Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act
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I wish I more fully understood the cultural differences that make this anti-innovation stance so prevalent in the EU.
It's not just the European Union, the UK is the same.
There is a heavy bias towards what works for the incumbents.
One of the ways in which this plays out in Britain is that almost everyone is culturally conditioned to consider themselves as being a certain "class" of person e.g. they'll never start a business, they'll never earn above a certain amount, they'll work 50 years for a company (not the same necessarily, just "a company"), if they're lucky they'll get a mortgage on a 2 bedroom house. They look down on others who want more than that, which works very well for those who have it and want to maintain that moat.
Contrast that with the US in which success is celebrated and even the poorest dream of one day "making it".
Almost nobody in the UK works for the same company for 50 years and this used to be a thing in the US too.
Canada has similar laws/issues.
Social mobility is also higher in the UK than the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
Now I don’t trust these indices tbh, but I trust them more than a nice sounding anecdote.
There is a class divide in the UK but it's more complex/nuanced than what is described in this comment.
That is why the countries like uk canada and also Europe are incredibly poor.
Class system and anti-innovation.
I was under the impression that Canadian healthcare was incredible. At least, that's what I've been told for years by randos online.
For the rest, mindset plays a role in the perceived doom in Canada. Conservative talking points only ever focus on the gloom.
Source: am canadian.
They are not that poor if you adjust for cost of living and hours worked. If you look at the Wikipedia thing "GDP per working hour (2019 US$ PPP)" some results are:
Denmark 76
USA 74
Canada 57
Spain 56
UK 54
So the pay isn't that much worse per hour. People probably work a little less over here, maybe because we don't have the whole if you don't work you won't get health cover and will be doomed thing.
Also life expectancy is 76 years in the US vs 84 years in Spain. There's more to life than working all hours then croaking.
I don't think that social mobility can be measured statistically, because it depends on people actually trying. I actually think that the UK does have fairly high social mobility _but_ the vast majority of people get stuck in local maxima, and the laws are influenced by that (e.g. stuff like obsession with the mediocre outcome).
Having said that, the index you've pasted is complete bollocks. I don't know what they are measuring but it has nothing to do with what I would consider social mobility (e.g. ability to move into a different social class or perhaps earn a significantly different amount to your parents). The factors they use seem super focused on socialist policies which I don't think have anything to do with mobility.
I think that the main issue is that it tries to come up with a metric that works across every country which is basically pointless because a lot of them are failed states where income information isn't reliable or meaningful.
So they come up with stuff like "how high is teenage pregnancy" and "what is the male female work balance" which they define as being proxies for social mobility I assume because if you have five kids at age 20 and you're forced to stay at home then you have none.
The problem is that it just introduces a billion ways to influence the actual rankings, they are value judgements.
If you look at well functioning countries only, then you can pretty much look at how many people in the bottom decile of parental household income end up in the top decile of household income.
You still have the issue though that this only tells you how the distribution actually ends up, not how it _could_ look in a specific country if everyone actually tried their hardest to climb the social/financial ladder.
What we in Spain consider "making it" is to enjoy life, having time to relax, pursuing hobbies, spending time with family. And not having to worry about healthcare bills and pensions. We don't need a lot of money for that. I don't always want more. I just want enough.
In the US the vast majority never "makes it" and they are far worse off than we are here. I think Europe is great the way it is. I would not move to the US even if I was offered a job there. In fact I don't even want to visit and never have though I've lived in many countries around the world.
No, not really.
Employees have actual rights here in Europe :) Most of my (ex-)managers are also my friends. There is no boot. We get lots of holidays, we get a good lump sum when we are laid off because there is no "at will" employment and grievances can be discussed fairly.
There's always reason to complain of course but we're not bad off.
Mississippi, the poorest state in America, has 33% higher GDP per capita than Spain does.
They're pointing out that "richness" comes from measuring all parts of a person's life.
But you immediately revert to talking about only money. It's super ironic.
Perhaps you have the wrong idea about Spaniards?
It also doesn’t take into account cost of living. You might as well make 300% more but if everything is 500% more expensive I don’t see why that’s an indication of things being better.
To take an over-simplistic example, imagine that the cost of healthcare in Mississippi just rose 5k per capita. Mississippi’s GDP just rose 5k per capita (simplified almost to the point of being nonsensical, but increased healthcare cost will raise gdp), but Mississippians got worse off!
For a glaring example, take Ireland; gdp per capita is over 3x Spain. Is the standard of living in Ireland 3x that of Spain? Definitely not; I think you could actually make a case for it being lower, especially for the more economically disadvantaged (wages are much higher, but so is cost of living).
