Telegram’s core domain t.me has been placed on serverHold at the .me registry, effectively removing it from global DNS and rendering all t.me links inaccessible.
The change occurred today, according to domain records. As of now, there has been no official explanation from Telegram, the .me registry, or backend operator Identity Digital.
A serverHold is a registry-level status that completely dead-ends the domain, preventing it from resolving anywhere in the world.
I realize we don’t like Telegram but we shouldn’t be supporting exploiting control over DNS in pursuit of surveillance.
telegram *is* surveillance.
I think the fact that Telegram is constantly in legal hot water indicates that it’s not.
Oh it definitely is surveillance but it’s surveillance from the Russian state so we don’t really care about that in most of the developed world since effectively they have zero power over us and they don’t really share information with anyone else.
That’s a false comparison. You can very easily spy on your users and choose not to do anything if they do something illegal. Or better yet, if they do something illegal in a country you don’t like. You can even encourage them in that situation.
Ah yes, the messenger built by r*ssians in r*ssia, that used r*ssian AS, that was used by r*ssian army for three years. The one that rolled their own verily secure encryption (that doesn’t work anywhere but 1-1 chats), that was questioned from day 1. That was constantly unblocked and blocked by r*ssian government, that was paid by fsb, that r*ssian government literally said is theirs isn’t a surveillance machine. Right. Everything indicates that it isn’t.
Russia’s been actively trying to push their own Telegram replacement called ‘Max’, while throttling access to Telegram to discourage it’s use.
They have outright blocked Telegram before (2018) because they refused to hand over users encryption keys to the FSB. That sparked outrage and protests because of it’s widespread use, and was ultimately overturned because of it’s heavy use even within the Russian government.
The more recent throttling has been causing huge struggles within their own military units because they’ve become dependent on it, as well as struggles with their ability to push propaganda outside Russia.
Youtube, 13:35 for Telegram+Discord.
When did it become necessary to say “no, Telegram is not your friend in standing up against governments” because it never has been.
They hand off data often because they can always access the data.
And the encryption is comically, infamously bad. Since the start.
Again, it is a r*ssian surveillance machine. Max-telegram story is about internal politics inside r*ssia. You can use it, obviously r*ssia is a far away threat for a lot of people, bit let’s not pretend that it isn’t.