol.
|
| Further info (which will also lead you to problems with their
| MTProto protocol, if you're interested):
| https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-
| telegr...
| ConsiderCrying wrote:
| Can we stop using 6-year-old info for apps that get updated
| monthly? The problems they have with MTProto have been
| patched literally 5 years ago, the only other criticism
| comes from a direct competitor, and they recommend WhatsApp
| despite the fact that it's closed-source and nobody can
| verify if its encryption truly works.
|
| Facebook is planning to merge Messenger, WhatsApp and
| Instagram, which makes it even more awful of a choice.
| input_sh wrote:
| Fair point, but from my perspective, even if it was
| absolutely the best end-to-end encryption there is, it
| wouldn't mean much unless everyone's using Telegram for
| 1-to-1 communication using Secret Chats feature.
|
| > Some of its channels helped unconnected, scattered
| rallies mature into well-coordinated action.
|
| This line alone makes their encryption rather meaningless
| for this use case, since Secret Chats only work between
| two people.
| skyyler wrote:
| Which is why I'm confused people are even talking about
| their encryption in this thread.
|
| This has nothing to do with secure chats and everything
| to do with Telegram's Channels feature. But a ton of
| people that have never used Telegram nor read the article
| don't know that.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| And proxies. Telegram has great proxy support and
| virtually anyone can install their own MTProxy in 5 min.
|
| A multitude of proxies, shadow optic cables over the
| border and a bit of whitelisting from the government to
| allow payment processing made Telegram invincible.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I don't see the problem of using a hand-rolled encryption
| algorithm or the strange choices that went into that
| algorithm as "patched literally 5 years ago".
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > The problems they have with MTProto have been patched
| literally 5 years ag
|
| Really? I haven't seen a single credible audit, nor a
| clear reason for rolling their own
| heinrich5991 wrote:
| Telegram still doesn't encrypt chats end to end (by
| default1), which means it's not a strictly superior
| choice to WhatsApp.
|
| Facebook can't read your WhatsApp messages (of course
| they can add an update any time to do that), but Telegram
| has access to all your messages _right now_.
|
| 1 Yes, you can select the end-to-end encrypted sessions,
| but they're very crippled from a usability perspective. I
| don't remember the last time anyone used it with me, yet
| all my chats on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted without
| anyone doing anything.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Can't Facebook read most people's WhatsApp messages
| because cloud backups of chats are enabled by default,
| and only the tiny minority of users who disable that
| feature will get truly end-to-end encryption?
| heinrich5991 wrote:
| No, that's not true as far as I'm aware. The backup is to
| Google, not Facebook.
| ConsiderCrying wrote:
| > Facebook can't read your WhatsApp messages
|
| Are we sure it can't? Because WhatsApp is closed-source,
| its GDrive backups are unencrypted and Facebook's whole
| profit model is based around snooping. Unless they make
| the app open-source, I'm not trusting them even with a
| grocery list. People act like E2E is the be-all and end-
| all but trusting an incredibly shady company on its word
| is not something I'm comfortable with.
| shawnz wrote:
| Open source is not the be-all end-all of security either.
| Closed source apps can still be audited (with increased
| difficulty), and open source apps might still be
| impractical to audit even though they are open source.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > > Facebook can't read your WhatsApp messages
|
| > Are we sure it can't?
|
| Google can remotely uninstall, and install a trojaned
| version of any app regardless of app signature on an
| official Android distribution.
| heinrich5991 wrote:
| Yes, people are reverse engineering the app. You can
| check the discussions on HackerNews when security of
| WhatsApp is discussed.
|
| GDrive backups are not readable by Facebook, they're
| readable by Google. End-to-end, if properly implemented
| is the be-all and end-all. Except for metadata, which is
| a problem, but a different one, and Facebook definitely
| abuses that. But they don't/can't read the contents of
| chat messages (for now).
|
| It's not merely trusting that shady company, but also
| realizing that the news of FB not having E2E-encrypted
| messages would definitely make the news, you'd be aware
| of it.
| shawnz wrote:
| > It's not merely trusting that shady company, but also
| realizing that the news of FB not having E2E-encrypted
| messages would definitely make the news, you'd be aware
| of it.
