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Comment by verganileonardo | Hacker News Reader

2nd time in less than 12 months. probably, we are going to see a surge in telegram downloads/usage today.

A true shame since Telegram is just as centralized as WhatsApp, minus the strong end-to-end encryption. Should it become the de facto messaging app for Brazilians, the next judge will just block Telegram instead.

But decentralized communication networks that work mobile first are hard, we all know it, so there's room for improvement, randomizing server addresses on a daily rotation, or whatever may render pointless these blockades.

WhatsApp could incorporate obfuscation proxies if they wanted to. Like the Tor connection bridges that exist to help get around a Tor block.

Maybe only activated once they detect a threat or something.

Yes, it's happening, more than 1M accounts* created by brazilians today.

[1]: https://twitter.com/telegram_br/status/727201106166689792

Too bad they're switching to a messenger that can easily be subverted by governments and doesn't come with E2E encryption by default. Might as well use Hangouts or Skype.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-h...

I prefer open source software that lacks features (e.g. E2E, which could be implemented by someone), than proprietary software that "supposedly" has some features (like E2E) which you cannot verify (that is, Whatsapp says they have that feature, but their software not being opensource cannot guarantee anyone that they are stating the truth).

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