• NateNate60@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    What is the charge? For operating a messaging platform? A succulent private messaging platform?

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Allowing criminal activity to go unmoderated on the platform. Including but not limited to fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime and promotion of terrorism.

        • Altima NEO
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          4 months ago

          Oh damn. He did? I just watched a video about him in modern times.

          • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            Yeah his death is why people have been talking about him over the last week or so.

      • bonus_crab@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        true but if its truly end to end encrypted it cant be moderated.

        between this and mega its clear they want your files easy to reach and access, privacy and security be damned.

        the internet should be free for the same reason we have the 2nd amendment - its necessary for exposing and opposing tyranny.

        so kill telegram and watch criminal orgs and militant groups just spin up their own servers or use encrypted radio or just encrypt messages themselves to send through any other platform.

        its the cops and feds job to investigate these people, they didnt need a fucking all seeing AI to do it in the prior century and they dont now.

        i mean seriously what happened to sting operations? its so damn easy to catch predators n shit on discord, and these telegrams are easy enough to join. do actual detective work smfh .

      • istanbullu@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        promotion of terrorism.

        You know the accusations are bogus when you see this.

        • claudiop@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Just because it is most of the time bullshit, it doesn’t mean that is not a thing ever. The “think of the children” doesn’t imply that legit application of child-protection laws are not a thing.

          Telegram is for example known for Russian military bloggers, which are, in fact, promoting terrorism.

        • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Even as a general user I’ve come across illegal shit on Telegram, so they clearly aren’t even attempting to moderate. It would be absolutely zero surprise that obvious terrorist organizations like ISIL would be using the platform for some communication and recruiting. And that doesn’t even get into subjective shit like Russian aggression and attacks on civilians in Ukraine, which many would consider terrorist attacks.

          • deafboy@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            The usefulnes of a system is often measured by the amount of illegal shit it can handle. Nobody would really use a stick or a fire if it required a law enforcement officer standing behind you the whole time.

            On the other hand, Telegram was always intentionally not secure, nor private. So it’s not that thay can’t comply. They just decided not to (as far as we know).

            - - tinfoil hat on - -

            This is not really about moderation. The europeans just want to evasdrop on the russians.

            - - tinfoil hat off - -

      • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I hope you realise that the comment you replied to is really just a reference to the Succulent Chinese Meal video.

  • MudMan@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    See, this is a tough one. Privacy concerns are legitimate, but also, when people keep reminding that Meta was a key player in acts of terror and genocide what is often not said is that a lot of it happened over Whatsapp groups and direct messages, as in India and Burkina Faso. Direct messaging apps are also social media.

    I don’t have a solution for this. It’s a mess of an issue and honestly, I don’t know that I trust anybody with a strong, aggressive position one way or the other.

    • Blisterexe
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      4 months ago

      Its actually because telegram isnt encrypted, and the ceo didnt reply to takedown requests of cp and drug exchanges

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      4 months ago

      Direct messaging apps are also social media.

      How do you define social media in a way that includes DMs but doesn’t include basically all communication?

      • noli@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        One thing that has always felt different about Telegram in particular was the large, public groups. I’ve never used WhatsApp but you can’t really get the same virality on something like Signal or plain SMS/RCS/etc. If you can widely share “rich” media, it kinda fits the bill for social media imo.

    • kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de
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      4 months ago

      I think 30+ people died directly in India due to fake message rumors on WhatsApp last year. The rumours were basically of child kidnapping rings doing the rounds and if someone new wandered in into a secluded community, they would be suspected and in rare cases, killed. Since India saw an exceptional implosion in smartphone usage in recent years and WhatsApp is the most popular messaging platform there, it’s a travesty that it happened.

  • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
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    4 months ago

    But by default the comms aren’t end-to-end encrypted. Isn’t desiderable that criminals use telegram rather than signal?

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Not being end-to-end encrypted is meaningless to law enforcement if Telegram refuses to turn over the chat contents (which they do). Law enforcement can’t just eavesdrop on the conversation without Telegram’s cooperation. The chat contents are still secured by TLS from the user’s device to the Telegram servers.

      Smart professional criminals rarely use Telegram for this stuff anyway. There’s WhatsApp and plenty of other popular platforms of end-to-end encrypted

        • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
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          4 months ago

          It’s perfect for criminal use! Unbreakable encryption between two parties! 100% safe, believe me.