|
| Right.. consider what your adversary would be giving up
| by revealing such a secret, even if it was true. That
| alone provides a not-insubstantial amount of security.
| newscracker wrote:
| > Facebook can't read your WhatsApp messages
|
| Facebook does get your WhatsApp communication metadata,
| and has been for years now. As the three letter agencies
| showed, metadata is actually quite valuable in many
| respects without needing to trawl through massive amounts
| of content.
| DavideNL wrote:
| > There's Secret Chats feature
|
| But secret chats are only for 1-to-1 chats, not for groups
| as far as I know (or has that changed?)
| BTCOG wrote:
| Correct. What anyone in an oppressive regime could do
| though is to make sure settings are set to "share your
| phone number with no one," as well as delete their own
| messages from the channel in their entirety after having
| been read 15-30 min later or whatever arbitrary time
| they'd like. They would do best to not use an @username
| or account name which could identify them. Beyond that,
| there's no way anyone in Belarus can do a thing besides
| physical violence and take an individual's or a group of
| people's phones.
|
| There are also options for invite only channels ( I
| manage several TG channels, public and private) in which
| nobody can join without having been given the invite
| link, or added to the channel if their settings permit
| other users adding them to channels.
| ConsiderCrying wrote:
| Nope, hasn't changed and it's one of the things on my
| "feature wishlist". Really hope they add for at least
| small chats.
| BTCOG wrote:
| This is all information in bad faith. The protocol and all
| Telegram is open source. Are you a cryptographer? And who
| "rolled" the Signal protocol, Moxie Marlinspike? Did he not
| design that himself?
| input_sh wrote:
| > ...and all Telegram is open source.
|
| This is demonstrably false. Telegram's apps are open
| sourced (except Telegram X for some reason), same as
| Signal's (no exceptions). None of the two offer you their
| server's code.
|
| > And who "rolled" the Signal protocol, Moxie
| Marlinspike? Did he not design that himself?
|
| It passed the scrutiny of the best cryptographers out
| there. This comment provides more info:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24237791
|
| And again, this is completely irrelevant because even if
| Telegram's end-to-end encryption was absolutely the best
| there is, a) it doesn't work on group chats, and b) it's
| not enabled by default, only in Secret Chats. The vast
| majority of Telegram's usage is not end-to-end encrypted
| _at all_.
| diimdeep wrote:
| And how is Signal's protocol is not "roll their own" ?
| Sorry I don't know.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The Signal Protocol[0] is based on OTR, a technology
| which had already seen a number of implementations and
| informed scrutiny by the time Signal came along.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol
| godelski wrote:
| Also an important aspect is that it is open sourced,
| meaning others can audit it. I'm a little untrusting of
| people that say "trust me" but also "no, you can't look
| at it." (unless there is a good reason to hide it, which
| in this case I do not believe there is)
| upofadown wrote:
| It's based on the concepts of OTR but it has gone in
| different directions to actually implement those ideas.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| First of all, most of this goes back five years and
| things have likely changed, but basically MTProto used
| several non-standard and out of date security mechanisms
| (no AE and using SHA1 were fairly notable at the time)
| whereas Signal was purposing fairly standard and widely
| used mechanisms (OTR). It's possible that many of those
| failures have been addressed over the years, but I
| haven't followed it closely. It's worth noting that
| Signal has been widely vetted over time and is the
| underpinning of WhatsApp, whereas MTProto continues to
| have a poor reputation, it seems.
| tptacek wrote:
| Signal Protocol won the Levchin Prize at Real World
| Crypto, which was awarded by a panel of several of the
| most renowned academic cryptographers in the field
| (including Dan Boneh and Kenny Paterson). Other winners
| include Bellare, Krawczyk, and Joan Daemon. The protocol
| has been extensively analyzed and is the current gold
| standard for messaging encryption.
|
| Telegram's protocol... is not that.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| But the standard we should apply to secure chat protocols
| isn't how many awards it won, but whether it's
| watertight. Obviously winning a prestigious prize means
| it's watertight, but the converse doesn't follow. A
| protocol can be safe for practical use without winning
| any prizes.
