It’s not a matter of finding a more private app. It’s about keeping a group and have an opportunity to expand it, reach more people who would need to be a part of it. Any app in Russia that is not telegram would be too obscure for that. For now it’s a perfect balance between privacy and reach.
I’d assume the average citizen has harder time.
Average Russian knows more about VPN than most others because of tons of restrictions. And telegram only helps with that by providing workaround and info about proxies.
doesn’t care about who can read and influence their communication
Groups chats are private by default, you have to change that by yourself to make it public. There is no evidence that anyone else would be able to read it whatsoever while it’s private. The only danger comes from actual members who may invite unwanted people or share screenshots of the conversation.
the company behind Telegram has been involved in various sketchy situations
That’s the only thing you have. Any other company that could provide a service with similar features would have to be involved in very similar sketchy situations and there is no way around that. Signal doesn’t care about public communication features which puts it into a whole different weight category. Also signal would hardly care to help Russians restore access if it gets blocked.
I wouldn’t bet my wellbeing
Not surprising. You’re clearly not Russian.
This is what happens when western people read such articles. They turn into denial. Telegram is basically the safest place in Russia’s digital space.
these people must have been living under a rock
Russians are very advanced when it comes to the internet. They spend more time in it because real life sucks more than in other countries.
Telegram has control over the content and channels
Doesn’t mean anything. Especially for groups who just want to communicate.
has been working with governments in the past
There is not enough evidence to support the probability of telegram making steps to make finding gay people easier for Russian authorities.
My point is that dictatorship mainly affects real citizens, making their lives worse. Israel cares about its citizens adequately from what I see. There are no grave political crisis or tons of citizens suffering from inadequate laws or false accusations. Israeli people are fine. There is only Gaza and Palestinians Israel is dealing with, and I leave that out of context because those are outside of political regime definition for me.
Your thinking what you provided is an evidence doesn’t mean it was it. But by all means, go on.
As you wish, I don’t care. The original comment claimed it to be a dictatorship, it’s up to them to provide evidence. They failed.
Occupation is never normal. I’m not ignoring it. Just saying that dictatorship is a different thing that is hardly related to it this case and otherwise too. Also my point is that it just looks increasingly stupid when people ar first blamed Israel for being bloodthirsty killers and then switched to “oh that’s all because Netanyahu wants to remain in power”, as if it would immediately cease if Netanyahu disappears.
Whatever you prefer calling occupied territories, I don’t consider a subject for dictatorship. Dictatorship is something I consider an internal state of the country, so no other territories should affect it. An aggression on neighbouring territories can be a result of dictatorship but never a reason for it. So whatever is going on with “occupied” territories is not a subject for this discussion for me.
have been under Israeli Military Control since 1967.
You didn’t see the comment tree? It’s about Netanyahu. Are you going to pretend he is responsible for all of that?
If you ignore all of that
When we’re talking about whether or not some person is a dictator - yes, its irrelevant. Dictatorship is about having a power against the will of too many citizens, also silencing them, jailing them, killing them etc.
If you consider a democracy
Don’t need that. There are not 2 types of government. It may not be a democracy, but it’s similarly difficult to qualify as a dictatorship.
Palestinian citizens are about 20% of Israeli population. Black people are about 14% of the US population. Both of them hold legal citizenships and rights but often face disparities. Does that make the US an apartheid by your logic?
As I said before, there is no line. You can’t assume some regime fell into the other side after a short time. These things develop for years. Or could you try to classify the US regime? Surely it’s not a democracy when people can only choose between 2.
Not helping. Apartheid or not, my criteria is how well government cares about its citizens, and that term ignores that. Political gain or not, my stance is that it started with October 7th attack, which was not prepared by current Israeli government, therefore it’s correct to blame another party. Protesters doing their thing is good for everyone, we should start worrying when they are unable to do that anymore due to oppressive laws, police raids etc.
You’re changing the subject by trying to describe it with unsuitable words. Your actual thought is that it’s bad and should be changed, but you first tried calling it a dictatorship, then autocracy. People of Israel aren’t living in such conditions yet. Better just get back to “doing war is bad” stance.
You don’t need to ask me how I prefer calling a regime in a country in order to make it look bad. I don’t have such preferences. There are people suffering in any country including yours, and their lives could get better with new elections. This is not an extraordinary situation.
I don’t need to invent words for Israel. I would call it bad when I see it does terrible things to its own people. This is not a case for now and from what I know, there is no imminent conflict/crisis between government and citizens. That’s aside from the war conflict/intervention situation of course. I would also appreciate hamas if they did a better job at governing gaza, but instead they bombed it with inaccurate missiles as a side effect of trying to harm Israel. This is a huge difference - I call the Palestinian regime bad because of that, and suggest they could manage it much better. When compared to Israel, I don’t see much obvious room for improvement (I don’t see a lot of Israeli people suffering) and thus I can’t call it bad.
You’re acting ignorant with the last sentence. There is no line between democracies and dictatorships. There is a long way until we could call Israel a dictatorship. When they will marsh the streets after some next elections get cancelled (unconstitutionally), and huge numbers get arrested, then we’ll talk.
I hear Putin is a dictator and there are tons of evidence. I hear Xi is a dictator and there are tons of evidence. The evidence you gave (an article with words from one person) is laughable at best, sorry. Israeli people seem to live just fine under Netanyahu. Also it doesn’t seem probable that he would attack Gaza if the October 7 attack didn’t happen (and people are having a hard time trying to prove that he somehow made it possible). Same with Lebanon.
I don’t think we have the same understanding of dictatorship. Dictatorship can’t be hidden to the point of being only apparent to special people. It should be obvious to everyone and especially citizens affected (oppressed) by it. So far I’m not seeing any evidence of that.
One person? That’s not an opposition. Where is the opposition movement? Where are oppressed citizens?
This seems inconsistent with previous overwhelming thought that Israel wants to kill Palestine completely. Killing that many people that fast (in a course of just a few months) would not let it last for too long in the end.
Also, is there evidence of Israel being a dictatorship? Is there an opposition that is being threatened or killed or something?
Trying my best as a non-native. Feel free to hate my way of speaking.
It does and it sucks. But you can still have adequate protection because knowing your number won’t help authorities much. They have to find you in some group they deem illegal for anything to happen. They must find your account first, then add your number and see if that’s your account. Telegram did some improvements on that issue at some point, so it should take much longer and more resources to do.
Also it’s relatively easy to get a sim card not tied to your passport in Russia. Also using a cheap sim from another country is also an option, since you can set up a cloud password so that even if someone has your sim they won’t access your data fully.
A service requirement of a telephone number is not a honey spot. But sure some groups are honey spots. Yes, authorities mainly operate within the service. It can get to overwhelming extent but that mist mean they don’t have real backdoor-like access.