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Comment by Fatnino | Hacker News Reader

It's just made by a Russian but the Russian gov is mad at him and he's living abroad.

Exactly. People read "Russian" and freak out without any nuance.

Not really strange, given what this country has done on social media to control foreign elections, allegedly, just saying.

As a Russian, this goes both ways. I really hate how the US tries its damnest to pretend they control the entire planet and meddles with internal politics of other countries, something they have no business even knowing about, all the time. Sovereignty? What sovereignty?

True, but that it happens on both sides is not really an argument that will make people more at ease with foreign social media apps, I suppose.

>given what this country has done on social media to control foreign elections

What has Russian done that

a) Directly affects the results, such as hacking any system where electronic vote is possible.

b) Any kind of propaganda or lobbying that any other country such as the USA, England or Israel don't also engage to make public opinion more sympathetic to them.

More of option B? If it hasn't been mentioned already and I know it already is a contentious topic repeating it, the drama with J.R. was allegedly a "professional political attack":

https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/149022042327069900...

Nobody has any problem with Russia the country or the Russian people. It's the current Russian government and its psychopathic leader that are freaking us out.

Still, I believe a reflection of the government deeds affects just people – entrepreneurs, projects, etc.

I don't have data for that. I am just sharing my 5 cents here.

People could "freak out" when they hear "it's Russian" without doing any research from their side. I hope it's not happening often. As a Russian ciz this thought disappoints me sometimes and makes me sad (and our Gov deeds too).

That's a legacy from the Cold War.

> Russian gov is mad at him

citation needed

Telegram was blocked in Russia for around 2 years for refusing to cooperate with FSB. That block wasn't effective despite breaking half the internet at times and many people didn't even notice it, so eventually the government just gave up and unblocked it to save itself from being laughed at.

It is actually trivially cut off at the app store level (both apple and google), just like the free-speech-loving Germany is proposing right now (1), and the Russian government chose not to do that. The "telegram blocked" story is 2 years old, currently 52% of Russian Internet users rely on Telegram every day (2) All charges against Durov personally were dropped, and he is (admittedly) rumored to visit Spb now and then, but there is no official beef with him or any of his services currently.

1. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/politician-says-germany... 2. https://www.vedomosti.ru/media/articles/2021/09/28/888523-au...

> It is actually trivially cut off at the app store level (both apple and google)

Yes, this is why Pavel blocked the Navalny bot (providing a very nonsensical explanation for it). Apple's app store is why we can't have nice things. Google Play doesn't matter nearly as much because Android allows sideloading and Telegram already makes use of that. This page https://telegram.org/android has a prominent apk download button and an "if you want a Google Play version instead we have that too, you weirdo" link at the bottom.

Check out "telegram russian block" or "ban" in a search engine, from 2018. I don't want to give any particular resources as you will know better what is better source for you - that was a huge event and most news sources wrote on that, including HN. Russian gov forced a block on so many IP classes that a lot of goverment services stopped working, not to mention whole public clouds. Let me just cherry-pick this hilarious tweet [0].

[0] https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/986138335319117824

great, so a story from 4 years ago? the ban was removed in 2020, although they could have easily choked Telegram at the appstore level. Yet, it's officially alive and well.

Appstore you say.. well, there are many other distribution methods then appstore. I for instance use the direct download built into telegram. A bonus that I can enter chats that my government thinks is not appropriate, like ones that leaked their official communication they did on random public email services.

Also I'm sorry I dissapointed you with sources. Yes, it's sarcasm. How would one provide any meaningfull sources to what you are afraid of? Is it even possible?

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