| fsfellowship wrote:
| free messaging apps, like free software organizations, are just
| better at obfuscating their fascist overlords but the fascist
| overlords are still there pulling the strings somewhere as this
| clearly demonstrates https://fsfellowship.eu/matthias-kirschner-
| fsfe-nazi-compari...
| biscotti wrote:
| The Belarus protests work to unseat a President who resisted
| bribes to impose a strict lockdown. Lukashenko was offered a sum
| of USD 940M, initially by the WHO & raised by the World Bank.
|
| It's a foreign led insurrection that we should all oppose. That
| people in this thread label it a revolution just goes to show how
| easily truth can be perverted.
|
| Seems to me he's a threat to their Corona agenda, that's why he
| must go.
| [deleted]
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/jbbmQ
| paganel wrote:
| Similar thing is happening in the States with different social
| media platforms (FB, Reddit until recently) which have empowered
| political views not reguarded as "good" by the mainstream media,
| but you don't see congratulatory articles about this phenomenon,
| with FB even seen as Satan itself when it comes to politics.
| airstrike wrote:
| Social media != instant messaging
| jessaustin wrote:
| CIA encourages lots of friendly articles about social
| disruptions they've planned and funded. It seems likely they
| didn't plan BLM and related recent American protests, but
| definitely they are behind anything going on in Belarus.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That sounds like taking the claims of every strongman that
| their internal opposition is an external malevolent actor.
| The CIA would only be needed for sufficent state level
| resources such as training or large quantities of munitions
| beyond what they could source without intervention.
|
| Dissent is very damn cheap with modern communications
| infastructure and can exist with and without it.
|
| The only funding the CIA certainly provided was historical
| general purpose funding of computers and cryptography
| research. Calling it planned would certainly be a stretch.
| jessaustin wrote:
| It's certainly true that politicians can be unpopular for
| entirely local reasons. For instance, most politicians in
| USA, for at least the last decade. They are corrupt and
| incompetent, so they are unpopular.
|
| However, both TFA and other things I've read about Belarus
| have a very "Euromaidan"/"Kong Tsung-gan" flavor to them.
| This is the sort of thing CIA does. They publicly claim
| this is the sort of thing they _should_ do. Why would they
| be sitting this one out?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This is a myopic eastern-European worldview where general
| population are sheep and nothing ever happens unless some
| sort of Illuminati has planned it.
|
| CIA does a lot of things, but they are not the only ones,
| and they can't be everywhere at once.
| scroogeydop wrote:
| You should be on thorazine.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Thanks!
| dilettantism wrote:
| Because right-wing nationalism is not a good thing.
| scroogeydop wrote:
| It's hysterical when conservatives play as if they have a
| valid ideology.
| ROARosen wrote:
| Please direct me to the comprehensive list of "valid"
| ideologies. Also, if you can get me the methodology for
| deciding what ideology is considered "valid" I would
| greatly appreciate it.
| dmurray wrote:
| A different interpretation is that those social media platforms
| keep the dissent monitorable and under control, and the powers
| that be are quite happy with the status quo. If that was the
| case, as soon as a platform that was not US-controlled gained a
| foothold in the US, we'd see a crackdown from the
| establishment. It would be painted as a tool of a foreign power
| and shut down or forced to be turned over to a US-based entity.
|
| If that ever happens, we'll know democracy in the US is under
| threat.
| ROARosen wrote:
| > as soon as a platform that was not US-controlled gained a
| foothold in the US, we'd see a crackdown from the
| establishment
|
| Telegram is not US controlled. There is no crackdown from the
| "establishment". Except if you meant only in situations where
| there is widespread unrest? If it is not relevant to Facebook
| here in the US in the first place.
| newen wrote:
| 3.5 million monthly active users of Telegram in the US. 80
| million MAU of TikTok in the US. Makes a difference. They
| didn't crack down on TikTok until very recently.
| exolymph wrote:
| Democracy in the US has always been under threat, because the
| elites aren't stupid and realize that letting the masses rule
| leads to Third Positionism.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > If that ever happens, we'll know democracy in the US is
| under threat.
|
| Not to get political or anything, but with the clear election
| interference with dismantling the USPS and removing sorting
| machines only in swing states it's clearer than ever that
| democracy is already currently under threat.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Was there something about TikTok recently?
