Telegram is the only platform where I have been able to get uncensored footage of the Ukraine conflict from a civilian perspective. Of course there is a lot of propaganda, but I get to see the destruction and war crimes from both sides with my own eyes.
I used to follow ASBMil on Twitter before Twitter banned it :/
I can't vouch for others but ASBMil was doing accurate reporting. Just searching for ASBMil on twitter will show many saying that Twitter is censoring accounts that do not repeat the accepted Western narrative.
Lol isn't Asbmil the one with the legendary fall of 2021 tweet saying „US intel is trying to fool you all, Russia will never invade, idiots“?
Also, if the „western narrative“ is one of condemning the most blatant international military aggression since WWII for the gain of a handful of oligarch… I guess I am pro-Western then.
I really can't see any reason to subscribe to any other narrative here.
This is just a random speculation. There is no hard or even indirect evidence that Durov cooperates with FSB in any way. Even Whatsapp which belongs to Facebook is still available in Russia despite their explicit pro-Ukrainian stance.
Facebook's been extensively cooperative with Russia, so I hardly see a 'even Whatsapp (which belongs to Facebook)' argument there. It's probably more of a 'Russia cannot continue to pay us, so best wishes guys, you can have advocacy again when you're able to pay for it'. It's just business.
The smaller services that go UP against the tech giants and have Russian backing, those will be cooperating with Russia. I don't know if Telegram counts as that or not, as I haven't looked into it. But they exist, and a lot of 'em are left scrambling now as the money dries up.
Durov doesn’t ban Russian government channels calling to literally nuke US and EU, posting fake news, etc. FSB easily tracks anti-regime/opposition channel authors by copying SIM-cards and getting access. Durov also doesn’t call war in Ukraine as war. He exchanged Russian userbase.
Killing WhatsApp will be disastrous for the Russian economy. The effect will probably be on par if not greater than all other sanctions combined.
Every single daily thing is done via WhatsApp. The state realizes that which is why they carved an explicit (if a completely made-up) exception for it when they went after Instagram, Facebook and Meta. You don't want to inconvenience your brainwashed masses that much or they could be shaken out of their nirvana and start looking closely at what's going on.
Several years of blocking attempts hardly count as “untouched” in my book, but neither WhatsApp nor Signal shared anything either; in fact I don’t think any Western social network is in compliance in any practical sense.
In this case, self hosting matrix within Russia would present the same legal vulnerabilities. Maybe a bit obscurity, but at same time it's signalling to FSB that it maybe be worth investigating.
the entire point is you want to start by gather your existing friends and family in their respective groups, and create your own communities, and gradually let them invite other people who they know and can trust
It’s a bit disingenuous to say that Signal has nothing to share. Signal has access logs as well as metadata about the phone number, the name given on the app, group memberships, etc.
With Signal, it’s also trivial to find out if someone is using it by adding their number to one’s address book. Then they can ask Signal for access and other information. That’s not easily possible with Telegram (there are settings to prevent this).
That said, Telegram does store all non-secret chats in an accessible form (for it) on its servers.
Also, my point about finding who uses Signal and the access logs (though it’s not a historic log, for which I stand corrected) stand — Signal does store the last access information.
Well Signal is sitting on a centralized Google Cloud instance and Google can just issue a ToS violation, with the metadata that it is collecting about certain users on Signal that the three-letter agencies are looking for, including logs and phone numbers and that can essentially force Google to get them shutdown.
Even without it, Google can shutdown any instance whenever it wants to on its own terms since that is another private platform and can choose to do business with whoever they want to.
I think OP may be sloppily confusing Signal and Matrix here.
The link for the case for a link between Matrix and Israel is there : https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html
"Matrix is not a community-based software, it was born [00] in Amdocs [01], a multinational corporation founded in Israel.
On the Internet we find many pieces of information connecting Amdocs with Israel’s Intelligence [02][03][04]. We do not know if it is because they wanted to wash their image, but allegedly Amdocs does not own the project anymore. A new organization, New Vector, was created for Matrix. Nevertheless the same people work there [05] and the project keeps being generously funded [06]."
Talking of sloppiness, that hackea.org article is a huge steaming pile of FUD about Matrix.
For what it’s worth, the team who came up with Matrix was originally based in two separate startups: one in the UK doing VoIP, one in France doing mobile dev. Both got acquired by Amdocs in 2010, but we ended up forming an independent “incubated startup” first to build telco apps, and then we came up with the idea of Matrix in ~2013. We then built out Matrix until 2017 when Amdocs killed our funding, having run out of patience for what amounted to generous FOSS philanthropy.
