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.

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

Thanks for posting this context. I’ve been wondering about this aspect of this event

and an attack on encrypted messaging

lmao. It's barely encrypted and what little of it that is (one-to-one DMs) have never been audited in a way where Telegram haven't just either ignored the results or moved the goalposts.

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.

Great article to let people understand the problematic aspect of Telegram