Yet more glaring hypocricy with Telegram

Russia decided to try and ban Telegram for 2 years. At the time it happened every free speech warrior and the entire alphabet soup of advocacy groups for journalists were going off about how the world was ending.

France, one of the largest NATO member states arrests the founder (1 guess as to who asked for that arrest) after he found out someone was paying his lead programmer to put a backdoor in the program behind is back.

The reaction from the west and the organizations who lost their shit over the Russian ban?

Total and complete silence.

Interesting how that works.

I guess free speech and journalism only counts if it is approved in Washington, Paris, and Brussels first.

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Elessar · 26-30, M

I'm conflicted on this specific issue because

1) as you say, this concretizes the possibility of the state limiting free speech, but at the same time

2) allowing these platforms to be completely unrestricted and de-facto above the law does immense damage as well; see also what Twitter/X, Facebook and friends did to the political discourse, and how many far-right lunatics they've radicalized.

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Ghostrunner66 · 56-60, M

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow I know, my unit was support to the School the Americas at Fort Benning in 80's. 😁

PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

@Ghostrunner66 Yikes.

SunshineGirl · 36-40, F

The two scenarios are completely different. The first relates to an internal power struggle within Russia. The second to the refusal of a French citizen to take reasonable measures to reduce illicit content (in particular child abuse material) on his company's platform or cooperate with French law enforcement agencies to mitigate social harm. There is no conspiracy, however Telegram may wish to present it. It si.ply involves a breach of national law.

PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

@SunshineGirl Yeah no. A ban on a service is not a power struggle no matter how hard people want to pretend it was. Furthermore even if it was it has nothing to do with the issue that was raise.

And a law like that is absurd if you think about it for 2 seconds. It is only useful to strong arm literally any online service because the minute you have more than 3 people using a service you probably have at least one shady person.

Also this was about forcing someone to let them use their service for surveillance not some "save the children" nonsense.

And by that same logic the CEO of Google should be in chains over Youtube.

SunshineGirl · 36-40, F

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow

And a law like that is absurd if you think about it for 2 seconds. It is only useful to strong arm literally any online service because the minute you have more than 3 people using a service you probably have at least one shady person.

That's a basic responsibility of a CEO, is it not? It's like me setting up a convenience store and saying it's inevitable that my premises is going to be used for prostitution or weed cultivation. It's an absurd situation in which someone can make vast profits largely on the back of absolving themselves of basic regulation. None of the other CEOs (with the possible exception of Musk) take the same dogmatic approach of complete non cooperation and effectively bury their head in the sand.

PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

@SunshineGirl Um no. Otherwise literally every social media site CEO would be in prison or on charges.

And we both know comparing it to a corner store is ridiculous.

Especially with an encrypted messaging service when the entire point of the business model is that the CEO cannot know what their users are doing.

Oh and fun fact. When prostitution happens in the parking lot of a business they arrest the people committing the crime. Not the person who owns the parking lot.

So even your hypothetical doesn't work.

Really? How many cases of users on youtube in the last 6 months have been outed as sexual predators. And literally nothing has been done by Google and yet the DOJ doesn't consider them responsible.

Quit pretending this is not entirely political and making excuses for a surveillance state.

Should the NSA put cameras in your bedroom too? If you have nothing to hide than that should not be an issue.

That is the basis of your argument here.

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PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

@Khenpal1 Riiight. The same country that banned Telegram until last year.

Oh and nobody controls the app. That is the entire point and why everyone is taking turns trying to bully the founder.

Khenpal1 · M

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Totally differ from your opinion. So does CIA
[media=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAACPCPMLMU]

PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

@Khenpal1 Well if you believe the CIA you are asking to be lied to.

And random YouTube videos are not a great source.

And it is not just opinion. End to end encryption has a definition.

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