We then set up New Vector (now Element) as an entirely independent UK/FR startup, and have received zero funding from Amdocs since. To be crystal clear: Amdocs has zero privileged influence or control over Matrix (or Element, for that matter), and has zero access to the Matrix servers we operate as Element. And besides - the whole point of Matrix is that you can and should run your own servers so you can pick who to trust, even if you don’t trust the project itself.
They have a clear picture of users' social networks because of their dubious requirement that people provide them with working mobile numbers. Who speaks to whom, how frequently, during what times and what days of the week etc. Incredibly valuable and revealing data.
The opposite is the truth. The signal servers don't know who talks to whom, and they chose phone number as identifier specifically so the app could use your local address book for contacts and not store your contacts server side.
Are you real? There is no need to transmit a mobile phone number to a remote service in order for an iOS or Android application to get access to locally stored contacts. You do not need to receive a "verification SMS" to allow the application to access your contacts.
Your evidence is that the signal app client knows your phone number and can see your contacts list and your groups and your chat messages, and if it is malicious, it could just send all that to the server which could just store it in plaintext and turn it over to anyone who asks. But people have reverse engineered the app and it doesn't do that.
Pardon, but you're completely lost. The service knows your mobile phone number because the app requires you to provide it in order to activate your Signal account. After you've provided your mobile number the Signal service sends you an SMS with a verification code, and the app asks you to enter that code. Your account is unusable until you comply with this procedure. Since the service is passing messages between users, those who run the service also know which people communicate with eachother - because a valid mobile number is tied to each and every Signal user account.
I have no idea what you're rambling about regarding people having "reversee engineered the application". There's no reverse engineering required, as it's entirely open source.
Isn't that the law in Russia?
Every ISP is required to have the SORM (Russian ECHELON) lawful interception boxes in their network.
So anything with servers in Russia will get their traffic intercepted to begin with and then FSB will pressure them for more indepth database access.
This has always meant that Telegram was not suitable for anything requiring secrecy or privacy.
This doesn’t really look like a trustworthy publication and the post doesn’t actually point to anything specific changing on the platform. I guess anyone could say stuff on the internet these days, it doesn’t mean it’s true.
Text is in Russian, but nowadays it shouldn't be a problem.
Just in case, Google Translate:
Oleg Matveychev, deputy chairman of the committee on information policy, information technology and communications, told Podyom that as long as the messenger is politically neutral, they will not touch it, and there is no need to become biased by Telegram.
“Durov found a compromise with the FSB. Not an agreement, not that he unequivocally said “come in, do whatever you want in my household”, but managed to convince him that people's lives are important and that terrorists are negotiating through Telegram.
Requests within the framework of operational activities are transferred there if terrorists or someone is under control. Telegram installed equipment to be able to watch all the dangerous subjects.”
This is a claim from a Russian member of parliament. Given that they all have been selected by Kremlin, and are there to just rubber stamp whatever has been sent to them from the Kremlin, they are all just nobodies without any knowledge or authority. There is no reason to trust this claim at the moment.
It is true that in my opinion Durov himself is a bit shady and some actions of Telegram were a bit weird (i.e. in the beginning of the war against Ukraine), but right now it's Telegram is certainly the easiest way in Russia to access independent voices.
Both still up if you live in a place that respects free speech. Not telegrams fault that they are forced to respect certain local law.
Also a bird told me that you need to write blocked channel names backwards if want to see what your gov does not want you to see.
These channels are only blocked if you have "the wrong" phone number (blame the local gov)
So other people mirror these blocked channels and to easy find them, they "mirror" the name too.
Its basically the Streisand effect in action.
We have deep respect for languages, but HN is an English-language site, so posts here need to be in English.
That may require waiting until a good English-language article appears, but the more significant the topic is, the more (and sooner) this is likely to happen.
Telegram channel "Код Дурова" asked a source close to Telegram what they thought of Matveichev's words - "Clowns" (https://t.me/d_code/13701)
Keep in mind that they are paid for correct answers. Reminding how Elvira Nabiulina (head of the Central Bank of Russia) talks about the good economic situation and stability in Russia.
Durov has been on exile for years because he refused to cooperate in the past and he made a statement about this. You can read his statement on his telegram account. https://t.me/durov
