Spain has banned Telegram. [relevant to XMR] (monero.town)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by SummerBreeze@monero.town to c/monero@monero.town

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Spain has banned Telegram.

They are claiming this is over copyright violations of users, that Telegram is failing to police. Now some users will be forced to consider decentralized solutions. As I have repeated many times, Session messenger empowers users to defy state level censorship, with its unique blockchain based DNS that completely separates physical locations from identity. And our team has repeatedly mentioned using Session to defy a Monero ban.

With Session, if the location of the VPS or device is discovered, the user can rotate the blockchain name to a new public key. On the other hand, SimpleX, Tor Onions, or XMPP are tied to physical devices with encryption keys in memory, and their discovery is a game-over.

However, Session receives a lot of criticism. Rather than ignore this, I tackle it head on, https://simplifiedprivacy.com/spain-has-banned-telegram-defending-session/

Tor Browser Onion: http://privacypkybrxebcjicfhgwsb3coatqechwnc5xow4udxwa6jemylmyd.onion/spain-has-banned-telegram-defending-session/

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[-] black0ut@pawb.social 4 points 8 months ago

Spain has not really banned Telegram. It has instituted a temporary restriction while the company appeals. However, this restriction isn't really enforceable, because it must be implemented within 3 hours of the ISPs receiving the ban notice. However, ISPs can only receive these notices oficially on working days, and right now they're celebrating easter.

Telegram has 3 days to appeal the ban, and it probably will appeal before ISPs start blocking it. The appeal will most probably be accepted (as Telegram is an important company, and many people there use it as their only messaging app).

Thus, the ban will probably be lifted even before ISPs start blocking Telegram, unless something goes terribly wrong.

[-] gunnm@monero.town 1 points 8 months ago

I don't think Telegram users are the kind to use decentralized solutions, they will rather use some proxy. I think it is still important for Monero community still being active on Telegram for more exposure.

[-] AriaVPN@monero.town 1 points 8 months ago

If anyone is interested...we're building a VPN service which collects zero data and would love to trade some free trials for your feedback :)

[-] azalty@jlai.lu 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I’m all for switching for Session, but it has some serious issues that can’t be ignore and that you didn’t talk about:

Messages fail to send WAY too often. On mobile it automatically retries to send the message so all good, but not on desktop / windows. Having to resend the same message 5 times for it to finally work is annoying
Notifications and message reception can be really delayed on mobile (android specifically), but goes faster on iOS than on desktop
Mobile apps have some accessibility issues like not scrolling down automatically when a new message is received while the conversation is open
The android app regularly crashes
the onion routing sometimes gets stuck on mobile. The solution is to close the app and wait for it to choose a new route
image quality sucks. Too much compression even with the best settings enabled

These issues have been here for a couple of years now. That’s pretty annoying not to see any change and improvement

[-] azalty@jlai.lu 1 points 7 months ago

Also the shadiness around the OXEN foundation doesn’t make me want to support them financially. A crypto on which they get a certain % of each block mined, and also have pre-mined currency? Heh, can’t support that

[+] danny801@lemmy.world -3 points 8 months ago

[deleted]

[-] tusker@monero.town 6 points 8 months ago

Matrix is better than both of them.

[+] helenslunch@feddit.nl 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

[deleted]

[-] azalty@jlai.lu 2 points 7 months ago

This. I don’t get why it’s so praised. I feel like all main clients are just spyware with how much data they retrieve

[-] tusker@monero.town 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Telegram does not collect metadata... 🤦

You can run your own matrix server. Metadata is meaningless if you use a different account for each identity along with VPN's.

[-] SummerBreeze@monero.town 2 points 8 months ago

The metadata of conversations is just as important as the metadata of money. The CIA director said "we kill people off metadata"

Also this conversation was about censorship, not just pure privacy. Matrix is federated, just like SimpleX. Meaning it uses government domains. So one could not trade Monero on either of these platforms against the will of sanctions with any meaningful size.

Can you do a small amount and different burners? Sure. But then how's the customer gonna verify its you and find you? PGP signatures over Matrix DMS? c'mon man, we're talking about freedom here.

[-] tusker@monero.town 0 points 8 months ago

Yes, if you are using the same account to talk to your grandma as to buy and sell 10K XMR then you may have a problem, but you would most likely be OK anyway.

I would like to see Matrix over Tor or I2P this would solve any DMS issues.

[-] SummerBreeze@monero.town 2 points 8 months ago

I'm asking you to consider this technology beyond just evasion. It's a distribution system for content.

Matrix is tied to one server. Federation is physical locations. Yeah you can hide those locations with Tor or I2P, but ultimately if that location is found its game over. With a blockchain based and node based system, its full blown crypto anarchy. You can establish a reputation that can't be taken away.

The same way we value XMR for it's self-custody of money, as opposed to btc lightning that ties it to a liquidity server. That same logic, is now why self-custody of communication is greater than "federated liquidity hiding"

[-] tusker@monero.town 2 points 8 months ago

I see what you are saying. Once we have the usability and feature set of matrix with a blockchain based decentralized solution I am 100% in. 👍

[-] VolunTerry@monero.town 2 points 7 months ago

Awesome discussion! I see better solutions on the horizon with back and forth like this here. A willingness to adopt better tech as it is developed will be critical. Monero doesn't stagnate in its development and neither should our communication and distribution platforms.

[-] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 1 points 8 months ago

You can run your own matrix server

If you communicate with someone on another server, wouldn't your data and metadata be exposed to that server too?

[-] tusker@monero.town 1 points 8 months ago

Yes, the other server can see who you are talking to, but you can encrypt the conversation so they cannot see the content.

[-] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Not that telegram or others are any better (except maybe SimpleX), but imo this is a significant privacy weak point. But I understand it is pretty difficult to get away from this.

I disagree that metadata is meaningless even if you use multiple identities with VPN. But I agree this greatly enhances your security. A state actor could potentially still find you out though, with enough effort.