| soufron wrote:
| It's never "the work of a long-preparing revolutionnary crowd"
| revolution, but always a "latest fashionable technology"
| revolution.
|
| Tech propaganda at its best.
| nix23 wrote:
| It's really disgusting!! It's like saying, not Trump is bad but
| twitter is...so US, it's not BLM but TSM (Twitter Shitstorm
| Matters)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| You'd be more persuasive if you toned the language down.
| FWIW, I'm not up nor downvoting you, just sharing perspective
| as a mod with political sympathies.
| [deleted]
| EGreg wrote:
| I remember when Arab Spring was blamed on social media and
| Google
|
| Then Moscow had a giant demonstration on Red Square and that's
| right around the time Putin blinked and started cracking down
| on such platforms and free speech.
|
| Of course, for those who remember, Telegram was started by
| Pavel Durov, the "Zuckerberg of Russia" who refused to give out
| details of VKontakte users, and the mail.ru conglomerate took
| his company, while he fled to France and started Telegram.
| Roskomnadzor tried unsuccessfully to ban it in Russia, and
| inadvertently banned colocated AWS servers hosting LinkedIn
| etc.
| Udik wrote:
| > I remember when Arab Spring was blamed on social media and
| Google
|
| There's a pretty big and well known country that is blaming
| the election of its president on interference of another
| country through social media. It seems pretty credible the
| same social media can have promoted protests in more unstable
| countries.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Wrong. Telegram worked actively for years towards such usage
| scenarios.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| To be fair "long preparing revolutionary" people tend to be
| dogmatic loons who are obsessed with some pure concept
| (religious fundamentalism, communism, ethnonationalism) that
| aren't enough to be a crowd.
|
| As opposed to a general populace pushed to an edge by extreme
| conditions and leadership which does the exact wrong thing in a
| circumstance.
| robertfw wrote:
| > To be fair "long preparing revolutionary" people tend to be
| dogmatic loons who are obsessed with some pure concept
|
| * citation needed
| rectang wrote:
| "Dogmatic loons", like, say, Nelson Mandela?
| ip26 wrote:
| Are you similarly critical of discussions about how ubiquitous
| camera phones have changed the civil rights movement?
|
| Technology is only a tool, and is only as good as what people
| actually do with it. But it can be a crucial tool that changes
| everything.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >But it can be a crucial tool that changes everything.
|
| this is the exact same narrative that took place when the
| Arab Spring happened. What determines the success of
| revolutions isn't what makes the news media, it's what
| happens on day 1 after the revolution is over and the cameras
| are turned off
| echelon wrote:
| I don't think so.
|
| Calling it "{arbitrary brand} revolution", when pretty much
| every messaging platform is indistinguishable feels crass and
| tacky. The brand isn't the one in the trenches making the
| sacrifices.
|
| It could be called a smart phone revolution instead. A
| revolution of the people.
| dgellow wrote:
| Telegram has some distinct features that makes it quite
| good during protests:
|
| - location based chats, you see people around and can start
| a local group. So you can easily get in contact with other
| protestors around you.
|
| - Broadcasting channels
|
| - Not by default, but you can creat encrypted chats, with
| auto destruction
|
| - Since a few days, encrypted video calls
|
| - Not owned by Facebook
| newscracker wrote:
| > Since a few days, encrypted video calls
|
| Careful though, since video calls are currently in alpha.
| ROARosen wrote:
| >- Not owned by Facebook
|
| "nine out of ten Egyptians and Tunisians responded to a
| poll that they used Facebook to organise protests and
| spread awareness" [1]
|
| "During the Arab Spring the number of users of social
| networks, especially Facebook, rose dramatically in most
| Arab countries, particularly in those where political
| uprising took place, with the exception of Libya, which
| at the time had low Internet access preventing people
| from doing so" [1]
|
| As far as I'm aware Facebook is actually owned by
| Facebook.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Ar
| ab_Spri...
| postnihilism wrote:
| Given the relationship the current US administration has
| with Russia, it seems like Facebook would be a less
| welcome alternative for a pro-democracy Belarusian
| protestor.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Facebook 2020 isn't the same as Facebook 2010. Their
| public image has changed a lot in between.
