turns out durov’s bullshit is bullshit. huh.

  • rdri@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I’m Russian, have a good knowledge about protest activity. Amount of people being unlawfully arrested, prosecuted, and jailed, is abnormally big. Yet, with this amount of cases you’d guess there will be at least some links or evidence of Telegram being a career, or a link that allowed to find certain users and arrest them. Such a case would be a huge deal for a lot of people. There is no such case as far as I’m aware.

    Telegram is a platform that is used by both prey and a hunter. It doesn’t actively try to protect the prey. It does contain abilities that one could utilize to protect themselves. But it certainly does not help the hunter. Hunter can try to utilize various tools that would use Telegram, and help them get the data on the prey. But that data would not be exclusive. It won’t be a result of Telegram saying “we got your request for this user, here is the data that they hide, enjoy”. It would be a public data from public chats, or data that has been manufactured using social engineering. Telegram is not a side in this process, it’s a field.

    There are other platforms that really provide data (private data, or data not easily reachable) by request from authorities, we know it and avoid them. That would be VK. It was created by Durov, but now it’s operated by authorities basically.

    So when I see stuff like “owner of Telegram servers had some links to FSB”, “someone could get your data if they monitor your traffic” etc., it doesn’t strike me. Those have nothing to do with the “Telegram shares your data with authorities” narrative, which remains unproven. Durov is a creator of VK that now haunts on Russians, he is not a genius I would like him to be. But Telegram administration doesn’t seem to share the data I want to keep secret with anyone, for now.

    • glitching@lemmy.mlOP
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      3 days ago

      your argument boils down to “the fully functional and loaded gun is in this weirdo’s holster and he won’t use it”.

      the whole point is not relying on the benevolence of the weirdos out there and not letting them even be in the position to do any harm. encrypt my 1on1 comms and I don’t give a fuck what happens in the pedo/terror/carding/etc public groups. ample time to implement that in the past decade+ and be on par with practically every messenger out there. but he/they won’t implement it, they insist on all your shit being in the “cloud”, in plaintext, forever. there is no scenario where there’s not a malicious intent behind that.

      I’ve been using Telegram since the early days. it was phenomenal vs the crap of its day - magical, even. like many, I was enamored with the vision of durov the folksy hero battling the forces of evil (in a bozo nightmare) and bequeathing us this tech marvel.

      but I can’t trust it with anything any more. if weirdo can’t be trusted about some stuff, then he can’t be trusted with anything. enough for me, YMMV.

      • rdri@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        No, my argument is “this argument about a gun being used is invalid. It’s not used for now”.

        I’m pretty sure if there would be enough demand for strong encryption there would be OTR forks of Telegram that would become popular. There is no such thing now. People use Telegram for stuff that is not “1on1 talks that I want to be strongly protected” in overwhelming majority of cases. People choose convenience. Encryption is useless when you are getting reported on by people in your chats or when you don’t know what you’re doing. Stupidity breaks any encryption, see that latest Signal case.

        • glitching@lemmy.mlOP
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          3 days ago

          except, implementing E2EE via 3rd party FOSS clients is explicitly against Telegram’s TOS, which I’m gonna assume you already know as you’re parroting weirdo’s stance “all crypto is broken by NSA, so we’re better off without”. take care.

          • rdri@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            No, I’m not saying that.

            First time I read about such thing being included in TOS. Care to link something relevant? I can’t imagine how they are going to control that or ban any client or wipe data transmitted by them.

            • glitching@lemmy.mlOP
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              3 days ago

              you must’ve me confused with someone who does shit on your behest, go find out yourself.

              this is just for onlookers, as it’s obvious it’s weirdo’s shill: the term in the ToS is “all comms must be readable by all other clients” which an E2EE capable client would be in breach of and would be promptly kicked off telegram’s infra, as was mentioned by those same FOSS developers in lemmy threads regarding that subject. as for you, plonk.

              • rdri@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                It doesn’t work like that. Encrypted messages will not become unreadable for other clients. They will become undecryptable for users of other clients.