          IMHO not a coincidence that the app constantly prompts to save unencrypted backups to Google drive for “safety”

      • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        Smart criminal use Briar or Signal, not WhatsApp, lol, which totally has a backdoor for the government.

      • kungen@feddit.nu
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        4 months ago

        if Telegram refuses to turn over the chat contents (which they do)

        Source?

        Law enforcement can’t just eavesdrop on the conversation without Telegram’s cooperation

        Why do you think Roskomnadzor gave up their blockage plans in 2018? And then made their own official government channels? “It’s technically difficult for us” has never stopped Roskomnadzor before.

        • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          The source is this article.

          It’s not just “technically difficult” to eavesdrop. Properly implemented, it’s computationally impossible to eavesdrop on a connection secured with TLS.

          • kungen@feddit.nu
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            4 months ago

            The source is this article.

            There’s nothing in the article that says they refuse to disclose chat contents. In my own experience they often do so when receiving a proper request from governments, providing at least the last 24 hours of messages.

            My comment regarding Roskomnadzor has nothing to do with encryption, but rather Telegram cooperates with them, and that’s why they stopped trying to block the platform. A little bit of reading comprehension would do you wonders.

        • istanbullu@lemmy.ml
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          4 months ago

          The fact that Signal has not run into legal trouble when Telegram has.

          Also Signal has some really shady practices, such as rejecting and killing all third party clients.

          • lemmytellyousomething@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            4 months ago

            The algorithm for the end to end encryption is open source as far as I know. Should be easy for security researchers to prove that something is manipulated…

            • istanbullu@lemmy.ml
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              4 months ago

              Signal had long periods of blackouts when they did not publish server side code. Calling Signal open source is really a stretch.

              • lemmytellyousomething@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                4 months ago

                I’m calling the E2E algirithm open source. That’s the reason why WhatsApp is using it, too. As long as the message is correctly encrypted for E2E on the client side, it should not matter what the server is doing as far as I know.

            • JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              The algorithm for the end to end encryption is open source as far as I know. Should be easy for state actors to read through it and break it

              Ftfy

          • XioR112@lemmy.ml
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            4 months ago

            Signal have been blocked in several countries including Russia and Telegram has more users there and it isn’t blocked.

          • ᗪᗩᗰᑎ@lemmy.ml
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            4 months ago

            The fact that Signal has not run into legal trouble when Telegram has.

            Because Signal cooperates as much as they can with law enforcement. Signal happily gives all the data they have and thankfully, for its users, the only data they have is the date/time the account was created and the date (not time) a client last pinged their servers; both in unix timestamp format, they don’t even convert it to a proper date.

            Additionally, Signal has no “public groups” like Telegram. Everything’s private, end-to-end encrypted by default.

            Also Signal has some really shady practices, such as rejecting and killing all third party clients.

            Yeah, so that’s outdated misinformation:

            Three of these have existed for multiple years and have not been asked to stop development. The gurk-rs dev even commented (on reddit, unfortunately I can’t find the source) that it reports to Signal’s server as a non-official client and that if the Signal devs wanted to block it, they could easily do so.

          • Possibly linux
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            4 months ago

            That’s total BS

            Also Signal is US based so it isn’t under French jurisdiction

  • Kokesh@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Seriously? Arresting messaging app CEO for content of people’s chats? I guess pigs are pissed, that they can’t crack the encryption.

    • XioR112@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      Encryption on Telegram only works in 1 on 1 chats and is turned off by default so no one use it.

      • istanbullu@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        This is nonsense. All internet communication is encrpyted these days.

        • lemmytellyousomething@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 months ago
          1. When talking abou encryption for chat apps, it’s uaually about E2E…

          2. We are usually talking about open groups on Telegram. I can join them. You can join them. Police can join them. Everyone can read everything afterwards.

          Your connection to the Lemmy server you are using is also encrypted. But I can read your response anyway… So, no E2E…

        • JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          You should really brush up on how the internet and computers work, this is a scarily bad way to think about your Internet traffic

          • dev_null@lemmy.ml
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            4 months ago

            It’s technically correct, the same way Wikipedia is encrypted, because you access it over an encrypted HTTPS connection. Doesn’t make it any less public.

            Telegram is also encrypted, but not end to end encrypted (in most cases), and of course Telegram can see your messages, and public group chats are public. But yes, it is all encrypted. Just not in a way useful to this conversation.

