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Comment by codesnik | Hacker News Reader

telegram also removed bots from Navalny team which you could ask what non-ruling-party candidate has most chances to win, to facilitate "protest", tactical vote, much the same as the app would do. Telegram CEO cited some nonsense about "silent days" (why would he had obey them?) which are not even a thing with current 3-day voting in Russia. Many people agree Durov just got threaten that telegram app would be yanked from appstores, just like navalniy's app.

Huge win of the current government in their intimidation tactics.

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“Silent days” are still a thing. The new bit is that the day before the election is not included, only the election days themselves. This prohibition makes sense to me.

My personal opinion is that telegram’s actions are reasonable in this context.

Navalny’s team fucked up by publishing their recommendations only on the 15th, two days before voting. I don’t understand that decision at all.

This ensures Putin's government won't have enough time to subvert the recommended candidates in some way.

The government will have plenty of time to do that after the election.

But that won't prevent the person from being elected. Doing it after comes with many drawbacks.

Doing that before the election (I assume your plan, if you were Putin, is to have all 225 “recommended” candidates withdraw?) is more difficult than subverting the, very optimistically, 30 that will get elected.

There is no dichotomy here.

If you know the candidates beforehand, you can bully them before the election, see who wins nevertheless, and bully those again.

> to have all 225 “recommended” candidates withdraw?

Having some of them withdraw is also useful, it's a numbers game.

The candidates are known beforehand. Putin’s men do not need Navalny to tell them whether there is a popular candidate in an electoral district. Consolidation of “protest” votes does not make someone win an election; it gives a small extra push in contested districts.

You really don't see the difference between eliminating all the candidates (and all popular candidates) and eliminating one candidate per district?

Smart Voting™ creates these popular candidates in the districts where all competitors of Putin's guy are more or less equally popular. Knowing whom they will make popular is an advantage for Putin, don't you agree?

I have a feeling you're arguing out of stubbornness. My original point was that announcing the Smart Voting lists in the last moment can be useful, I think gave some good reasons for it.

“One per district” is 225, “all popular” in contested districts is, like, maybe 70?

Smart voting does not create new popular candidates. It’s a way to concentrate the 5 % they can access (or 2 %, if badly mismanaged by publishing the list too late) in an efficient way.

Please back the numbers up with data.

But there was nothing to hide, everyone knew that it will be basically "vote for Communists".

Don't they need to announce a concrete Communist to vote for? Last time I checked the number of Communists in Russia was strictly greater than one.

One Communist Party candidate per electoral district, yes.

It's not true. I checked and I see plenty of Yabloko candidates being suggested

After that day candidates can not withdraw from the elections (that's the law), so the government can't threaten the recommended candidates.

You have these "silent days" in most countries. When we have elections in France, we just look at Belgian or Swiss newspapers to see how the votes are going on. They do not care about these days, only French newspapers and media do.

Twitter does not, Facebook does not, Telegram does not - nobody cares except for France.

How is Russia different?

You either believe that this regulation makes sense, or you don’t. France, apparently, is in a situation where nobody cares enough to enforce, but taking the law off the books is not politically feasible. I do not know whether that’s a good thing.

As a Russian: the election has a limited relevance beyond a certain type of signaling. The majority of United Russia is largely guaranteed by the “electoral sultanates”, so votes cast now will not impact new legislation over the next five years.

If your purpose is to signal things, being morally clean is more important than the number of votes you manage to achieve. If a law is reasonable, and a norm in multiple other well-regarded systems, it makes sense to comply.

It could still allow for a few independent-ish senators via single mandate district system. If it is allowed to run fairly at least in some locales.

Source: observing one.

Sure. How does this relate to the very late publishing of lists? Or to complying with “silent days”?

It doesn't. Merely a comment towards the state of electoral affairs.

> France, apparently, is in a situation where nobody cares enough to enforce

It is strictly enforced in France. But Internet knows no borders so the statistics of votes (which is is illegal to provide in France during the voting day) are available outside of France (usually in French speaking Belgian / Swiss online newspapers, or Twitter/FB/...).

My point is that a country cannot expect that other countries (and services in these countries) will follow their rules.

> If your purpose is to signal things, being morally clean is more important than the number of votes you manage to achieve. If a law is reasonable, and a norm in multiple other well-regarded systems, it makes sense to comply.

I am not sure I understand that point.

> It is strictly enforced in France

It’s not strictly enforced. Exit polls published outside France are collected inside France. Those who collect with clear intent to immediately publish are subject to French law, and may be fined. Which, from what you are saying, does not happen.

> I am not sure I understand that point

I am not sure how to explain it better. You should not both demand lawful election and circumvent electoral laws at the same time. You can, and people do, but it’s not a strong position.

> Those who collect with clear intent to immediately publish are subject to French law, and may be fined

Exit polls are legal. Publishing them is not. They are published by non-French entities, which cannot be fined because of some internal law of ours.

> You should not both demand lawful election and circumvent electoral laws at the same time. You can, and people do, but it’s not a strong position

The rules are from the times where information was provided by printed newspapers, radio and TV. It is time to realize that we are in a different world and adapt.

If we allow foreign newspapers to publish data (because we cannot forbid that), we should give an equal chance to the French ones.

