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Comment by funnym0nk3y | Hacker News Reader

Telegram is considered a platform for people, which do not respect the basic values of democracy like groups far right expressing xenophobia and groups which think (and express loudly) of the COVID measures as repression by some elite against the common citizen. Most of them whish for a autoritarian government. Groups which act against the constitution are observed by the Verfassungsschutz, an authority to protect the democracy and constitution in Germany. On telegram those extreme thoughts can be shared whithin their bubble which catalysts them. I don't know if this is the majority of users of Telegram (probably not), but it is strongly associated with them.

Those are the things I gathered by lightly consuming news. Maybe this is some kind of preparation for winter, where COVID cases are expected to rise in combination with very high energy prices.

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On the surface you are correct, this is especially the painted picture by the mass media and at least partially by the government (who also sought banning Telegram entirely in Germany). If you go deeper, you get to see that also a lot of human rights activists and NGOs are using it. Have been using Telegram since 2015, and in the meantime, most of my IT buddies use it and/or Signal.

With the invasion of Ukraine it seems like 95 % of the information out of Ukraine flows through Telegram (I'm not a user myself but the watermark and screenshots of the app are everywhere).

Telegram also has some ~700 million monthly active users - it seems unlikely to me that there are even 700 million alt-right people in the entire world.

It’s not and everyone knows it, including those arguing against it. The really painful thing is, Germany still has a right problem. They can be found everywhere, including in police, military, political system, media etc. Multiple scandals offer evidence, but the daily life also shows stuff not covered by this. But this situation and widespread knowledge of this is also used in order to intimidate the others, that are not on the right at all. And this is not only a reality in Germany, unfortunately.

Ukrainian here. Almost 100% of war videos goes through Telegram, possibly because Youtube does not like videos with blood and murders, and 0% goes from something like torrents or self-hosted.

Yes, I agree that the reports on Telegram are mostly focused on right wing groups. I think that it's in ins very own nature that if there is a space for non conforming right wing ideas, there is also a space for other ideas that do not fit particularly well into the mainstream opinion. I would consider human rights activism and some work of NGOs as at least unpleasant for the government which would be a good reason to pay attention on where the communication happens.

The „funny“ thing is that they discuss anti-democratic topics in public, open groups and channels. They are for the vast majority completely technologically illiterate and somehow associate Telegram with secrecy. But they are in fact publicly broadcasting their wishes to reverse authorities. Any investigators can just join a group and see almost everything they are planning out loud.

Well, Telegram is my main messenger and I don't associate myself with any of the mentioned groups. I think most of your impressions are bit bit over the top. That's not your fault as the media likes to paint Telegram in that light. Sure, there are these channels and yes Telegram tries to be light on censoring them, focusing only on the public and dangerous ones but still, claiming "Telegram is considered a platform for people, which do not respect the basic values of democracy" is a bit much as you could replace Telegram with the name of any social media/messenger platform.

This was no accusation to anybody using telegram, I use it myself. I just wanted to paint a picture of the sentiment towards Telegram in Germany and give some insight why they could act this way

In Spain telegram is mainly used by people who self identify as far left ...

In Italy it is mostly far left anarchists that use Telegram to organise, but there are far right Italians that use it, surely.

Yes Telegram is being smeared pretty badly in the German press, but to even consider people who have a disagreement with _huge_ cuts into personal liberty as a threat to basic democracy means that nobody should take them seriously.

"basic values of democracy" was redefined by Nancy Fraeser, Home Secretary. According to her only those people who align with the values of government are democrats.

https://www.cicero.de/innenpolitik/nancy-faeser-und-kommende...

So she's basically considering every upcoming protest against government due to exorbitant high energy price being anti-constitutional and undermined by violent right-wing extremists.

This is not somy dystopian future, this is Germany 2022.

"Telegram: An important opposition tool abroad, a radicalising cesspit at home."

https://twitter.com/argonerd/status/1296552428620451842?lang...

We should ban IRC next because all the swastikas floating around.

I am a telegram user, I use it download my native language telenovelas for watching over weekend. Friday evening is the only time I open telegram.

People who think that the COVID measures were repressive wish for an authoritarian government? Get your propaganda right.

Not all of course, is difficult to translate the word "Queerdenker" to English. I think we can agree that those have a significant overlap with "Reichsbürger", right politics, etc. They are not considered the core of society.

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