
Telegram shuts down major Iranian anti government channel - chvid
https://mobile.twitter.com/durov/status/947179988213624832
======
paganel
Don't know why this isn't higher, imho this shows that Telegram is in the
hands of a state-actor (in this case Russia), I haven't seen Twitter taking
down any of the videos which showed people actively being violent against the
police forces.

Also, it seems like Iran has "temporarily cut internet access to mobile
phones, but full coverage was eventually restored."
([https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-warns-against-illegal-
gather...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-warns-against-illegal-gatherings-
protests-112847988.html)). I remember something similar was done by the Assad
regime in Syria just before the 2011 revolt (or around that time).

~~~
some_account
Its not that simple.

Snowden had some good comments here about Telegram in Iran:
[https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/947190333540061185](https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/947190333540061185)

Telegram can only exist in Iran if it allows itself to be censored, basically.
The alternative is for them to not exist at all in Iran.

The Iranian government cant force Twitter to do anything, but I assume they
can shut down the Telegram app completely in Iran since they control the phone
network and Internet there.

As long as the technical infrastructure for these apps are centralized, they
are easy to shut down.

~~~
teen
russian shill account?

~~~
mschuster91
No, you don't need to be a russian parrot in order to have this (in my opinion
perfectly valid) view on things.

The core problem is that the Internet is both centralized and decentralized at
the same time - while the Internet is able to route traffic away from broken
cables etc. easily, it is vulnerable to hostile actors who are able to control
an entire country's uplinks.

Something like Tor should have been built into the Internet from the
beginning... but it wasn't, as the Internet was built on the implicit trust
that no one would do harm.

------
bilkow
I agree that this is bad, considering that the country will answer with
violence anyway, but this seems to be aligned with telegram's position. From
the FAQ about takedown requests on public content:

"Please note that this does not apply to local restrictions on freedom of
speech. For example, if criticizing the government is illegal in some country,
Telegram won‘t be a part of such politically motivated censorship. This goes
against our founders’ principles. While we do block terrorist (e.g. ISIS-
related) bots and channels, we will not block anybody who _peacefully_
expresses alternative opinions."[0]

I believe that, if there were actually violence calls, they're being unbiased
by strictly following their own public rules.

[0] [https://telegram.org/faq#q-wait-0-o-do-you-process-take-
down...](https://telegram.org/faq#q-wait-0-o-do-you-process-take-down-
requests-from-third-parties)

~~~
KenanSulayman
I was member of that channel and they shared guides on how to build Molotov
cocktails. With 2 million people in there, I’d have taken it down as well.

~~~
vnchr
It’s unfortunate that a false flag operative could easily shut down a major
communication channel with posts like that—although I have no idea if that was
the case here. On Reddit, the role of moderators who remove content that’s
against site guidelines is crucial or else any community could be shut down by
rogue or infiltrating members.

~~~
bilkow
Only admins can post to telegram channels, they're like facebook pages. On
supergroups any user can post but admins can remove content, although I don't
believe it counts as public content, so they shouldn't (according to the FAQ
entry I listed above) take them down anyway.

------
swiley
Telegram is not the alternative to open chat systems that it's fans championed
it as.

It's a shame the iPhone won't let background applications run, before it
became popular even my mother was just fine using IRC to talk with the family.

~~~
throwanem
Set up a family bouncer. Palaver's good for iOS. I'm sure Android has good
clients too.

------
ankushnarula
"...for breaking terms of service by calling for violence"

------
guilhas
Yesterday was facebook for Israel. Fyi

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16035721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16035721)

