Telegram is no longer safe for piracy.
I bet they will start kicking out piracy channels in few weeks.
I am going to delete my account now as it will become useless soon anyway.
Fuck this is exactly what I was worried about when the arrest happened
They have bigger issues than piracy, e.g. csam, malware, and other criminal activity. But the age of no moderation whatsoever is over it seems.
Yeah csam can go away. Everything else can stay though (although it won’t.)
The “other criminal activity” probably includes many horrible things. Not just a teen selling shrooms. So, I am not so sure that’s really what we want.
Telegram published a statement on X/Twitter that they are not changing any policy. The just removed misleading line in their FAQ, that stated that you can’t report private chats (which you always could).
deleted by creator
Telegram adds option to let users report content on app two weeks after CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest After almost 2 weeks of CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest, Telegram will start moderating private chats as well.
this all seem confusing, there’s no such thing as “private” chats on Telegram, only secret chats which are E2EE, well even their encrypting is questionable
what are other options?
Matrix. It can be self hosted, federated, and has encrypted chat rooms.
Matrix is great and works great.
Element is a semi abandoned client that happened to come from some of the makers of matrix.
Use literally anything else. Fluffychat works for me. Element is okay for debugging sometimes so I keep it handy.
But the commenters point stands. In matrix, you can send whatever you like, as illegal or morally corrupt as you wish because its nobody‘s fucking business AND e2ee.
If someone on my server sends csam, I would never know unless someone reported it to me. Because thats how privacy works.
it wasn’t abandoned, they are developing an overhaul with a more efficient sync API that required them to rethink how it works internally
The new Element X is really great, but only available for iOS and Android. Unfortunately no desktop or web version.
I tried a Piracy group in Matrix and there was less than 100 users…and the only active poster was a bot (or honeypot) advertising explicit CSAM related telegram groups for purchase… just looking at the words made a pit in my stomach
That’s the double edged sword with no moderation abilities
there are moderation abilities, but instead of all-seeing global moderators it must be done by the little poor room owner, and the mods they have granted permission.
if the existing owner/mods don’t do that, and disgusting content starts appearing in the room, that means they probably aren’t active anymore, and that it’s time to make a new room with the still active members before something even more damaging happens, like an uncontrollable high volume spammer, at which point you won’t be able to tell the others that you have made a new room.
Isn’t matrix like an absolute non for privacy?
Why? You can connect over a VPN or TOR, can sign up with an email, and it can most likely be hosted on a as a hidden service on I2P or TOR.
How is telegram better?
I’ve never said Telegram is better. I’m just saying Matrix is also bad.
XMPP is the future.
But terrible handling of metadata. Which is the case for all chat apps AFAIK. Like, even with OMEMO, who talks with whom, and when, can be exposed. Which sometimes is enough to get legal issues (e.g. Ola Bini’s case)
Speaking about XMPP, compared to centralized services, at least the “who talks to whom” and metadata concerns in general are partially mitigated by not having all the metadata converge towards a single host, being able to selfhost, and being able to host behind tor/i2p/…
SimpleX chat.
For easy piracy like telegram? None
there are many solutions, but they should stay hard to find
XMPP; an open protocol that can be as basic as IRC or extended to support everything Telegram does and more. Decentralised (since it’s a protocol), and E2EE through OMEMO or by encrypting with PGP client side is something your provider can’t even have control over.
Signal is probably the best option because it’s as easy to setup as Telegram and others.
Signal is unfortunately as vulnerable to this as Telegram is, as it is a fully centralized service so once the CEO is grabbed is Game Over. Something like jabber / XMPP would be better.
Signal is E2EE encrypted (similar to Telegram’s secret chats but probably better) so it’s less vulnerable. If people know about it they can ask Signal to ban you, but they can’t just passively spy on everything.
That said, XMPP is better still IMO.
(Edit: centralization isn’t as big a problem as you might think with Signal. The wealthy own the whole world now. You can’t set up somewhere outside their jurisdiction, you can only stay ahead of them as they force people to stop hosting you. Sending a takedown to Signal is the same as sending it to your hosting provider, do not fool yourself. )
You can host (tens? of) thousands of XMPP sessions on a RPi at the back of your router or in a field hooked to a PV panel and sim card, and none of “the wealthy” knowing or caring about it, though. The difference with signal is that everyone can do that, and everyone doing it expands the network and makes it more resilient for the benefits of all.
@nintendiator @someonesmall Matrix
My understanding is that Matrix is worse than XMPP in basically every way.
deleted by creator
