How Telegram's Founder Pavel Durov Became a Culture War Martyr
www.404media.co
Conservatives have spent months championing Telegram as an app that more closely aligns with their values than Signal.
  • Troy@lemmy.ca
    1·
    2 years ago

    I don’t understand how authoritarian leaning conservatives and free speech absolutists align most of the time.

  • Sem@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I heard that in USA Telegram is used mostly by conservatives, trans-haters and drug dealers. But in Russia where I was born and where I have been living until the war, Telegram was a single source of alternative news and the main tool for opposition to putin. I had a talk with an Iranian guy recently and he told me the same: in Iran Telegram is the only source of non-state-propaganda news.

    I do not care that Durov is just a billionaire who makes money on the trend of privacy. But I remember how Telegram successfully fought against attempt of blocking in Russia in 2018 by providing regular updates and using different techniques to avoid blocking. An attack on Telegram for me is an attack on the latest opposition to putin, khamenei, lukashenko and others.

  • bizarroland@fedia.io
    0·
    2 years ago

    I have no idea what’s going on with all of this but the news said that he was arrested for child pornography, so in my opinion if there was a hundred other things that he did right this one bad thing out does them all if that is what he did.

    • jarfil@beehaw.org
      1·
      2 years ago

      Where I am, the news said:

      • “Telegram is a social network” (it isn’t)
      • “that allows terrorism from Russia and Iran” (it’s used by Russian and Iranian oppositors)
      • “drug trafficking” (because it’s encrypted, I guess)
      • “fraud” (scams are also part of email and the web)
      • “money laundering” (…what?)
      • “piracy” (sigh…)
      • “and distribution of child pornography.” (so does email)
      • “It doesn’t honor removal requests from the film/music industry organizations” (that’s piracy twice)

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse

      Terrorists, pedophiles/child molesters, organized crime like drug dealers, intellectual property pirates, and money launderers are cited commonly

      Do we have a BINGO?