Hacker News Reader

How is it Russian in any way? The app has been banned in Russia for more than a year now and the creator/CEO Pavel Durov is in exile from Russia.

>CEO Pavel Durov is in exile from Russia.

Pavel Durov is a Kremlin ally who pretends to be in exile from Russia. The app being sort-of blocked in Russia is just a part of the elaborate PR campaign to legitimize this VK spin-off.

https://theoutline.com/post/2348/what-isn-t-telegram-saying-...

Telegram has shipped blatant backdoors in the past (This one is particularly egregious as there's no way to explain away this MITM feature as a bug) http://habrahabr.ru/post/206900/

Seeing how hard Russia tries to ban it and that the founder had to leave the country for his safety, they are probably not sharing anything to Russia.

> Telegram is primarily Russian

Telegram isn't Russian at all at this point.

"Although Telegram was founded by a Russian, Pavel Durov (more on him later), the messaging app rejects any affiliation with Russia."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/world/europe/telegram-ira...

Telegram is legally British.