I didn’t mean to say anything that Israel did was okay. But a lot of it is understandable, e.g. the ground operation was very well expected by everyone when it became clear the hostages are not getting released. No matter how you look at it, Gaza was not ready.
And if we consider the October attack itself, only some of it is understandable (“they couldn’t bear with oppression any longer” sentiment, which itself is problematic at best).
That didn’t worth it in my opinion. The level of international support is nowhere enough. And again, they could build defenses to decrease the number of victims.
Also the premise of “Israel is a monster” sentiment is hugely weakened by the monstrosity of the October attack itself.
a war they started.
There are chances the outcome would be different if hamas released hostages, or didn’t attack Israel on October 7th. Those things were not smart. It didn’t serve any good purpose. A smarter thing would have been to prepare for such an attack from Israel by building defenses to protect civilians at the very least.
Basically, a corporation owning such an open source project removes almost all positive things associated with “open source”. They’re using it for “look we are good” much more than for “we actually care about open source community”.
Russia holds considerable defense in depth.
I think you have no proofs. As a Russian, it’s insane to assume Russia would spend resources on keeping any meaningful defense far from borders. And from places Putin often visits, of course.
You seem to have a detailed opinion about something you hardly even used, or researched. It’s fine, you don’t have to like it and I don’t care. But I will point out mistakes.
Most people do use it for public communication only. Not in plain text. Telegram was popular even before it started circumventing anything.
Others didn’t try to circumvent much because Russian market is usually too small for any app to care. Telegram’s user base is historically huge is Russia.
If telegram or other parties can access it, is it truly encrypted?
If the website creator and others can access the content hiding behind SSL/HTTPS, is it truly encrypted? It’s similar with telegram, except they also don’t keep the raw data on servers etc.
I used telegram during all that time in Russia. It did circumvent the shit out of the RKN. I guess you used somewhat limited data to learn something from Russia.
Telegram chats are not e2e by design. There is no standard way to handle e2e in group chats, also most chats are public anyway. Chats are encrypted according to their docs. There are no unencrypted chats in telegram. It’s just that people like e2e and call anything that is not e2e “not encrypted”.
On April 16, 2018, the Russian government began blocking access to Telegram, an instant messaging service. The blocking led to interruptions in the operation of many third-party services, but practically did not affect the availability of Telegram in Russia. It was officially unblocked on June 19, 2020
Some say it was unblocked because they made a deal with Durov. Another opinion is that too many people and services including officials continued to rely on it even during the time it was blocked. Regardless, Telegram did a huge job on circumventing those blocks.
Aren’t e2e encrypted by default you mean.
That’s not an opinion. That’s the lack of it. Plus a few grams of whataboutism. You’re a victim of Russian propaganda agents.
find sensible solutions
For example? How do you do that with terrorists?
Russia’s anti-terrorism goals
You’ll say this is a quote. The fact that you rely on this very phrase is hilarious. Either Putin equals Russia for you or you accept that he is not a terrorist.
Telegram requires a phone number.
It does and it sucks. But you can still have adequate protection because knowing your number won’t help authorities much. They have to find you in some group they deem illegal for anything to happen. They must find your account first, then add your number and see if that’s your account. Telegram did some improvements on that issue at some point, so it should take much longer and more resources to do.
Also it’s relatively easy to get a sim card not tied to your passport in Russia. Also using a cheap sim from another country is also an option, since you can set up a cloud password so that even if someone has your sim they won’t access your data fully.
This might as well be a honey pot for trapping more lgbt people.
A service requirement of a telephone number is not a honey spot. But sure some groups are honey spots. Yes, authorities mainly operate within the service. It can get to overwhelming extent but that mist mean they don’t have real backdoor-like access.
It’s not a matter of finding a more private app. It’s about keeping a group and have an opportunity to expand it, reach more people who would need to be a part of it. Any app in Russia that is not telegram would be too obscure for that. For now it’s a perfect balance between privacy and reach.
I’d assume the average citizen has harder time.
Average Russian knows more about VPN than most others because of tons of restrictions. And telegram only helps with that by providing workaround and info about proxies.
doesn’t care about who can read and influence their communication
Groups chats are private by default, you have to change that by yourself to make it public. There is no evidence that anyone else would be able to read it whatsoever while it’s private. The only danger comes from actual members who may invite unwanted people or share screenshots of the conversation.
the company behind Telegram has been involved in various sketchy situations
That’s the only thing you have. Any other company that could provide a service with similar features would have to be involved in very similar sketchy situations and there is no way around that. Signal doesn’t care about public communication features which puts it into a whole different weight category. Also signal would hardly care to help Russians restore access if it gets blocked.
I wouldn’t bet my wellbeing
Not surprising. You’re clearly not Russian.
This is what happens when western people read such articles. They turn into denial. Telegram is basically the safest place in Russia’s digital space.
these people must have been living under a rock
Russians are very advanced when it comes to the internet. They spend more time in it because real life sucks more than in other countries.
Telegram has control over the content and channels
Doesn’t mean anything. Especially for groups who just want to communicate.
has been working with governments in the past
There is not enough evidence to support the probability of telegram making steps to make finding gay people easier for Russian authorities.
Like I said, apartheid part is irrelevant in a “dictatorship or not” definition. If most Israeli people don’t feel themselves being under a dictatorship then it is not a dictatorship. What the regime does towards Palestine and its citizens is another thing. In fact, if you insist on calling it a dictatorship based on what happens to Palestine and Palestinians I’d feel as if you would assume there is no Palestine outside of Israel.
Gaza population was steadily increasing for all these years. This doesn’t bode well with the “prison” sentiment in my opinion. They had institutions. They could teach their own population. Their actions could be more logical. Instead it seems they’ve been spreading terrorist propaganda (literally pushing their children to become merciless terrorists) and spending resources on building offensive tech instead of defenses. I can not justify actions of Israel (though I can understand why the ground operation was started) but there is no way I can agree that actions of hamas had any logical ground.