“Telegram is not a private messenger. There’s nothing private about it. It’s the opposite. It’s a cloud messenger where every message you’ve ever sent or received is in plain text in a database that Telegram the organization controls and has access to it”
“It’s like a Russian oligarch starting an unencrypted version of WhatsApp, a pixel for pixel clone of WhatsApp. That should be kind of a difficult brand to operate. Somehow, they’ve done a really amazing job of convincing the whole world that this is an encrypted messaging app and that the founder is some kind of Russian dissident, even though he goes there once a month, the whole team lives in Russia, and their families are there.”
" What happened in France is they just chose not to respond to the subpoena. So that’s in violation of the law. And, he gets arrested in France, right? And everyone’s like, oh, France. But I think the key point is they have the data, like they can respond to the subpoenas where as Signal, for instance, doesn’t have access to the data and couldn’t respond to that same request. To me it’s very obvious that Russia would’ve had a much less polite version of that conversation with Pavel Durov and the telegram team before this moment"
Why do you say signal is not the best option? My only discomfort with it is the phone number requirement (and I think they maybe relaxed that)
Phone number requirements + afaik servers are in USA + it was some cryptocurrency related story (they tried to add some crypto wallet at some point)
You mean one of the few countries not currently trying to dismantle encryption?
Yeah, you can make payments with MobileCoin. 🤮
Luckily, Signal does give you the option to completely ignore it. I only see it mentioned in the settings and I have not enabled it.
Same with stories, you can enable/disable them. Although, if I want to convince my normies friends to look at Signal using stories probably helps that. 🤷
Ah I am not bothered by the cryptocurrency … thing. It’s pretty well buried in the app, and doesn’t seem like anything they’re particularly trying to push. More like a failed experiment.
It’s important to remember that for a lot of programs that have some tangentially related crypto feature, crypto used to be popular. It still is popular in some circles. There was a time when it made sense to include those features because users were asking for it. So time, money, and energy was spent to add those features.
What do you expect them to do with those feature now? You really think they’re just going to delete them? Why would they remove an already developed and implemented feature? They hurt nothing. People don’t have to use them. Them existing doesn’t take anything away from the app functionality.
It’s like being upset that old car models weren’t recalled to remove ash trays and cigarette lighters when smoking became unpopular.
It’s not the wallet itself that bothers me (it is these days equivalent of adding some ai feature), but the story behind their involvement with and promotion of a particular blockchain or coin . Frankly can’t recall all the details .
Damn near everyone was making a coin at some point. Again, why would they remove or get rid of a feature they spent time, money, and energy to develop when it doesn’t hurt anything by being there. In fact, they’d have to spend more time, money, and energy to remove it than if they just left it in place.
Context:
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/6829998083994-Phone-Number-Privacy-and-Usernames-Deeper-Dive
Supported by US nasty agencies… They do NOT care about any-ones ‘privacy’ and would only support if they have another purpose or a way in…