Telegram had such terrible privacy it might have been reasonable to arrest him in the basis of fraud...
This is a case of bad people getting arrested for bad reasons. The outcome might end up being good for the wider world, if users of Telegram move to something more secure.
Lyn Alden
-Treat the arrest of the Telegram CEO as an emergency.
-Advocate for his freedom and for all freedom tech providers.
-Support and build things that function without a CEO, like some aspects of Nostr. When authoritarian Europe or the US arrests you, be able to say, “I literally can’t control it, it’s already out there, and we are legion.”
-Tell me and others, as capital providers, how to accelerate this.
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Replies (15)
What a stupid take.
Even if it's not private enough, do you arrest people on the basis of them having a poor quality product?
That's so idiotic of you.
We arrest people on the basis of having a poor quality product all the time. It's called commercial fraud. This may be an example of it, depending on the statements that Telegram has actually made about the security of their product.
This sets a precedent for anyone working on Nostr. Especially when you account for the Dutch ruling that making something decentralized is itself a crime.
Telegram is a service, not just software.
Nostr's problem here is that it too is pretty close to a service, a fairly centralized one...
No. You arrest them on the basis of dangerous products. Or fraudulent products.
Not poor quality ones.
Poor quality privacy is dangerous.
His biggest mistake was printing the TON currency.
He created himself as a single point of failure. Nostr inherits a single point of failure from the fact it started as a one person hobby project. And while some parts are delegated, not really alot.
For example just one of the 4 nostr primitives was changed in the core protocol, against community wishes, and there's nothing we can do about it. When this was pointed out, the assertion was that bitcoin has dozens of changes each week and is more "dangerous". Nostr very much does have a single point of failure. Durov's experience might be a wake up call, I hope so!
Telegram was never decentralized. The same with X…
Wasn't the Dutch ruling partly depending on the fact that the developer is gaining financially from the decentralized system? It feels very unjust if building something decentralized that could hypothetically be used to break the law, is a crime in itself.
He was arrested more because he did not want to rely to french injunctions than for the product itself.
If the product prevent him technically from moderating the content, this is a very good reason not to be pursued.
I don't think he his is any way in real danger. France is not that kind of country.
Telegram is almost entirely unencrypted. So no, the product doesn't prevent him from doing anything. Telegram has banned a bunch of content at the request of the Russian government. They've also done a good job at banning porn or anything remotely like it, probably because they know child porn claims were coming.
Ok, interesting. So why the hell did he refused to collaborate with the french government?
The (in)direct profiting argument was used by the prosecutor, but the judge didn't need it. Being ideologically motivated was also sufficient to be held responsible.
Is that something new as a result of the TornadoCash case, or was this already in place?
True, though he might get unfair sentence if he's prosecuted for bad reason.
