But let's face it many on HN deny the norm and couldn't care less if Telegram is used for criminal content. It's undeniable that the app has a certain reputation.
For those who have built or participated in building large scale social networks (nvm global scale), you learn the Tim Ferris rule very quickly: 1 in a million is a common occurrence.
As soon as you have a social network you’ll experience a massive industry, trained over decades & with plenty of financial backers, farming it for victims.
Government bodies are hand-waving in the same way companies are - moderation is a difficult, unsolved problem and if you solved it you’d have a new set of difficult problems (opposing sides feeling they are getting more censored than others). No one has a solution to this, which is why regulations are entirely “doing enough to prevent the problem.” Can’t be done.
What I’ve seen expressed on HN has been the central posit of information systems since the beginning - if you require your information systems to be crime & abuse free, you will not have an information system anyone can use.
My personal stance is that an issue does not become a moral one until there is an actual solution on the table or the will to fund its development for the public good.
Where is the EU grants to solve this problem?
It’s seems fairly clear that the EU has invented a revenue engine that collects rent from tech to alleviate pressure on its own unpopular cost burden on its member countries. It’s smart, probably inevitable, and a reality for tech companies to contend with for the foreseeable future.
No one does and that’s not why Durov was arrested. It’s fine if there is crime on your system providing you are ready to work with law enforcement so that the space can be policed to the best of your ability.
If you don’t, you are basically voluntarily harming society and will be prosecuted. I’m personally fine with that.
I find it very hard to take the discussion about Telegram here seriously anyway because I just opened Telegram right now to check and sure enough the third contact in people nearby right now is called “Weed, Coke, Viagra - Buy now”. At some point, if you don’t see the issue, I think you might be intentionally blind.
Or we just see these discussions as something that shouldn't be criminalized. I'm happy that those who wish to buy drugs can do so on a safer platform than the street corner.
What you say is absurd because you're assuming that what the government requests for being "ready to work with law enforcement" is actually reasonable, fair and considerate to certain rights that most of western society ostensibly takes seriously. You assume that the measures proposed under the guise of protecting some vulnerable group won't be used for other much more self-serving things that also very much harm society.
Both of these assumptions are visibly false in so many cases of such state requests that you can't just be "fine" with that unless you flat out don't give a shit about people's fundamental rights against a powerful state.
