Since forever I stay suspicious but so far Telegram as an impeccable track record. Never there was a single instance of case where there would be even a suspicion of proof that insider knowledge of conversations was accessed/used.

Also, it is clear that Durov is a dissident and personally experienced and run away of the dictatorial state. So I think that it is probably one of the tech personality that I trust the most in the world.

Durov was notorious in Russia for refusing to cooperate with FSB (successor to KGB), too. I remember when FSB asked him to give access to protester communications on VK (in 2011 during mass protests), he mockingly responded with a picture of a dog with its tongue out (showing your tongue means "I won't give it to ya" in Russian culture). That's why he left Russia, because he felt he'd get arrested soon. Quite ironic that he ended up getting arrested in the "free world", not Russia. Telegram was also banned in Russia for a few years.

> Do you unironically believe it's not already backdoored for Russian government?

Yes. You should read the history of Durov and why Telegram was created in the first place.

> Do you unironically believe it's not already backdoored for Russian government?

To people arguing against this, Russia's Sovereign Wealth Fund RDIF has an ownership stake in Telegram after co-raising with Abu Dhabi's Mudabala in 2021 [0]

Either way, Telegram is at the whims of MbZ, and if the UAE ever needs something from Russia, they'll use Durov and Telegram as collateral. The UAE's done the same thing with Pakistan (Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif), India (Dawood Ibrahim), Israel-Palestine (Mohammad Dahlan), Serbia (Belgrade Waterfront Project and Mohammad Dahlan), Turkiye (Mohammad Dahlan), etc.

If the Telegram founders were truly opposed to Russia, they would have immigrated to Israel, the UK, Germany, Netherlands, or the US like most business dissidents in Russia. If VK wasn't stolen by an oligarch, they would have remained in Russia to this day.

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-23/russia-mu...

There is no need for a backdoor since the vast majority of messages on Telegram are not end-to-end encrypted. Just read from the server!

>Do you unironically believe it's not already backdoored for Russian government?

Yes as Telegram was banned in Russia for a long time (or at least they tried) before giving up.

Yeah why would it be backdoored by the Russian government? Because Durov is Russian?

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Actually, there is a moderation within Telegram; it is not at the scale of Meta & X in terms of the head-count. Telegram probably has 100x less employees than Meta (I don't know the actual number) https://telegram.org/tos/eu-dsa

>Telegram group chats are technically open to moderation, yet the company has done nothing to put any kind of moderation in place.

This is not even remotely true. I have reported content many times and when I come back to check it, it's gone. This includes account of spammers, some sellers (or pretending to be) of illegal goods, etc.

Facebook does not generally take down content that is offensive or criminal in nature.

The have moderation teams because they are required by law. These are outsourced to the lowest bidder. They are so overwhelmed by the amount of that content.

Watch those documentaries about the psychological traumas inflicted to those that moderate Facebook content.

So he's a political prisoner.

The political establishment doesn't want the proletariat having journalism that reports against the wishes of the powerful or of regular people having free speech to be used against the government.

No ethical person should take part in enforcing these laws.

That’s good, while prosecutors and law enforcement are wasting time building a car against him, the drug dealers and pedophiles will just carry on elsewhere.

You can report any post in public or private groups to moderators.

Do you have a link in english?

This was a bug that was fixed right after it was reported. The author of the article praised Telegram for the speed of reaction.

Note that America has been caught spying on EU countries politicians and manufacturers so many times and nobody got ever punished for this. While the backdoor talks are purely hypothetical, and Telegram's client and protocol are open source: you can just study the code.

There’s a world of a difference between refusing to hand over data you have to the authorities, and plausibly not having stored them in the first place.

By end-to-end encrypting messages, but uploading backups to Google Drive and iCloud, and in a non-end-to-end encrypted way by default, WhatsApp (and iMessage, which does largely the same) have quite cleverly maneuvered themselves out of that potential source of legal problems without cutting off law enforcement access entirely.