Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Brushfire 16 days ago
insanity. it almost undercuts everything they do.
2 comments

Wait until you hear that the chats aren’t end to end encrypted.
wait until you hear why, and that you can optionally use e2e but lose other functionality.
And end-to-end encryption not supported on web client and doesn't sync properly between devices. Useless.
>> doesn't sync properly between devices

which is good, actually. We don't want a way through which a server could tell a new device all the information it needs to decrypt messags

I thought this was a long solved problem: the server syncs encrypted data, and the user provides the decryption key from another device (via QR codes, BLE, …)
Make it device-to-device then
yeah, it is good! I hate usability features too!
You either have E2EE or you don't. If you have usability, you don't have E2EE.
i think it makes perfect sense if you understand what telegram is and which country it benefits
Since when did registars care about the political positions of its clients? They could have registered on cloudflare or namecheap and I doubt they'd bat an eye. Telegram is mainstream enough that nobody is going to cancel them, unlike kiwi farms or 4chan.
registrars are bound by the political whims of those that allow them to exist there have been multiple domains that have been shut down at the behest of certain governments even when its well beyond their jurisdiction

kiwi farms and 4chan are relatively harmless compare to what Telegram enables yet kiwi farms was taken offline at the behest of a political camp that has certain opinions about very basic stuffs that shouldn't even be grounds to be considered.

>kiwi farms and 4chan are relatively harmless compare to what Telegram enables yet kiwi farms was taken offline at the behest of a political camp that has certain opinions about very basic stuffs that shouldn't even be grounds to be considered.

For most people, the % of content that's "harmful" matters more than absolute harm numbers. This is a good thing, because otherwise after telegram, the next app to be canceled would be signal.

> kiwi farms and 4chan are relatively harmless compare to what Telegram enables yet kiwi farms was taken offline at the behest of a political camp that has certain opinions about very basic stuffs that shouldn't even be grounds to be considered.

Literally what the fuck is this take? Kiwifarms' central purpose for existing is to organize doxxing and harassment efforts. It has harassed multiple people into committing suicide, and celebrates these murders as achievements. It is shameless to downplay that in the way you're doing.

4chan and Telegram are completely unrelated. They are low-censorship platforms. People can misuse them to commit harm, as they can misuse any place they're allowed to speak with privacy/anonymity, but the platforms do not exist for the explicit purpose to cause harm.

The wrong thing is that instead of going after doxxers, and reducing data collection to prevent leaks, they simply force the sites go to Tor network.

And now Europeans want everyone to send a selfie and a passport to register at sites, which only makes doxxing easier. Clowns.

Also, doxxing is relatively harmless. You won't die just because someone posts your passport online.

> You won't die just because someone posts your passport online.

Jesus, do you have the object permanence of a 3-year-old? This part alone, no. But this then directly leads to hundreds of people harassing you, everyone you know, blackmailing you, etc. People get fired because their workplace doesn't want to deal with it, for fuck's sake.

News outlets have been reporting on how the Terrorgram, O9A, 764, and murder loving European fascist groups have been organizing on Telegram (it's in the name!) for years.

Discord at least attempts to do some moderation about this.

Telegram's strategy to deal with violent extremist groups on its platform is to not ban them but just make it hard to discover. But this doesn't stop someone already in the groups from inviting their buddies. I bet they actually prefer it this way.

Do you want privacy, or do you want back doors into everything?

Usually, the backdoor on apply to "regular" citizens, while the governments and military get exemptions from it.

If the balance of power wasnt so asymmetrical I would be inclined to emphasize with the position that E2EE is a bit of an over-correction. We would be remiss to ignore the practical concerns about nefarious actors using it to organize.

HOWEVER, we would ALSO be remiss to ignore the imbalance of power it would cause if ONLY the governments are privy to secrecy...

Violent extremist groups can also meet in parks and go to a bars. Police should follow everyone around and make everyone wear mandatory surveillance devices. Let's call them portable telescreen.

Oh extremists can also buy knives...

They subscribe to a belief that private speech should not be surveilled. I'm partial to their views. For all of human history, any two people could get together and privately talk. Talk about anything, including committing crimes. Now communication methods have changed but people still want to get together and talk about things, privately. Some of those things include crime, sure. The problem is it's not your freaking business what anyone is talking about privately. As soon as you open the door to surveillance "because crime", now you also have surveillance because you disagree with the government. And when it comes to internet surveillance, everything is preserved forever and also sold/leaked routinely, so you're really committing to leaking everyone's private life to anyone who is interested, forever. The internet is such an integral part of how most people communicate that "just don't say anything personal on the internet, ever" is not in any way reality.

I think this is not a line that can afford to be crossed. It is better for criminals and terrorists to be able to communicate privately than it is for no human anywhere ever to be able to communicate privately. It is not worth stripping the rights of billions of people to target a tiny minority of bad actors. And, given the trivial potential for authoritarian governments to misuse the power of absolute surveillance, I think the world we end up in would be much, much worse. Allowing nobody to privately communicate opposition to the government will lead to much worse outcomes than allowing nobody to privately communicate about crime, despite best intentions in short-term-thinking harm reduction. In addition to the criminal groups you mention it being wanted in Europe for, Telegram is also being prosecuted in Russia for harboring anti-Putin-regime activists! Such is the inherent nature of private communication.