| ROARosen wrote:
| > Their public image has changed a lot in between.
|
| Keyword "public". It is the same useful for protests as
| it was then.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| However they have only gotten worse over time. It's just
| now that they're willing to block some far right/far left
| groups trying to fraudulently dump info in the form of
| ads and memes on Facebook.
| dgellow wrote:
| I don't get your point. Telegram is not owned by
| Facebook. A potential alternative, WhatsApp, is owned by
| Facebook. That's the point I was going for.
|
| And you have a huge difference between Facebook 2010 and
| 2020.
| jgilias wrote:
| It was reported that Telegram was the only thing that
| somewhat kept working when the internet was down country
| wide.
|
| Also, I installed Telegram for the explicit purpose of
| following the events in Belarus directly from sources. By
| doing that I noticed that apparently the local press in my
| country have done the same, as it seemed that most of the
| updates in online media have come from the same Telegram
| channels. So, it has also served the role of information
| dissemination beyond the borders of Belarus at a time when
| journalists working there were harassed and sometimes
| imprisoned.
| ddorian43 wrote:
| Uhhh how did it work when the internet went down ?
| detaro wrote:
| They didn't fully shut down the internet the entire time.
| I.e. at least for a while, apparently port 80 was still
| open when other things were blocked.
| JosephHatfield wrote:
| I believe the Telegram app has a peer-to-peer feature
| that allows communication to be routed through other
| devices rather than requiring communication with the
| Telegram servers
| shawnz wrote:
| That is not the case. It is a plain old client-server
| architecture.
|
| You might be thinking of FireChat.
| jgilias wrote:
| Yeah, no idea really. It'd be nice to find out from
| someone more in the know. Was the internet merely heavily
| deteriorated instead of shut down completely?
|
| I also read that most of the VPNs wouldn't work, with the
| exception of psiphon.
| pesfandiar wrote:
| Nobody sees "Telegram revolution" and thinks the revolution
| was all about or solely enabled by the brand/technology.
| It's just a unique aspect of the revolution used to
| identify it. A good example of how a brand/technology was
| used to name (but not describe) an event over 30 years ago:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War
| znpy wrote:
| Except that isn't the case.
|
| Reportedly, Telegram has kept working when other apps did
| not.
|
| That makes it a "telegram revolution".
| ip26 wrote:
| In defense of the journalist, it's a direct quote from a
| protester who is presumably in the trenches making the
| sacrifices.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Well telegram is what they're using, do you suggest that
| the name of the app be left out of the article? The
| statements are coming from excited & anxious activists. Of
| course they're going to be overstated. I hope they are
| successful in their peaceful coupe and get honest
| elections. Can't you just have hope for them as well?
| jancsika wrote:
| You're not disagreeing with OP's point that this is "tech
| propaganda at its best."
|
| Same logic would apply if, say, a camera company had tried to
| brand Selma.
| charia wrote:
| It's literally what one of the protestors called it.
|
| > "Telegram channels and websites that don't belong to our
| government are the main source of information today as we
| cannot at all rely on state media," said Roman Semenov, who
| follows the NEXTA channels and joined a rally in central Minsk
| on Wednesday evening. "It's a Telegram revolution."
|
| On top of that this is article detailing how this particular
| technology, has made a significant impact for the protesters.
|
| "The fate of the country has never depended so much on one
| [piece] of technology," Viacorka said.
|
| There have been a number of articles and news coverage of this
| topic. That this one article focused on the technology aspect
| of the protesters and protesting does not make it, "tech
| propaganda."
| shawnz wrote:
| And the journalist who gets paid to write a nice article
| about Signal will surely get a quote from the protestor who
| happened to use Signal and not Telegram.
| SXX wrote:
| I'm far from being Telegram fan considering their custom
| crypto, lack of E2E by default, etc. Yet NEXTa channel here
| actually have 2 million of subscribers while Belarus
| population is less than 10 millions. Yeah of course there
| some % of people from abroad who follow the situation, but
| it's still a lot.
|
| Also Telegram was more-or-less resistant to at least not
| leak any personal information of their users in ex-USSR. So
| it's works well enough for protesters threat model.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Signal is blocked along with the rest of internet traffic,
| case closed.
