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Comment by Andrew_nenakhov | Hacker News Reader

It is time to ask Google and Apple if they were asked to actually remove Telegram from stores, when russian government was trying to ban it.

It wasn't removed at the time, and all sources that Apple and Google were demanded to block it in Russia pointed to press-release on RosKomNadzor itself.

I suspect that it is possible that all this Telegram block in Russia was a PR campaign coordinated with Russian government to give Telegram a reputation of a messenger that doesn't abide to tyrannical governments.

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it is possible, but it's also true that telegram bot is the only platform of Navalny smart vote service that keeps working(aside text file circulating all over the internet)

I wonder why all modern hipsters ignore email as a platform. Like, Telegram on behest of Apple and Google repeatedly bans flibusta bots (a site with a great collection of pirated books), why don't they make an email bot? What would Apple do, ban their own mail app? Start censoring emails?

Many disadvantages comparing with realtime messaging

For a service delivering a file or a list of names? Compared to a blocked and non-functioning bot?

Anyway, emails these days are nearly instantaneous too, not that much slower than, say, WhatsApp

Votesmart started out with mailing lists. Then somehow lists got leaked, and some of the people who subscribed using the same mail they used in government services got visited by police. You also need phone number to register in most emails btw, and the legal requirement for having a sim card is to register it to your passport.

I teach to university kids, and I know for sure: for many of them email is too complicated and they don't know how to use it.

it's sad, but it's like this.

0. Well, it is being done when possible. But it's not a 100% way of reaching people. 1. State terrorism. People are genuinely afraid to give their email addresses, and for a good reason. 2. Email delivery. Email doesn't work as good as you think. In addition to the typical technical email delivery problems, there are also specific to Russia. Many people are using local Russian email services. But those have shown to be dependent on Kremlin. For example Smart Voting lists had "strange" delivery problems for recipient in the mail.ru service (one of the most popular in Russia).

0. if you send an email with a command, 99% of mail services will not spam-filter the reply to it

1. Spare emails, like, lots of them

2. Users of mail.ru and such are their own worst enemy, and it's not like getting gmail address is particularly difficult

> and it's not like getting gmail address is particularly difficult

Last time I checked I couldn't create a new gmail account without a new phone number.

For Russians, Gmail accounts aren't filtered on the orders of censorship agencies. It's only national mail services like mail.ru that belong to Putin's oligarchs that do such things

They might just try different methods.

Also Telegram is deeply integrated into Russian infrastructure. Fair amount of the private companies use it as the main communication medium. Government entities use it to communicate the news. Lots of common non-political folks use it.

I would bet trade-off of upsetting non-relevant folks to the hit of the unfavorable party doesn't really pay off. Apple and Google may move their employees after these events.

>Also Telegram is deeply integrated into Russian infrastructure

I'd argue both apple and google are well-integrated too. A lot of businesses and people depend on them and sometimes in very unexpected places. For example, apparently yandex's own smart speaker uses 8.8.8.8 to test internet connectivity. A lot of services use recaptcha too.

I think you are wrong. It seems like Telegram it's the only platform where Navalny's team has still some space and freedom.

Would be a historical coordination if true.

It wasn't really difficult on RKN part, if true. Just announce something and not act on it.

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