[vldchk]

Here is the thing: Durov lies.

There is no law in Russia which forces him to ban that channel, and no concept of “silent days” anymore.

Russian authorities has NEVER asked Telegram to remove anything. They pushed Google and Apple to remove links to Navalny application from search and from Apple Store (and Apple removes it only for Russia users, btw, unlike Telegram removes it for everyone), and Telegram was absolutely never in the picture and never asked to do a thing publicly. Just search Russian authorities speakers. They never bring Telegram into the picture.

Durov shamelessly lies. He pretends his application is a speech freedom, but it is not.

When there was a Telegram channel posting information about Belarus policemen who torture their own people — they ban it. When there is still a channel where white men posting personal details of women and attack them — no action.

Why Durov lies?

Because after SEC issued a claim that TON is a security and killed TON as a project, he owed ton of money to investors, including American. He had a real risk of being sued.

Where did he find money to pay investors back? He found them in Dubai, Qatar and Russia. He issued Telegram bonds and buyers of those bonds are affiliated with Russia structures like VTB Capital bank or Russian Government investment fund named “Russian Fund of Direct Investments”.

Moreover, few years ago, Russian authorities tried to ban Telegram. There was a massive campaign against the application, but then all things I mentioned happened, and SURPRISE Russia officially removed Telegram from the list of inappropriate applications and stoped attempts to ban it. Even now after the election, Russia published a list of websites whom they are going to ban because they didn’t stop spread of Navalny information. There WhatsApp and Viber in the list. But no Telegram.

For me it sounds very very directly: Durov lies. He takes money from Russia government to cover his costs from TON failure and in return he, for example, bans Navalny Telegram Bot even while he a) wasn’t asked; b) Apple and Google wasn’t asked to ask Telegram; c) law he mentioned doesn’t exist anymore.

There is no more free Telegram. Remove it now and stay safe

[twelve40]

what you wrote in the first part is incorrect.

The law that prohibits campaigning during the election is still very much there, just like in many other countries, just not one day in advance like it used to be - this is debunked in the other thread - https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4800223 Btw, strange you didn't quote any sources for your claim - just a claim.

> Russian authorities has NEVER asked Telegram to remove anything

Yes, he starts the article by saying "has to follow rules set by Apple and Google", so he is not even talking about the Russian authorities. Apple and Google have been well known for swiftly taking down the apps that they think are troublesome for them.

Finally, Telegram was a massive channel for Belarus protests - in fact, Telegram was probably the main coordination mechanism for those - have you ever heard about Nexta?

[SergeAx]

Do you read Nexta recently? It became a travel news feed with videos of Canaries volcano and ads.

[seniorivn]

>and buyers of those bonds are affiliated with Russia structures like VTB Capital bank or Russian Government investment fund named “Russian Fund of Direct Investments”.

As far as i know, it's not true(meaning there are no signs/proof of that). It's entirely possible, durov does have connections in russian elite, after all he was the creator of vk.com russian most popular social network. Vk was owned by russian oligarchs most of it's life at least partly. At the end of durov involvement with vk, he had some harsh clashes with oligarchs/regime, but ended up making a deal(and got paid well, even if not as well as he should've been). So he certainly knows how to deal with them, but i seriously doubt he enjoyed it, so he must have been really desperate if he got in bed with them again.

The biggest promise of telegram was that it would become a point of entrance to a decentralized economy based on TON blockchain and it's masternode hosted services. If they succeed to launch and than move telegram itself onto ton masternode hosting, telegram would've become the greatest/freest/(and potentially most secure, if they would implement e2ee key synchronization) messaging service ever

End of TON project, ment an end of telegram's future as a not data harvesting company.

[vldchk]

I can share sources to Russian websites but will it tell you anything?

https://www.rbc.ru/business/23/03/2021/605a3fbc9a79470b2eb35...

They created a very elegant scheme when through a fictional Arabic investment fund they put russian government money (Government fund invests into Arabic fund which invests into bonds). It is kind of Russian classic and they did it a lot in the last.

Nowadays Telegram Bonds are traded at Saint-Petersburg stock exchange and there are a lot of rumors that Durov attends a lot of private parties in Russia for kids of oligarchs.

[seniorivn]

I'm russian as well, and rbc.ru is not the most independent source at the time of publishing, but even according to them, RDIF(РФПИ) invested about $2mil, that's a drop in the bucket, and since it was secondary market, it proves nothing but active propaganda from both sides(russian government has an agenda to promote as well as telegram)

bonds being traded wherever they are traded isn't really a proof of anything as well, wouldn't be even if it was shares of a company, but as bonds it's not that much of an influence, especially if accumulating big share of them would cost a fortune.