| skyyler wrote:
| I'm not sure why you've brought up Signal, they're
| completely different platforms.
|
| Signal focuses on secure communication, Telegram has a
| secure communication feature... But also a social network
| of group chats and channels that link to each other; and
| that's the focus of this article.
| shawnz wrote:
| It was just an example of a product which could be touted
| as enabling protestors.
|
| The other use cases of Telegram could be serviced by
| other apps. There are plenty of non-E2E social networks
| available just like Telegram.
|
| EDIT: Unfortunately postmodernbrute I am not able to
| reply to your comment. But I am not trying to deny that
| Telegram has caught a wave of popularity among
| Belarusians and others. What I am saying is that Telegram
| likely only has that trust because of puff pieces like
| this. It is not because of any technological superiority
| or unique feature that it provides (since it isn't/there
| aren't any).
| postmodernbrute wrote:
| But there wasn't another communication tool that was
| similarly popular and trusted among the Belarus people.
| And that, is the difference. Their choice in this protest
| matters much more to the reporting than your opinion as
| an outsider.
| gjs278 wrote:
| he brought it up because someone was paid to write nice
| things about telegram, so they found a guy using that
|
| when signal asks for an article, someone will be quoted
| as how signal was helpful
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Long-preparing revolutionaries need a way to communicate and
| coordinate with a bunch of people who suddenly see things their
| way. The government often tries to jam the lines of
| communication, so some alternate form of communication is often
| critical.
| ceeniwer wrote:
| I wonder why is it that folks in Hong Kong, xinjiang and
| Tibet can't effectively work together using telegram to start
| a massive nation wide riot. There are so many Folks in those
| regions who are oppressed (millions) and they are being organ
| harvested, forced to work in factories as slave labor, held
| in concentration camps, disappeared without trials, and
| tortured for democratic ideals.
|
| Or these folks can coordinate with protestors in other parts
| of the world, to raise awareness and stop consumers from
| buying from a dictatorship.
| robjan wrote:
| The protests in Hong Kong are organised over Telegram but
| there is not much appetite for rioting thankfully.
| throw38474 wrote:
| Didn't they completely destroy multiple subway stations?
| FpUser wrote:
| >"to start a massive nation wide riot"
|
| - Keyboard warrior? This is a crime in any country
| including the the US. Can you imagine what it will do to
| you in a country like China?
|
| >"Or these folks can coordinate with protesters in other
| parts of the world, to raise awareness and stop consumers
| from buying from a dictatorship."
|
| - What prevents you from not buying from a dictatorship
| now? Do you need to be directed by people from Tibet about
| it?
| postmodernbrute wrote:
| Protesters in Hong Kong have been using Telegram. And they
| did use it to start a massive city wide riot.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| In Xinjiang, the Uighur population are obliged to run a
| version of Android with surveillance software installed on
| it that is constantly phoning home about all activity on
| the device. So, even if it were possible to install a chat
| app that evades the Great Firewall, everything that one
| reads and types on that phone would still be sent on to the
| authorities regardless. Belarus is a dictatorship, but far
| less authoritarian in the digital realm than Xinjiang.
| chongli wrote:
| People who would be interested in rioting generally don't
| show up to riot unless they can be sure there are a lot of
| other people who will do so as well. A "one-man riot" is
| just a stupid vandal the police have no trouble arresting.
| And so communication of intent to riot is not really
| enough. There's a coordination problem akin to a massive
| game of chicken that needs to be solved.
|
| Usually, the way this problem is overcome is that rioters
| show up to peaceful protests and engage in a sort of
| signalling game to other would-be rioters. The usual
| trigger to begin the riot is the sound of shattering glass.
| Until someone is ready to throw that first brick, you
| aren't likely to see much of anything.
|
| Authoritarian countries know all this and they try very
| hard to prevent riots by banning all peaceful protests.
| Much harder to start a riot when there aren't any people on
| the streets to give cover.
| shawnz wrote:
| Telegram provides, at best, equal security and ease-of-use to
| previously existing solutions like Signal and Whatsapp, and
| in many cases worse security. Telegram didn't do anything to
| make this kind of technology more accessible or available.
