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.
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.