As to rumors, i would love to see any of it, again it's entirely possible, after Telegram official's attendance of government pr public forum(will use the same source, but it was all over the internet https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/09/07/2020/5f0730bf9... ) it would be surprising if telegram isn't dealing with them in any way.

[cnst]

It's funny how standard business dealings of having subsidiaries and offshore investment vehicles are being viewed by the Russians as a "Russian classic" just because critical thinking overload. :-)

The article does not really describe anything controversial or out of the ordinary.

I'm sure many countries do similar investments and arrangements. For example, IDA Ireland has offices in the US, and runs ads on Bloomberg TV. How's RDIF that much different?

[skinkestek]

> End of TON project, ment an end of telegram's future as a not data harvesting company.

Durov can ask any day of the month for a donation and I'll give it as soon as I have money in hand. $10 - $100, no problem, more in 6 months.

In fact even if he bust released a dumb sticker collection I'd buy it just to support Telegram even if I don't use stickers.

I guess this holds true for many other ex-Whatsapp enthusiasts as well.

Investments are a bit harder for me right now since I don't have capacity to do that right now.

But I think saying he has nowhere to go except data harvesting that shows you don't know how important Telegram is to how many people.

[irl_chad]

I completely agree with you.

In my country, we use telegram to communicate, rather than WhatsApp or SMS. Older people might use Viber, but Viber is a total nightmare. Just having it installed, I get dozens of spam messages per week from shops where I’ve bought things.

SMS is very expensive here.

Comparing telegram to WhatsApp or other competing apps isn’t even worth doing - there is no other app as user friendly or as functional and well thought out as telegram. It’s niche features like scheduled messages are a Godsend.

During the events of Jan 6, I was very worried that Apple would pull TG from the App Store. Thankfully they didn’t, but it’s not white supremicist groups that they would be hurting - it’s ordinary young people in foreign countries.

[seniorivn]

do you think a lot of people would be willing to donate to telegram? what would be an average annual donation per user? I bet it would be a lot less than what big tech makes, and there is no reason to believe durov would settle for that

[skinkestek]

> do you think a lot of people would be willing to donate to telegram?

Yes.

> what would be an average annual donation per user?

I don't know but if it was entirely voluntarily, somewhere between 0 and $10 yearly.

> I bet it would be a lot less than what big tech makes, and there is no reason to believe durov would settle for that

That doesn't seem to be Durovs goal.

[seniorivn]

> That doesn't seem to be Durovs goal.

completely disagree, he is definitely focused on making telegram some huge IT project that would put him on the same level as great IT entrepreneurs of our time. The whole TON project was all about making tons of money from becoming the main beneficiary from first decentralized consumer economy. It's a mystery how he is going to achieve anything similar now, but that goal was so ambitious, it's unlikely he will settle for something as small as this

let's use 2017 as a reference https://www.statista.com/statistics/268604/annual-revenue-of... https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...

so it had an annual revenue of $20 per user, and your assumption is a mere $10 max(likely lower), that's extremely low for someone like Durov

[Nasreddin_Hodja]

> law he mentioned doesn’t exist anymore.

Also that law is applicable to certified mass media like TV, radio, magazines, news papers e.t.c., but not social media, chats, apps, forums e.t.c.

[jwond]

> When there is still a channel where white men posting personal details of women and attack them — no action.

I’m not familiar with the situation you are referring to, but I’m curious why you specifically mentioned the race of these men. How is their race relevant?

[effffggew]

You are 100% right

[cnst]

Remove it and replace it with what exactly?!

Telegram remains the only mainstream free speech platform on the web today, with the least amount of censorship and the most resiliency against being taken down.

[seniorivn]

there is matrix, the best option, both secure and reasonably well made(element and alternative clients), but it miles behind telegram in terms of UI/UX even though it's on par with whatsapp/signal/etc

[Sebb767]

The grandparent said mainstream and Matrix is far away from that. You _might_ count Signal, but its market share is still way behind and in an area with so many network effects, this is everything.

[feanaro]

Is it? I just tried Telegram again today and something as basic as joining a public channel from the app itself (as opposed to clicking on a link) was seemingly unavailable, or at least hidden well enough that I was unable to find it.

[noxer]

Sorry but this is you first post here and what you claim doesn't make much sense.

He didn't have to pay back the TON investors because the deal included that if the network does not go live by a set date (and the reason isn't telegrams fault) he would return the remaining of the investment not the part used for the development. This is the risk the investors took and they lost. telegram itself only had to pay the sec fine which was peanuts for Durov.

Don't know anything about you other claims so I cant debunk but please post sources so we can check for our self.