|
| So, the fact that it happens to be a popular solution for
| encrypted chat right now doesn't really speak to its
| necessity for any revolution like you and the article seem to
| be implying. Easy access to encryption technology in general,
| sure, but that doesn't specifically need to be Telegram.
| renewiltord wrote:
| No, you guys always miss the important things. It's that
| Telegram has social features. It's that Telegram operates
| under harsher network conditions. It's that other people
| have Telegram for these reasons.
|
| This is the rsync v Dropbox of messaging applications.
| shawnz wrote:
| > It's that Telegram has social features.
|
| Yes, unencrypted social features that could just as
| easily be serviced by any other social networking app
| which hasn't been explicitly banned yet (and that could
| happen to Telegram at any time).
|
| > It's that Telegram operates under harsher network
| conditions.
|
| So their operators claim. But it's not clear why that
| would be true and I haven't seen any numbers to
| demonstrate it either. Have you?
| Integer wrote:
| >So their operators claim. But it's not clear why that
| would be true and I haven't seen any numbers to
| demonstrate it either. Have you?
|
| Telegram had to survive Russia's attempt to ban it, so it
| evolved a number of strategies: using push notifications
| to deliver IP-adresses of not-yet-blocked servers, using
| socks-proxies, the evolution of the MTProto Proxy
| encrypted protocol, and finally resorting to
| steganography to mimic ordinary https traffic, thus
| evading the DPI.
|
| The attempts of the state censorship agency to block the
| telegram servers were hilarious to watch: at one point
| they had 0.5% of the IPv4 address space banned, and broke
| a lot of stuff (AWS, Google, DigitalOcean, OVH, etc).
| Telegram was still working, of course.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Of course you are not going to see them if you are not
| looking. Maybe you could loo at have literally an entire
| country where it's the only messaging app still working.
| And previous attempt to block it in Russia.
| postmodernbrute wrote:
| Why do you consider Signal & WhatsApp, but not Telegram, to
| be the acceptable "pre-existing" solution? Because you are
| used to them in the West?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Some of the features of Telegram are helping them to do
| this, some stuff that signal is definitely lacking. for
| small groups and one to one signal is great, especially
| security wise, but the location and room functions of
| Telegram here are overshadowing it, even if it has inferior
| security and is much more proprietary.
| literallycancer wrote:
| Show me a Signal channel with 2 million people in it. Even
| if it's only writeable by the channel owner.
|
| The adversary in their case is mostly limited to beating up
| random people and picking on those that take a public stand
| against the regime.
|
| Turns out it's more important that it works at all and not
| whether the security is perfect.
| shawnz wrote:
| Show me an E2E encrypted Telegram channel with 2 million
| people in it, or it's not a fair comparison. There are
| lots of unencrypted social media apps which can support
| groups of 2 million, just like Telegram.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Indeed, from TFA:
|
| _...authorities shut off the internet, leaving Belarusians
| with almost no access to independent online news outlets or
| social media and protesters seemingly without a leader.
| That's where Telegram -- which often remains available
| despite internet outages, touts the security of messages
| shared in the app and has been used in other protest
| movements -- came in. Some of its channels helped
| unconnected, scattered rallies mature into well-coordinated
| action._
| 75dvtwin wrote:
| @soufron, I agree with you. It is shameful, to call uprising of
| suppressed -- against systemic unfairness -- as 'Telegram
| revolution'.
|
| This is akin to stealing valor (basically stealing medals and
| pretending to be the honorable).
|
| This type of valor stealing, is also happening when people call
| US border detention facilities as 'Nazi concentration camps'.
| For people whose family members went through a Nazi
| concentration camp, hearing such a comparing is painful.
|
| For Byelorussians whose livers and kidneys were raptured by the
| beatings, whose loved ones are imprisoned -- hearing Telegram
| marketing spin is painful, like when their valor, their
| sacrifice is stolen.
|
| Yes of course, without recording technology, in my view, we
| would not have successful type of investigative journalism that
| project Veritas has delivered.
|
| Or, without cell phones, the ability of people of Belarus to
| share images of brutality with the world.
|
| Technology, is helping to concentrate the will power of the
| masses, against well funded machines of system oppressions.
