That would be rather odd, considering that Telegram is as widely used by Ukraine as it is by Russia. Kasparov isn’t exactly a stranger to holding odd viewpoints though. He advocated the US using nuclear weapons against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, for example.
I just use it as an alternative for texting, especially when I have groups with iPhones and Androids. I use Signal the same way – different friends like different apps. I wouldn’t have any idea how to get on a Telegram news feed.
Aren’t WhatsApp and Signal end-to-end encrypted? How do they police naughty stuff in group texts?
I did a quick search on WhatsApp.
Meta claims that it’s E2E encrypted. Various other groups are claiming that WhatsApp is an open target for spreading illicit materials (e.g. images of children). Meta does say that they’ll share metadata about chats with law enforcement. E.g., if law enforcement finds illicit materials on someone’s phone, Meta will share who all that person has been communicating with and, presumably, any location data.
Durov has pointed out that WhatsApp has been allowed to exist in various nations that have laws against E2E encryption, implying that there may be a secret backdoor that’s being shared with those governments. Of course, it could be the above willingness to be responsive to warrants that has allowed them to stay. Banning them may just lead users to use encrypted apps from smaller companies who are less responsive.
Of course, that Durov is alive could imply that there’s a backdoor in Telegram that the Russian government has access to. More likely, it’s the design and promotion of Telegram that implies E2E encryption without actually doing it in most cases:
Making people think that they’re secure when, in fact, they’re not is possibly one of the most useful tools, ever.
Thanks for the detail. Who knows who now knows about my plans to see a movie??
Charges are official now.
No, no he is not.
It is both catty and narcissistic as fuck, but I always thought this quote from the brilliant but by then pretty nuts chess whackdoodle Bobby Fischer was amusing:
“I object to being called a chess genius because I consider myself to be an all around genius who just happens to play chess, which is rather different. A piece of garbage like Kasparov might be called a chess genius, but he’s like an idiot savant. Outside of chess he knows nothing.”
Well, maybe he was half right.
You mean that he’s claiming that his knowledge is vast?
Bobby Fischer was very good at chess, that’s all.
Ah. Thanks.