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Comment by lifeisloving

15 hours ago

I dont write off software because where the person that made it was born. I personally think thats the same thing as refusing to eat at a black owned resturaunt because of the owners skin color.

Seems like many people do this when it comes to russian tech. Im American and I certainly trust my data in the hands of a foriegn government/entity (which is not even the case for telegram), than my own. Even if it was a russian op (its not the Ukrainian military literally used telegram for years), the russian government cant touch me.

25 comments

lifeisloving

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maqp  2 hours ago

>I dont write off software because where the person that made it was born.

That's fine. I write it off because it by default leaks all of your content and metadata to the server, and then I ask why, and who is learning all that information and I do not like the answer.

>Seems like many people do this when it comes to russian tech

Yeah as a Finn it's not very hard to distrust Russia.

> Even if it was a russian op (its not the Ukrainian military literally used telegram for years)

You didn't prove anything with this, if anything, the fact that Ukraine banned using Telegram on the state officials devices, speaks the exact opposite: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78dwepw95do

>the russian government cant touch me

If it's a Russian op, they're collecting your entire life, your political opinions, your relationship issues, everything, in search of kompromat that they'd use to coerce you during recruiting.

ornornor  15 hours ago

Telegram is a double threat: the company is Russian and the founder was arrested then mysteriously released without any charges in France. Given why France wanted him and arrested him, the fact they released him a few days later with no charge annihilated the little shred of trust I had in this Russian piece of software, personally.

  • snek_case  9 hours ago

    I don't know why anyone is using telegram when there is signal. Also with all the issues around telegram and their founder, you'd probably be safer using whatsapp even... :/

    • ufmace  4 hours ago

      Telegram has way, way more features than Signal. First-class clients on every OS, much better behavior for large groups, far more sophisticated and granular permissions system for admins in groups, voice and video messages, folders for chats, etc.

      It also has way more security features too, such as the ability for any session to de-auth any other session, while on Signal, only one mobile device is your "primary", so you're screwed if you lose that. Also tons of detailed permissions for who is allowed to see what information of yours and add you to groups. The only thing Signal actually does better is E2EE for groups. I think it's simplistic and short-sighted that many tech people seem to think that "security" means E2EE and absolutely nothing else.

      5 replies →

    • writtenone  7 hours ago

      Telegram has channels, which are a one-to-many (thousands or millions of people) chat feature letting you have basically your own social feed.

      Lots of people follow channels for on the ground news reporting, especially since it's not censored or "advertiser friendly" like social media companies are incentivised to be.

      4 replies →

g-b-r  15 hours ago

You're sure you're replying to the right message? It doesn't mention any country or nationality...

Anyhow, people don't write off Telegram because it's Russian, but for many legitimate reasons.

There are indications that it could be much closer to the Russian government than they pretend, but that matters not because Russians are bad people, but because the current government of Russia is an aggressive dictatorship.

The Ukrainian military literally used Telegram for years and now literally banned it.

Maybe in part for this Ukrainian article: https://texty.org.ua/articles/112347/eight-signsof-danger-te...