[mynameisnoone]

Yes. Unfortunately, he miscalculated and threw his life away by failing to appreciate the conditions. Similar to standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square, this was and now proved to be a ineffective and futile act in a country whose populace refuses to stand up to Putin, oppression, or corruption. It's likely Putin will continue to be the de facto "elected" dictator of Russia until he dies and his oligarch pals replace him with someone equally terrible. The Russian people lack the will, organization, and moral courage to overthrow their klepto-plutocrat dictator.

[nuker]

> The Russian people lack the will, organization, and moral courage to overthrow their klepto-plutocrat dictator.

They lack secure communication tools in the first place. I believe Telegram is backdoored by FSB and Whatsapp just bent over without fight.

[walteweiss]

To Russians, it’s always someone else who is responsible. The will, organisation, and moral courage come first. Lack of secure communication comes after that.

If Russians had any of that, they won’t even need the communication means in the first place, to overthrow their dictator. When there’s a mass of people enough to fight the regime, the regime won’t even fight. They only fight the battles they believe they can easily win.

The truth is, Russians are, en masse, don’t care or even support all that. Those folks aren’t on Hacker News, they aren’t in any English-speaking communities as well. They barely speak even their own (complicated enough) language.

The so-called ‘liberal’ Russians try to persuade us that Russians en-masse don’t support all that, ’Putin’s war‘ they say [1], etc. But there are literally hundreds of thousands of Russian fight against Ukraine right now, and there are 400,000 dead [2]. They are Russians, aren’t they? Russians have the very long history of wars they started on their neighbours.

Is it Telegram being (possibly) backdoored or lack of Signal being too popular among Russians that stops them from growing in-house dictators and other murderers?

[1] As a very simple illustration, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39395697

[2] You may need a translator for this, casualties is the first number: https://www.mil.gov.ua/news/2024/02/16/za-dobu-sili-oboroni-...

[nuker]

> When there’s a mass of people enough to fight the regime,

To get the mass to act together requires clean comms. Dirty comms result in eliminating (jailing) of activists before they organise.

And don't forget no free press for 22 years.

[walteweiss]

As if Russians cared.

[nuker]

Most don’t but neither would you if you had all your info from TV box for 20 years.

[walteweiss]

Oh yeah, as if Russians were very very different before the TV box was invented. They always home brew despotic tsars. E.g Ivan Grozny aka The Terrible [1] was long before the TV, and it’s not the one and the only example, just the famous one.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible

[computerfriend]

In what way did WhatsApp bend over?

[nuker]

They provided data on request. We can never know for sure how much. Another fresh data:

https://archive.is/xGihD

[mensetmanusman]

A million tank men may be needed to topple stupidity. China will undergo major change this next century as they shrink 500,000,000 in population, and their system will inevitably change during this time. Hopefully for the better - maybe Tank Man was a necessary seed.