And these things are probably why it’s permitted for use inside Russia, as well as a lot of notable Russian politicians use it and thus indirectly promote it’s use.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Remember that a lot of these lawful requests are for things which are perfectly acceptable (eg CSAM distribution etc).
She also isn’t being asked to hand over data she doesn’t have.
She does not have to. It’s the similar argument with VPNs. Tech lore has a great video about it. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=HMl_cWvA__w
Edit: Will you go to jail for any apps you use if you were the CEO?
VPNs are also not E2EE.
Yes, but the point is about having no data to give in as mentioned above posts. 
At the end, E2EE is a tech for avoiding your provider to have data about you
Freedom and privacy are violated when E2EE is banned or broken, and online anonimity is not possible. Telegram doesn’t have either of those, at least not properly implemented.
On the other hand, Signal, Tuta, Tor, Element… are fighting for actual user rights.
What about Truth social 
Any platform is big as their users make it. No one can be stopped to use Briar or SimpleX for the same purposes as Telegram. Anyone can host Mastodon, Matrix, XMPP… server in UAE and offer the same thing. There are bunch of uncensored servers all around the world, and for most of them you don’t have to provide phone number tied to your real name and address
Why would she? Signal gives all the user information they have, each time they get request from the court (state). And they absolutely have no way to check if Signal is used for any illegal content or activities.
There’s no way to comply as much as you like. If you are requested to provide all the information you have, you have to do that. The only way is not to have that information, which for Durov and Telegram is not an option.
Fight against mandatory backdoors or usage of true identity online is a proper way. Hosting illegal content in UAE and claiming you care for users is not.
I don’t think the reason is as much refusing to provide information, but refusing to censor opposing political opinions/“disinformation”. Telegram is/was the only big player that doesn’t censor opposing political views. Too big to ignore.
Not big enough, and it does censor. Telegram is/was a nail sticking up.
EDIT: Telegram does remove CP/other really bad things. Maybe not as quickly and efficiently as people would hope, but they do remove it.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, they have in the passed slipped information to relevant authorities when they deem fit to do so.
Can’t imagine being anti-putin and say living in Russia and sharing your views about it inside that country for example and thinking nobody is going to visit you. This is one of the reasons PG doesn’t talk about “the eyes” or any of that rubbish because it entirely depends on what is being said where.
The only assurance you have is that strong audited E2EE is, actually protected. If it’s anything other than that you should consider it not private and not get caught up on whether or not you think a service cares about freedoms or not.
99% of Telegrams users are not under a gun, as they do not use anything illegal on Telegram. If one afraid of his data being accessible by government agents they would not use Telegram, right? Or at least secret chats, but there are better apps for that.
And if you want more privacy Telegram allows to buy virtual number with TON? Those numbers are not tied to a user, they are anonymous by their nature.
If one afraid of his data being accessible by government agents they would not use Telegram, right?
“Nothing to hide” fallacy here. Telegram markets themselves primarily as private and secure, and so it’s hypocritical for them to put on that facade while they literally don’t even use E2EE by default, don’t allow it at all on desktop, have tons of attack surface through added fancy features, continue to use their own inferior MTProto protocol for encryption, and don’t provide any server-side source code.
And if you want more privacy Telegram allows to buy virtual number with TON?
It’s not privacy if you need to jump through additional hoops and use a shady service that way. Signal lets you register with any regular phone number and it’s been proven repeatedly that they can’t link phone numbers to messages or accounts: Signal >> Government Communication
Besides, how many of Telegram’s users do you reckon even use these obscure privacy routes? They’re inconvenient and downplayed on purpose. Like I and @PurpleDime talked about, it’s done that way deliberately to induce a false sense of privacy, all while your stuff is being hosted unencrypted in a country notorious for an extremely poor privacy and human rights record.
You can’t wax poetic about privacy while you don’t care for basic measures regarding it by default. That is Telegram’s model.
This is very worrying turn of event. Telegram CEO is being made responsible for all the contents on his platform, while he clearly wasn’t responsible of what was said on private group chats. All the terrorism/piracy/CSAM thing is just an excuse.
I agree with you. I just said there are ways… …for paranoids, etc.
Is it really though? Are there any other situations where a provider can host things without E2EE without any fear of well established international law? I don’t think so.
What" well established international law" ? Telegram CEO wasn’t even on Europol list, just French’s.
It’s like holding Instagram responsible for what’s in private groups. That’s what dictatorships like China do,not the West.
Telegram did in fact comply and banned cerrtain groups when the gov ask to.
I am not saying the law allowed Durov’s conduti, rather than the law has chilling effect on free speech.
Yeah, this has been well-known since the days of Lavabit (Snowden’s preferred email provider) being shut down.
Not to mention all the torrent trackers and piracy forums that were hotbeds in the 2000s but that the feds have all but clamped down on.
Well just so you know CSAM related activities are illegal everywhere.
But they’re not private groups, they’re not even encrypted, which gives owners zero deniability.
Yes, I’ve seen that countless times. Every time Signal or WhatsApp introduces a new feature that Telegram has had for years, they use it as an opportunity to brag at how much better and ahead they are.
The big difference is, with Signal, with those features, you have actual privacy because it’s E2EE.
I do think that there is an important lesson that the developers of privacy tools need to learn from Telegram. And it’s that UI & UX matters. I’m sure they already know that, but I think they underestimate how much it matters.
I remember listening to an interview of the creator of the E2EE note app, Notesnook. In it, he said that the way they go about developing Notesnook, it’s so that their users don’t even have to think about privacy. Meaning that they are drawn to all the cool features they enjoy first, and privacy is most likely secondary.
The average user does not use privacy protecting products and services primarily because it’s private, but because of other features they enjoy that are similar or better than what you find in non privacy protecting products and services.
I started using Telegram years ago as an alternative to WhatsApp, because I mistakenly thought it was private. I tried to convert my friends and family, and I did. My main selling point to them was privacy. But that’s not what converted them. What converted them is the fact that Telegram had a cool UI & UX, it was fast, it had a desktop app and could be synced to multiple devices simultaneously.
100% agree with you on every point here. You have put into words exactly how I feel.
Telegram rose to the top because its developers understood how to provide good UX. And Telegram has the best UX of any messaging service I’ve seen, hands down. Wipes the floor with everything else.
Even madaidan (for all his legitimate criticisms of it) uses it for public chats.
It’s understandable that with their lower funding and lack of hired user design skill, FOSS and privacy software channels will suffer from a slower learning curve here. But like you said, devs like the Notesnook ones are providing this. And improvement is being made, we just always have room for more.
The average user does not use privacy protecting products and services primarily because it’s private, but because of other features they enjoy that are similar or better than what you find in non privacy protecting products and services.
Which is why Linux is seeing a slight but significant uptick among home users - not privacy or control, but because it’s more useful and less of a hassle to a particular set of users than the rancid cesspool Windows Home has devolved into. And it’s why Telegram has been seeing an uptick here compared to Whatsapp.
Indeed. This is why I never ever bought into Pavel Durov’s freedom fighter act. It always smacked of BS, especially when he talked about Signal and tried to defend why Telegram doesn’t have E2EE by default.. He uses a lot of deceptive weasel language, and most Telegram users are bamboozled by it. An anonmous Redditor completely debunked his claimes in this excellent blog post.
So has any French authorities come out and said exactly what Durov is guilty of? Looks like we are flying off rumors until an official charge is lodged.