I think where all this comes from is that gdp/capita _used_ to work a bit better as a proxy for standard of living (though still not well) when economies were more manufacturing-oriented.
Indeed my wage went down but my standard of living went up. The exception being if I want to pay goods that cost the same everywhere (e.g. computers, cars). But it's not a big deal.
Also, my quality of life increased considerably. In Ireland public transport is horrible and almost nonexistent. A car is always necessary for those living outside of Dublin or Cork. Now I can do without a car and spend 20 euro monthly on all my travel needs, and not having the hassle and costs of a car. Driving is very stressful to me (especially in Ireland where until recently people could just buy their license at the post office so driver skills are very low).
And the weather is way better which affected me greatly in Ireland (during winter it was raining almost every day where I lived, and the days were super short leading to depression). Here in Spain life is much more outdoors. And healthcare here is free and much better (in Ireland even though I had expensive private insurance I still had to pay 70 euro just to see the family doctor. Here I pay nothing).
Also, for stats on the US, there's so much variation; beware the tyranny of averages (statewide/nationwide); you want to avoid being in the bottom quartile/50% but the top quartile is probably quite nice. Many US indicators (education, violent or property crime, health outcomes, economy) are very heavily linked to zipcode(/county/metro), more so than in Europe. [0] says if you excluded the MS Delta from those metrics, MS is solidly in the middle of the pack in many of those metrics
[0]: r/mississippi: 'Mississippi often has the lowest "quality of life" metrics in the nation. Do residents believe this data, do they care about it, and does it affect them?' https://www.reddit.com/r/mississippi/comments/108ts12/seriou...
As a European entrepreneur I care a lot more about consumers/workers being treated fairly than I do about innovation. I know the EU does not always get this right. But man, the US treats is workers and consumers like crap.
I wish I more fully understood the cultural differences that makes this business-first stance so prevalent in the United States.
This is flagrantly bullshit, unless you're claiming that there's some sort of intellectual and moral difference in European human beings because... reasons...
The EU is as corporatist and protectionist of big business as it's possible to be, it just hides it (poorly) behind a number of veils while throwing moral-sounding legalisms at certain companies and entrepreneurial culture in general. I say this as someone who fully detests some of the rapacious grubbiness of many American tech companies and the silicon valley culture and believes both should be watched carefully. Nonetheless, this placement of the EU on an absurd pédestal because it's "European" needs to burn and die.
>As a European entrepreneur I care a lot more about consumers/workers being treated fairly
These sorts of claims are tediously common here on HN from too many people obviously from Europe. For one thing, as a European the only thing you can establish under that rubric is that you're from that part of the Eurasian continent. Nothing more, certainly not morally or emotionally. Being a European menas being part of dozens of cultures that all have their own details, and of which many are no less greedy, self-serving, dishonest and in further extremes racist as hell, than they are in many other parts of the world.
Does your smugly self-indulgent statement somehow imply that American entrepreneurs only care about squeezing every last dollar while crapping as much as possible on their employees and customers? If so, I invite your to open your eyes wider.
There is most certainly a cultural difference. I’ve lived in the USA for 10+ years. My “self-indulgent and smugly” European opinion is that the average American is a lot more individualistic than the average European. Which could partly explain why they just see things differently. Why is it such a scandalous thought that our morals and priorities are just different?
> The EU is as corporatist and protectionist of big business as it's possible to be…
I disagree. I’m more optimistic. There are a lot of good people and organizations within the EU working very hard to level the playing field. A lot of good work has been done. I can certainly say that I prefer being an employee and consumer in the EU, which is the reason I moved back here. Compared to the States, yes I think the EU deserves the pedestal. No doubt.
>Does your snuggly self-indulgent…
No, I’ve met many hard working honest American Entrepreneurs. But big businesses, yeah, for sure they want to squeeze the American labour force and consumers for every last penny. Just like big EU businesses do. The difference is that our governments are doing something about it.
Or the same EU that's pushing and pushing for encryption and fundamental privacy prohibitions?
Look, I'm not saying the EU is perfect. We have our own lot of crazy and corrupt politicians to deal with. I'm sure you can find plenty of examples of why the EU sucks. I'm not trying to convince you otherwise.
I'm saying that in my personal opinion based on my life experience, the EU is doing a lot more than the US when it comes to passing laws that benefit consumers and workers as oppose to businesses. And that's not something I just read in a news headline. It is something I have personally experienced as a person that lived in both places.
For HN innovation often means digital stuff, but the world remains a physical space.
The EU is a decent place to start non digital high tech companies. Germany was at the cusp of becoming a biotech powerhouse, the war and energy price increases killed that.
