• pushupentry1219 2 days ago

    Next time someone tries to tell you Telegram is a "private" or "secure" messenger. It is neither.

    • selivanovp 2 days ago

      Yeah, and looking at what happened to Durov in France you know why.

      • hulitu a day ago

        > Next time someone tries to tell you Telegram is a "private" or "secure" messenger. It is neither.

        You know, there are others who say that their messenger is "secure". Shall we trust them ? If yes, why ? If not, why ? /s

      • squigz 2 days ago
        • metadat 2 days ago

          How many TB is this in total?

          • squigz 2 days ago

            Click it and see - 61TB

            • metadat 2 days ago

              The full collection is actually 126TB over 17.2 million files.

              https://annas-archive.org/datasets/zlib

              • AzzyHN 2 days ago

                And the whole of anna's archive mirrors 972TB of books! Though I imagine many are just carelessly encoded PDFs...

        • DidYaWipe 2 days ago

          This article neglects to convey a critical piece of information: what "Z-Library" is.

        • miohtama 2 days ago

          Note that this is not first time Telegram removes content and its moderation tools have existed and been effective for some years.

          • notthefuture 2 days ago

            i don’t think you can call them effective given the active and open organizing of terrorist groups like Terrorgram and ISIS on Telegram.

            • melagonster 2 days ago

              It is more reasonable to arrest the Telegram CEO for me now. I can understand that if they designed it as impossible to control, but they are controlling contents for a long time... This almost means they permit these contents in their community.

              • Sakos 2 days ago

                Well, the moderation tools might be effective, but it's clear that they're used very selectively.

              • hifromwork 2 days ago

                Telegram host thousands (or more, not like I keep count) of blatantly cybercriminal groups and refuses to take them down. Due to nature of my work I have access to a few new telegram channels used to leak people's data every day, and telegram refuses to do anything with it. Same goes for channels where cybercriminals organise their activities.

                Telegram is one of the main sources of disinformation in my country. Known fake news channels are never closed. It's also a big market for illegal data.

                Telegram hosted a leak channel for the data stolen from my country's government for many months before finally agreeing to take it down. Then a clone of this channel was created, and it exists to this day.

                Tell me more about how telegram does... anything at all to moderate its content.

                • coolspot 2 days ago

                  Can confirm. One can subscribe to channels that for example give away stolen credentials for disney+/netflix/chatgpt every day.

                  • Sakos 2 days ago

                    I've seen a lot of wild shit in Telegram channels. It's weird seeing people defend Telegram, but I guess that's American first amendment fundamentalism/fetishism. Even terrorist speech should be protected, apparently?

                    • an_guy a day ago

                      What kind of "terrorist speech" are we talking about?

                      • undefined a day ago
                        [deleted]
                  • krick 2 days ago

                    True. Among all noise over Durov being harassed by France it may seem to uninformed that this is some new development, but it isn't.

                    The first time I've noticed some "extremist" (I mean, I don't necessarily think they merited being taken down, but I need to find some word to communicate the idea that it was "serious business", like, you know, discussing firearms, being largest free library, being pro-Trump or COVID-skeptic, some spicy things) channels being taken down was January 2021, right after Biden came to office and all the fuzz that accompanied these events. Probably, it also happened before, but it was the first time I really noticed it happening at scale. Like, enough for me to finally learn that Telegram isn't some "old free Internet" kinda thing anymore.

                    And lately it even can be about forcing bloggers to delete something as mild as fancams from some sports-event a big TV-channel has all rights to. And when that happened everybody was angry at that TV-channel, not at Telegram, because Telegram abiding if somebody large enough is insistent enough is nothing that isn't unexpected. I'd just say they are kinda lax if nobody large enough is insistent enough, and it was like that for quite some time.

                  • ChrisArchitect 2 days ago

                    Related development:

                    Telegram says it will share phone numbers and IPs of 'bad actors' to authorities

                    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41621705

                  • tibbydudeza a day ago

                    Amazing what a few hours facing a couple of stern French gendarmes does.

                    • lozf 10 hours ago

                      ... plus a 5MM EUR fine, and whatever other threats may have been made.

                    • GaggiX 2 days ago

                      Is this enforced on all clients or just those downloaded from the App Store or Play Store? There was a difference in the past, if I remember correctly.

                      • miohtama 2 days ago

                        Posts and channels are removed on the server side. All clients are open source.

                        • grishka 2 days ago

                          The server knows which client you're using. There are indeed stricter restrictions for apps that come from app stores.

                          • o999 2 days ago

                            Some channels are only available on android for off-play store apps, it is server side restriction of course.

                            • golergka 2 days ago

                              A lot of content in Telegram is moderated only for iOS, while still being available on other platforms.

                              • duskwuff 2 days ago

                                > A lot of content in Telegram is moderated only for iOS

                                And even then, I believe that only applies to users who haven't flipped the "Show 18+ Content" toggle in the app settings. (It's off by default.)

                                • GaggiX 2 days ago

                                  I don't think there is a "Show 18+ Content" in the app downloaded from the App Store, it's only hidden in the web app (activating it will also allowed NSFW content on the iOS app).

                                  • duskwuff 2 days ago

                                    It's definitely there for me, second from the bottom in the "Data & Storage" menu. Maybe it only shows up once you've enabled that option from another app or something?

                                    • GaggiX 2 days ago

                                      Yeah I think so.

                                      • wrboyce a day ago

                                        Visible in my iOS app, was disabled (content hidden) but could be toggled on/off within the app.