Hmm, I've been wondering the same, and I'm not sure this applies here. They clearly used other legal means (marking the org as terrorist). If you have a leaflet already at home, you can still read it. If you walk to your local party's branch, you can read the leaflets there. Websites of most parties do not close during silent days, only advertisement is forbidden. Finally, this Smart Voting app does not seem to use any real-time polling result, does it? It's basically a directory with local candidates per area.

What I meant is essence is that moving the information outside the country to an entity that is independent (and cannot be bullied like Apple or Google were) would allow for access to that information (the dynamic part (the part of the information that changes) is interesting because, as you noted, once you have it, you have it)

The government used the ‘extremist’ classification, yes. Telegram’s Durov referred to the ‘silent days’ practice as his excuse.

There is a theory that Telegram is a Russian op, given that they still having office in Russia, which they are very secretive about, despite the claims of Durov being nearly chased by KGB on every corner.

You are correct that there is this theory, yet I haven't seen any evidence of that.

Deleting Navalny's bot seems like a response to a threat from Apple and Google. To fight this, it would be great to abandon Apple and distribute all apps via Android APKs, circumventing the app stores. (Not gonna happen, I know)

First they came for the American opposition, then they came for the Russian opposition, then there was no opposition at all.

Telegram had been banned by Russian authorities with a demand to disclose E2E encryption keys previously, then that ban was miraculously lifted last year. What is happening beneath the curtain is anyone’s guess.

Setting aside any speculation as to whether they are in fact a state-backed covert operation, last time I checked it appeared to be a tiny company of undisclosed structure, which—while in a way glamorous/romantic—does not strike me as a radically more acceptable/sustainable state of affairs, as it makes the individuals involved liable to be influenced (including through [in]direct fear for personal safety, a mechanism markedly more effective than fines or legal action) by whomever is able to find them.

We now see that Apple and Google routinely remove apps by request of Russian government. How come Telegram was never removed? Maybe the russian government never really asked?

Telegram is used widely by many people, including people in government. Removing Telegram will wreak a lot of chaos. It's like cutting of external Internet. Technically possible, but very unpopular measure.

They asked, but before this situation, there were no serious reasons for that. But a few days ago, the Navalny organization (FBK) was declared by the court to the status of an extremist organization. They just put the opposition on one list with terrorist organizations like ISIS and the Taliban.

For now, Google and Apple ban "another dangerous organization," not political opposition. Google and Apple already censor all the content and application for local markets.

It's nothing new. Many youtube videos are restricted in some countries but accessible in others. Companies want to make money, not to play political games, and to declare war for freedom. It's not their responsibility. But in Russia, many local players dream about a ban of Google and Apple to finally take all the market.

Mail.ru, Yandex, Vkontakte, Sber, etc., all these companies got money from an oligarchy in Russian, and for them, Google and Apple are the leading competitors in the market. Many local clones of google search, mail, WhatsApp, youtube, twitch, TikTok, and other services, but they can't win the market because of US companies.

I think, in the future, Russia will ban US giants on their market. Everything goes to this.

> They asked

I actually researched it. All sources that every story about 'they asked' cited in the end pointed to RosKomNadzor press release on their own website. And it is very well known that Russian government never lies.

There were no public confirmation from either Google or Apple that they did receive such request and refused to act on it, like they earlier did on LinkedIn.

There was a request from opposition to Apple about that, and they got an official answer. You can read it on Twitter

https://twitter.com/ioannZH/status/1438750081402953728

Read my grandparent comment again please. I was talking about Telegram, and that we don't have a confirmation if Apple or Google did receive a takedown request for it.

I understand what you are talking about, but this is not how rules apply to stores' apps. (not sure about App Store, I'm mainly working with Google Play).

You can read the legal part of Google Play, starting from section 8 and to the end. https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreeme...

TLDR: it's your responsibility to observe any regulation change and decision by google in your app. Suppose any content got banned on the platform by "applicable law" in any country's jurisdiction. In that case, you must apply this decision to your app because, legally, you must inherit all Google's decisions. If you don't do that, your app can get takedown without any notice.

I'm not sure when Google changed its policy about Crimea. I can verify it from my ex-company experience and legal department. Around 2015 our application got takedown without any details because we provide access to people who live in Crimea. Still, after our legal department contacted Google, they answered that it's our responsibility to observe these decisions and apply them.

Durov didn't wait for a takedown and applied app stores' decision to Telegram. Anyway, I think his message about this "silent day" is stupid, and the worst thing that can happen for Telegram is probably takedown for Russian users in stores for a few weeks.

I just checked now, and you have access to this bot if you are registered with any other phone number except these from Russia. My Ukraine and US numbers work fine with the bot.

UPD.: To clarify, I don't say everything happened because of this Google legal agreement, I'm not so into everything in Russia politics, Telegram, etc. It's my stupid opinion on the whole situation, with assumptions based on my experience. Take it with a grain of salt.

There was news about Russian investments in Telegram and agreements between Telegram and the Russian government, so maybe it's part of agreements, nothing more.

This conspiracy theory that telegram is a secret KGB project and all bans are kind of promotion campaign - I heard it a lot of times.

More frequently as a joke but sometimes you start thinking: "what if?"

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