But these are external factors, so I think it counts as a counter example.
However, while struggling at many points, the EU is far from becoming economically irrelevant as the top poster sees to believe.
To address your arguments on intellectual property being as important as actual manufacturing, I tend to differ.
3 points: 1. This type of thinking is exactly the reason why china became a super power. 2. Intellectual property is only as good as the power to enforce it, if Russia had the factories to produce the tech they need for the war, nothing could stop them from just from doing it. 3. In economies build on intellectual property and outsourcing, wealth concentrates in the hand of the patent holders.
Neither of which seems desirable to me. I do not begrudge the Chinese their economic success, but the events in the north Filipin Sea are concerning.
However, look at China - they don't care much about the intellectual property rights, they are okay with industrial espionage and reverse engineering, and yet their chips are not even close - even though their fabs aren't too bad. The fab is just not the whole story.
The EU really is becoming irrelevant, more and more, and it's accelerating. 10-20 yeaes ago the US and EU economies were comparable - and that was when the US anti-worker and anti-consumer situation was worse than today, they're improving on this metric, in some cases faster than the EU. The EU energy policy based on ideology instead of facts is going to be the last straw. I'm saying this as an EU citizen.
If you do not wish to respect customer privacy laws, I am ok with you not wanting to sell your product in the EU.
https://www.ft.com/content/196fbc63-b311-4e9f-bd6a-ffcc7e2a6...
> Ofmin, a French police agency set up last year focused on preventing violence against minors, said on Monday that Durov is alleged to have failed to adequately moderate criminal activity.
> “At the heart of this issue is the lack of moderation and co-operation by the platform (which has nearly 1 billion users), particularly in the fight against child sex crimes,” Jean-Michel Bernigaud, the secretary-general of Ofmin, wrote on LinkedIn on Monday.
And:
> Durov has taken a hands-off approach to moderation and cast the app as unassailable by governments. However, some researchers have warned that it has become a hub for illicit activity and extremism as a result.
On sufficiently long time scales, the internet will not tolerate states, and states will not be able to withstand the influence of the internet.
The ability to copy and send bytes around the world, to capture and disseminate media in such a way that forces transparency, but also to facilitate and democratize private conversation, to route around censorship... these are qualities that make what are today fundamental aspects of statecraft, such as state secrets, intellectual property, control over money supply and trade, surveillance, and censorship, impossible.
It's time to acknowledge that we need to transition our methods for ensuring each other's safety, well-being, freedom, justice, and prosperity via stateless channels and stop regarding states as having any jurisdiction over the internet.
The Internet seems like a similar invention but the effect on the nature of states is harder to fathom. I don't know if anyone living in the 1500s would have predicted a world where the top 10 militaries are all in a single alliance and the church would be a shadow of its former self.
I think there are interesting times to be had. Democracies certainly seem to be feeling the effects for good and ill of the collapse of traditional gatekeepers in the face of free distribution of information.
He who controls the cables controls the (cyber)universe
To the extent that this is correct, it means states cannot tolerate the internet, and will transition to not using or allowing it.
> these are qualities that make what are today fundamental aspects of statecraft, such as state secrets, intellectual property, control over money supply and trade, surveillance, and censorship, impossible.
State secrets are primarily voided by cheap surveillance, e.g. that a laser microphone is now a high school project.
IP is covered by international agreements, though may be voided by AI.
Control over money is done by requiring residents pay taxes in whichever currency, nothing about the internet changes that.
Supply and trade correspond to people with guns on the borders, that's only going to change with personal nanoscale 3D printing and delivery by orbital bombardment, not the internet.
Surveillance is likely to get much more prevalent rather than become impossible, e.g. aforementioned laser microphones.
Censorship might become impossible. Or perhaps we'll find new ways to do it. Jamming works by increasing the noise so you can't get a signal, GenAI may do that easily.
Source: I'm living in that lunatic asylum.
Also, what's that supposed to even solve?
In much the same way that the mere existence of Dropbox doesn't preclude the USA from prosecuting Kim Dotcom.
If Dotcom was in the US he would be in prison for a decade. It's a huge difference.
Not when "the platform" is from outside the EU, as Telegram is.
For any question along the lines of "is Telegram in breach of legal obligations?" there's zero connection to what any other messaging app does.
If I set up a local company for a local messaging app and local government leans on me about it, that government doing so makes zero difference to an outside company such as Telegram.
> If Dotcom was in the US he would be in prison for a decade. It's a huge difference.
His home was raided in 2012 and he's lost his last battle against extradition despite some intermediate wins about the raid itself.
> Following a referendum held on 23 June 2016, Brexit officially took place at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).
