We created a new account in Telegram and started looking for a job in Estonia
threadreaderapp.com
threadreaderapp.com
Among many other accusations against his person which can be maybe up to debate, one accusation stands out here in Geneva, Switzerland - he repeatedly used pretty bad violence against his youngest son to the point he is badly traumatized for life, having issues with basic functioning. That's suicide / self harm / bad violence material later in life. I have absolutely 0 tolerance for such piece of shit, you don't need to be a parent to see him as absolute scum of this world, and no suffering too great for him.
Maybe his work and product is stellar, maybe not, I am beyond caring. Child beaters can do whatever stuff they want, they are still primarily child beaters. The fact that russians use it so desperately for their war in Ukraine doesn't make it any better in my eyes. These are eyes of regular Joe mind you, just like most of this world.
Point me to other child beaters who also created something popular and I'll happily toss their shitty products down the drain.
Telegram is used by drug dealers in my country too. All types of illegal content. Honestly Telegram is new darknet, but not even that dark. Streets are full of QR codes linking to Telegram channels,
OTOH Telegram is a really good technology. Very lightweight client. Whatsapp sucks compared to Telegram. Very hard to block protocol, Russian authorities basically failed to block Telegram. Very easy to write bots. Telegram bots are very powerful, way beyond simple chat replies. One can build UI with buttons and dropdowns inside Telegram.
Also, in not so free countries Telegram is the Internet basically.
Of course, some weird accusations suddenly come out in such situations, coincidentally not when the money was flowing. The Swiss government hasn’t charged him with anything, so he’s innocent before the law in that case.
The issue here is between Durov and the French government. HN won’t care if he was indicted for domestic violence or something else not related to his app.
Thanks for falling easy to outrage rumors though.
The recent anti Telegram rhetoric i see here on hacker news and
other places seem to pretend that everything listed does not happen
on all the other big tech platforms.
Let's ban text messages, skype, whatsapp and email too!
The claims of this article are roughly as follows:
>""We created a new account in Telegram and started looking for a job. We joined channels that were directly about jobs in Estonia. Here’s what happened.
"We were quickly offered to 1) carry migrants from Belarusian border to Germany, 2) to scam Swiss out of their savings, 3) launder money by allowing unknown people use our bank accounts, 4) different drug related gigs, 5) send a photo of our penis for 2500 USD (we rejected).
[...]
Bottomline: Telegram has made it so easy. You don’t need to know the dark web to buy/sell drugs, find quick criminal gigs or even if you’re a Russian secret service looking to hire people for sabotage ops in Europe." "
Question: If we replace the word Telegram with Facebook or other Social Media Networking Site or even The US Postal System or The US Phone System or Your Countries Postal System or Your Countries Phone System or even The Entire Worldwide Internet -- then these claims (at least in some local or regional variety) -- could still be shown to be true!
Ask yourself a simple question:
If you are the CEO of a large social networking site (or heck, any owner of ANY Internet site that facilitates communication of any form between two or more users!), that is, you want people to communicate, but you don't want people to use your communication facilities for illegal/unethical/immoral/unlawful activities or transactions, but you also don't want to engage in nor allow censorship nor spying on your users' messages (remember, you promised them privacy or they would not have signed up in the first place, you know, contract in, contract out!) -- then,
What exactly are you supposed to do?
?
(Also, and this is minor and nitpicking -- not my main point -- but was the author of the article actually making a "good faith" effort to find and get and work at a legitimate job in Estonia had they been offered one? Or were they intentionally trolling to find the "worst of the worst" illegal/illicit "job offers" with the intent of writing a "cup of water is half empty" (what about all of the positive communications between moral/ethical/lawful/legal/legitimate users?
I guess we conveniently ignore all of those (you know, like SNL's Church Lady: "Well isn't that conveeeeeeeenient! <g>) -- and focus on all of the immoral/unethical/unlawful/illegal/illegitimate uses of the social media platform in question.
Which is like, <1% of the users...
I mean, we never hear heartwarming stories about how disabled people are able to reach out on a social media platform and feel loved and validated by other disabled people, never hear stories about how LGBTQ+ people found other LGBTQ+ people to feel loved and accepted and validated, never hear stories about how doctors have helped sick people in other countries or have created some lifesaving new medical cure that they couldn't create had it not been for the social media platform, etc., etc.!
It's always that the social media platform in question (today it's Telegram, tomorrow it could be your website!) somehow enabled/abetted crime, financial fraud, human trafficking, extremism, violence, terrorism and child pornography!
Between two or more unknown parties who are completely unrelated to the owner!
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy)
And then this is used as a pretext for arresting the owner of the website/social networking site in question!
(The Jimmy Dore Show: "Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Arrested By French Police For Free Speech!": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo2s5C2sAxM)
And this pattern plays out again and again...
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb) calls this apparently emergent phenomena a "Dictatorship Of The Small Minority" aka Minority Rule: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Or, you can read the associated HN article here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20837171
Comedy writing mode on (!):
Also, to Holger Roonemaa (if that is your real name!) who wrote:
>"5) send a photo of our penis for 2500 USD (we rejected).":
That's a shame, because I get $5,000 (consistently!) for mine! :-)
I guess you really have to know what markets to buy and sell at! :-)
But for only $5 the Global Intelligence Community can have a picture of me (as a future tech CEO!) giving them the middle finger! :-)
I'm just kidding of course!
(That is, the price for that is actually $10! :-) )
De facto, HN should and does allow links with actually readable content.
> Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.
Just like links to sites like WSJ or NYT have their archive.today links in the comments rather than as primary sources, Twitter/X should be the primary link with Thread Reader in the comments.
I don't like Twitter's login policy either, but we have rules around here and I'm going to encourage people to follow those rules by posting x.com links as primary links unless and until the rules are changed.
The reader app's purpose is organising different x posts into a more coherent article, actually readable. While the content is a concatenation of x posts, it's an article by itself.
It sounds to me like you want to enforce rules for the sake of enforcing rules. There doesn't seem to be a reason other than that in your comment. X makes this website's experience worse, so let's follow the spirit of the rules when our interactions are considerably better, and not be rule extremists.
HN has repeatedly broken its own rules for the sake of making things better for HN. The same thing happens here.
Or maybe it's not... but isn't it at least worth considering that kind of debate before admonishing others for not wanting to follow the rule you don't even agree with for the sake of following rules?
I'd support such a ban, there are far better sources for that content, such as the link provided in this post.
HN doesn't enforce an "original link only" rule, and there are frequent URL changes to non-original content, mostly articles, which are more readable, or provide more information.
Simply put, x.com links seldom offer content for us to digest and comment on.
I'd be happy if links requiring a login (paid or free) were banned completely tbh.
Unsurprisingly, people have different experiences with sites like these that really want you to log in, but will sometimes allow you to view some content without logging in, as a way to entice you.
Could be something about my uBlock Origin, but I'm not taking it down for anyone.
I've also never had a twitter account.