
Telegram Suffers DDOS, Criticism For Enabling Human Rights Lawyers In China - pmatrix
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/13/did-china-take-down-messaging-app-telegram/
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JohnyLy
You can't be big in China if you don't have local contacts. If you are a small
startup or a small company, you are fine. But if you are a big one, you will
be blocked unless you have political contacts. Then, once your company is
blocked; a Chinese company is going to create the exact same service but with
a lot of censure added to it.

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sschueller
Maybe it is now time for them to open the server side so we can run our own
federated nodes.

They did say that they may open up the server side. Maybe this is the only way
to keep the network from running and preventing governments from blocking it.
[1]

[1] [https://telegram.org/faq](https://telegram.org/faq)

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emsy
I like Telegram and that's why I wouldn't want it to happen. This would result
in a mess, similar to Blockchain currencies. Suddenly everyone thinks they
need to roll their own. That is, unless everyone would still communicate on
the same platform, but I don't think Telegram was built with distributed
servers in mind.

~~~
sschueller
I am not sure that this would result in everyone trying to roll out their own.
The reason that is happening with bitcoin is because of the direct possibility
of financial gain.

BitTorrent works well and has not split into hundreds of clone protocols.

The way skype used to work may also be a possibility where there are super
nodes outside of the main cloud.

~~~
timboslice
> The way skype used to work

Those were the good ole days... I hate the new skype.

Also, it's 2015, can Skype stop leaking subscriber IP information? Someone can
resolve your IP from your username without even messaging or adding you as a
friend. Seems like a design flaw to me

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higherpurpose
To me the more interesting thing is that the Chinese government is making such
a big deal about a relatively unknown app such as Telegram, but isn't saying
or doing anything at all about iMessage, which is _supposed_ to be end-to-end
encrypted (by default even, unlike Telegram).

Are you telling me that those same lawyers don't have iPhones and don't use
iMessage even more than they do Telegram? Because I don't believe that.

So either the Chinese government has just recognized there's nothing they can
do about banning Apple's iMessage - or Apple already provides them with a way
to look at iMessages.

I'm inclining to believe it's more the latter.

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johnnydoebk
>> Are you telling me that those same lawyers don't have iPhones

SUDDENLY, you know nothing about China and other developing & 3rd world
countries.

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olalonde
Not sure what you mean but Apple sells more iPhones in China than the US.

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themeekforgotpw
The United States censors links to foreign propaganda as well. They DDOS sites
sometimes, especially ISIL-active forums, etc. I don't know if they DDOS state
sponsored sites - they are probably more stealthy (something the Chinese don't
care about).

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themeekforgotpw
It's true. Downvotes don't change that.

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cbd1984
Downvotes for making an irrelevant _tu quoque_ don't imply people disagree
with your statement.

~~~
themeekforgotpw
Well it's not irrelevant tu quoque.

Telegram is like ZunZuneo and other initiatives by Western governments to
force their adversary to choose to either censor something and take a PR hit
or have their countrymen radicalised.

I ought to have made that link clear. I apologize.

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dnqthao
If China wants to do it, they will just block Telegram servers. Why bother to
DDOS?

~~~
est
Because people would like to think China as a single entity acting in a clear
single minded way using a single method.

The fact is China is the largest bureaucratic country, the DDoS may or may not
coming from any administrative authority layer, or just business strategy to
spur your competition to anti-China side, so government will act accordingly
and take care the competition for you.

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cpncrunch
I'm surprised Telegram hasn't done anything about this yet, as they have been
having DDoS attacks since September 2014.

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mahouse
And what can they do against this exactly?

~~~
known
Install [http://wiki.debian.org/iptables](http://wiki.debian.org/iptables)

~~~
cpncrunch
Is that sarcasm, or are you being serious?

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jsingleton
Not much they could do about this but it's resulting in a lot of bad reviews
on the app stores. It would be in their interest to do better with
communication to users. They are in the communication sector after all!

Maybe they should respond to the reviews directly in the app stores or put
something in the app which explains what is going on. Not sure if they have
the ability to broadcast message affected users but it could be as simple as
implementing a better connection error message. Most of their users aren't
going to read their blog or the tech press.