With one leg out.
>> @amelius: Can't the EU make their own messaging app?
> @tptackek: Wasn't Matrix in the running for this?
Three points:
1) From https://matrix.org/foundation/about/: The evolution of Matrix is managed through an open governance process, looked after by The Matrix.org Foundation - a non-profit UK Community Interest Company, incorporated to act as the neutral guardian of the standard on behalf of the whole Matrix community.
2) Matrix is a protocol, not a messaging app.
3) UK is no longer EU.
Read it however you like, I'm simply pointing out that private efforts in non-EU member states are difficult to roll under "EU effort to create their own messaging app".
There are things like this: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/
>The European Commission has told its staff to start using Signal, an end-to-end-encrypted messaging app, in a push to increase the security of its communications.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-commission-to-staff-switc...
What an utter ridiculous and misleading statement from the company that LITERALLY REFUSES to take down drug and malware shops from its platform.
There's tens of academic studies that have looked at this problem and many of them have Telegram as the worst offender.
Here's just one of the studies: https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/addressing-distributi...
What is important when it comes to regulators is not whether you fail to comply or not. It is whether you take your responsibility to comply seriously e.g. timely responses to information requests, continuous process improvement etc.
https://www.facebook.com/viarailcanada/posts/scam-warning-av...
I reported it (like others in this thread), but facebook said it didn't break any rules. I requested another review, and they said the same thing, with no way for me to make any comments or replies.
Perhaps they will remove certain ads if it's instantly obvious that it is illegal, but overall they're pretty terrible at moderation.
[0] https://campaign.askingcanadians.com/faq/via
So I can see some of those offers being legitimate.
Serious crimes where people's lives are at stake.
Scams in general are towards the bottom on everyone's priority list.
It seems obvious to me that Meta's moderation is mostly about pretending just enough for regulators to go away, and no more. Hell, Meta probably indirectly makes money from these scams by targeting more scams at the people who fall for them, at a premium. Meta makes money, scammers make money, regulators are content. It's a win-win-win.
The difference is that other platforms give EU states access to people's private messages. If you go into the technicalities of what EXACTLY this means, it started with a list of 27 organizations that got blanket access, without judicial oversight (because all of the different rules from the member states apply. Some do not require judicial oversight). Organized long ago by Interpol. It grew from there, exactly as people expected.
Oh and in case you're wondering. This already exists. It is NOT about the new EU directive ("directive 92"). This is about delivering specific individual's messages, when specifically asked to, and maybe blocking them.
Which other platforms are you talking about because both Signal and WhatsApp are e2e encrypted?
France has much tougher laws on this than the rest of the EU.
In fact when publishing to the App Store as a developer you are primarily asked 2 questions.
1) What types of encryption you implement
2) Whether you are planning on making your app available in France
So it’s likely another reason but the authorities are using legal pretenses to arrest this guy.
The study you linked names instagram as “the most important platform”…
Also from your study: “Our investigation finds that large networks of accounts, purportedly operated by minors, are openly advertising SG-CSAM for sale on social media. Instagram has emerged as the primary platform for such networks, providing features that facilitate connections between buyers and sellers. Instagram's popularity and user-friendly interface make it a preferred option for these activities.”
I tried Googling (without knowing Dutch I found these: https://archive.is/dGp2w https://www.inhope.org/EN/articles/tackling-csam-hosting-in-... ) and I guess the difference is that I'm talking about public bots/channels, and the problem lies with private chats / groups?
Yes, random internet person. I believe what you say, and not totally making it up just to win an internet argument.
I actually work in cybersecurity. I think I know how Telegram's support team reacts, which is not react at all.
Seriously though, I was trying to figure out what kind of reports get ignored vs acted upon (since THEY IGNORE ALL REPORTS is an obvious exaggeration). I’m sorry if it’s about winning internet arguments for you.
I'm not a 'consumer,' but I consider it a huge advantage of such platforms in terms of increasing safety and clarity.
I mean the West has always accused the East of employing similar tactics wrt arresting journalists/freedom fighters etc, how do we not see the irony here...
I thought he was a human being.
> It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.
No, it is exactly the law.
As the law places certain responsibilities onto platforms, if you (any platform not just Telegram) say this kind of thing, are you sure you're following the law right, or are you just saying the law is wrong and bad?
Didn't some crypto mixer coin network creator just get found guilty for this?
You know something is up when russians, and Snowden (or his handler), are calling the arrest of French citizen in France "taking hostages".
The Russian army is trying to restrict phones amongst their troops right now, from what I can tell. The soldiers who need telegram the most to handle their own logistics and strategy, because that is horrificly a thing, need telegram.