|
| But the will of the people, their sacrifices, their sufferings
| -- is the driving force -- not Telegram
| brosinante wrote:
| Calling a detention facility a Nazi concentration camp is not
| the same as calling a grassroots effort a "telegram
| revolution". One is making an analogy to history, the other
| is using a vapid phrase to market a mobile app.
| bdamm wrote:
| "The medium is the message"
|
| In fact it is a Telegram revolution, because Telegram is
| the tool that is allowing this rage to become organized.
| That doesn't minimize anything about the protesting or the
| political situation itself. That's not marketing, it's just
| recognizing the tool.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > Yes of course, without recording technology, in my view, we
| would not have successful type of investigative journalism
| that project Veritas has delivered.
|
| Your "successful investigative journalism" is more widely
| recognized as a "right-wing disinformation outfit". O'Keefe
| and his organization have been repeatedly shown to have
| fabricated stories, solicited fraudulent activity, and
| deceptively edited recordings. Their activities are
| politically motivated propaganda, not journalism.
| 75dvtwin wrote:
| Oh, that 'politically motivated propaganda' argument.
|
| That's what Lukashenko is using to imprison
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siarhei_Tsikhanouski .
|
| Who ran a blog and youtube channel, recording, often
| without the knowledge of the person he was talking too.
|
| It is the same style of investigative journalism as Project
| Veritas, O'Keefe are using to show the true colors of the
| people, actions and ideologies hiding, conveniently, behind
| a banner of a 'legitimate' political party (who also,
| unlike Lukashenko, have access to far greater resources,
| including Wikipedia to 'clean up')
|
| I hoped to get across 3 points with my previous post:
|
| a) what's happening in Belarus is systemic, medieval-style
| suppression of the populous, voter abuse, and political
| imprisonments.
|
| And the argument that used by Lukashenko, is the same as
| @dukswuff is used against Project Veritas...
|
| b) One of the imprisoned leaders, exposed the methods of
| the tyranny, using the same approach as investigative
| journalism (involving recordings) as Project Veritas,
| O'Keefe is doing in US.
|
| Technology is important there, but not more or equal to the
| heroism of the people doing it. And, at least for me, the
| more dare the retribution, the more heroic actions are of
| the journalist.
|
| c) Telegram marketing spin manipulating words, trying to
| assigning the heroism and suffering of the victims -- to
| their platform.
|
| Just like some in US are using heroism and suffering of the
| victims in Nazi concentration camps (who did not choose to
| go there), equating that to people crossing US border
| illegally and being detained.
|
| This is stealing of valor.
|
| It is being perpetrated in western media daily for many
| years, and often spills over to events like Democratic
| National Convention.
|
| ====
|
| I am also going add one more point.
|
| The statements Lukashenko is making about Byelorussian's
| duty to support him, so not dissimilar to the argument
| Biden is making about the duty of African-Americans to to
| support his candidacy.
|
| The marks are that similar.
| echelon wrote:
| > This type of valor stealing, is also happening when people
| call US border detention facilities as 'Nazi concentration
| camps'. For people whose family members went through a Nazi
| concentration camp, hearing such a comparing is painful.
|
| I was with you until this comment.
|
| What the Jews went through is horrible beyond words.
|
| What immigrant families are going through is also horrible.
|
| They may not be systematically murdered like the Jews being
| sent to gas chambers, and they may not be sterilized like the
| Uighurs, but they are still suffering. Families are being
| separated forever. Lost children will never be given back to
| their parents. That's not okay.
|
| Don't trivialize human suffering. Condemn it. Don't turn it
| into an analogy where you can praise those that suffered the
| most. Who are you to know how any of this feels? We're not
| trying to win some contest here - the result we're after is
| the end of suffering.
| intpete wrote:
| Well said! Sadly, the importance of your message seems to
| have been overlooked in the usual HN game of one-upmanship.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| What was the revolutionary app during the Ukrainian protests? I
| remember reading almost the exact same article at that time,
| although then I was a little distracted because that
| revolutionairy app ended with Russia annexing Crimea. Guess that
| wasn't in the TOS?
| dschuetz wrote:
| I really hope the people of Belarus get the government they
| deserve.
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