    • lemmytellyousomething@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      You don’t need to crack down encryption for most of the platform. There are people in open groups who sometimes post illegal stuff.

      If someone posts that they want to see person XY dead, it should not make a difference whether it’s on Reddit, Lemmy or in an open Telegram group…

      The least we can expect is some kind of moderation like on Reddit or here.

  • poo@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    On one hand, that’s awful and Telegram should continue to exist totally unmoderated.

    Oh the other, anybody rich enough to arrive in a private jet belongs in jail for being a total psychopath.

    • Possibly linux
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      4 months ago

      This is more of a 80° wall.

      A very sad day. Rip the French

  • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    He was travelling from Azerbaijan, where he had been meeting with Putin. There is a theory that he knew he would be arrested and chose to go there to avoid retaliation and falling out of a window.

  • istanbullu@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    you know Telegram is secure when governments are trying to arrest the founder.

    The French kidnapping of Pavel Durov is a huge violation of human rights.

    • claudiop@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Alternatively: It is not (and generally not even encrypted) and he just happened to be in contempt.

      Plenty of military-oriented and shady-business going in in there.

      There’s still the possibility that the authorities wanted to go after specific someones with a proper warrant and Durov blocked it. No country on earth goes for that.

      We’ll get to know the charges soon enough.

  • Rimu@piefed.social
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    4 months ago

    During my time as an amateur disinfo researcher I found that ALL the fascist groups are on Telegram. Also all the antivaxers, qanon nuts, maga, conspiracy theorists the lot. One big fash melting pot.

    Telegram needs to be shut down, years ago.

    • istanbullu@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      Telegram needs to be shut down, years ago.

      This is textbook fascism.

        • istanbullu@lemmy.ml
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          4 months ago

          You are the fascist who we should not tolerate.

          Telegram is used by almost 1 billion people. Yet you want to shut it down because of political disagreement with what some of those people say.

          • ᗪᗩᗰᑎ@lemmy.ml
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            4 months ago

            A billion people tricked into using malware is still a billion people using malware. Telegram is a Russian spyware and misinformation machine. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/columns/2024/08/27/7472194/

            Putin’s Mouthpiece Demands Release of Durov (a likely fsb agent himself)

            Pavel Durov has secretly traveled to Russia more than 60 times between 2014 to 2022

            Durov concealed that he crossed the border more than 50 times from 2015 to 2022

            • Despite the story that “the FSB took Vkontakte away from Pavel in 2014”, his relationship with the Russian authorities 2015-present was good enough > that he was not afraid of being detained while entering, reentry& long stays & operations in Russia.

            • In response to the publication about his possible ties to Russia, Durov deliberately deceived Ukrainians and the general public, claiming that he > was an exile in Russia and that Telegram had “no ties” to Russia.

            • As proof of his lack of ties to Russia, Pavel claimed that he was no longer a Russian entrepreneur, had dual citizenship in France & the UAE.

            • After his arrest in France and the statements of the Russian authorities, we know that he has a valid Russian passport.

            • Russian authorities are demanding his release.

            Pavel Durov, telegrams owner, repeatedly crossed the border and concealed these 60+ trips into mother russia. For those familiar with Durov’s official position that he has become an exile and cannot return to his country, this fact alone should be interesting, as it probably means that Durov was not telling the truth about his conflict with the Russian authorities.

            But go ahead, keep using Telegram, товарищ.

            • istanbullu@lemmy.ml
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              4 months ago

              Look another American obsessed with Russia!

              The world does not revolve around your pissing contest with the Russians.

              • ᗪᗩᗰᑎ@lemmy.ml
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                4 months ago

                Look another American obsessed with Russia!

                A single comment on Russia’s bullshit spyware tactics does not equate with obsession. Are you going to refute the facts or continue to troll?

    • American_Jesus@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      And you think that’s only on Telegram, there’s also groups on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram… are they going to arrest Mark Zuckerberg?

      If Telegram is shutdown today, those groups will move to other platforms, it could be also Lemmy.

      Is not about ilegal activities, but privacy, you can have a private (E2EE) or one where governments watch all private messages.

      • claudiop@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        So, instead of fixing the cesspool we just designate a place for them? Why not just going after the ones committing crimes and state that big public groups must have moderation for basic shit? (Like no death threats and that kind of “moderation”, not a "I don’t like your opinions)