Judge Santiago Pedraz of the National Court has ordered the blocking of the Telegram messaging platform in Spain. This is a precautionary measure in response
And it is pointless too as there are countless other messaging apps that can be used and countless others ways that can be created to circumvent. Law makers clearly do not get tech.
I mean Telegram has been blocked in Russia before and it didn't stop their operations for too long. At best now some engineer at telegram has one more ticket and things will be back to normal.
It's not great if security is your main goal for organizing, but it has a better user experience than most chat apps. Especially if cross platform chatting is important to you.
I don't understand why people like it so much, I tried it and found the experience pretty bad. Signal is a million times better and easier to use, and Matrix isn't that hard to figure out either.
I mean, sure, you can use Matrix for personal chats. It's perfectly secure, but it's not as easy to use as Signal. For example, if I told my grandma to install Element and send me her Matrix ID, she would be really confused. Signal is very easy to use, and the user experience is basically the same as on mainstream platforms like WhatsApp. I also don't think that the phone number requirement is a US thing, as Telegram also has it. Signal only requires phone numbers to prevent spam, but they recently introduced usernames, so you don't have to give people your phone number in order for them to message you.
It indeed empowers common people by distributing full seasons of series all in one place in a somewhat user friendly way without "10 chicks in 10mt" popups.
A bunch of my friends, who don't even know how to install an adblocker, have a very rich catalog of things there.
Also, it is more difficult for a telegram channel to be banned than a website.
To be honest Telegram doesn't ban private groups "for piracy" and only takes out public groups that receive a DMCA.
I think the above user is pointing out a rather fun fact - if you're in some of the many private groups where shit is shared freely.....those wanting to ban it don't like the fact that they can't see in those private groups.
Like, is there any evidence of private groups being monitored by media corps or their lackeys in gov?
Just use Signal if you want an easy, relatively privacy friendly and secure messenger.
Telegram hands over data to goverments, is infested with spammers and scammers and its encryption is not end to end for group chat which lets Telegram access those chats.
Edit: Telegram is great for lots of things like big groups, communities, piracy, drugs etc but its just not the place where you should expect secure communication.
The CEO is a Russian, the company is based out of Dubai, and messages aren't encrypted by default. In fact, only private messages can be encrypted, group messages cannot. Telegram is not a trustworthy platform and a champion for user privacy like most people think, Signal is what you're looking for.
WTF is this ignorant "I know what they want but I'm smarter" crap, if you don't know how it works you know nothing, and "what they want" you get from news.
I know of a few governments not trying to really. Like the Russian one.
Read something about its internals before saying something as stupid.
XMPP with OMEMO is secure (not for targeted attacks, in that case you'll just get a trojan on your Android device via some unclosed vulnerability and finita la comedia, or rubber hose cryptanalysis will be applied).
This is one of the rare things where the Spanish left and right agree, for different reasons.
Simplifying a lot:
The left generally supports culture, actors, theatre, writers, Spanish made movies. They see piracy as a threat to the earnings of those people.
The right has historically cut any sorts of subsidies to the "culture creators", but they see piracy as a threat to the publishing, TV (...) industries.
They both support SGAE, which translates cleanly to the General Society of Authors and Editors, who protects their interests by charging fees to everyone who dares look at copyrighted work.
You own a bar and you play TV, Radio, or Spotify? You have to pay SGAE.
You buy a computer, part of the money goes to SGAE.
You buy a blank CD, DVD, Hard Drive, you pay SGAE (because they know you will put copyrighted material there, and if you don't, well, fuck you)
It's a fucked up system and I don't know if things have changed in the past few years as I don't live in Spain anymore. But it honestly feels like a prosecution of the population who is so evil and trying to destroy Spanish Culture.
Tbh switzerland has a similar system to the SGAE, where there is a "hidden tax" on all devices that you can load with data.
And in turn the downloading of media (with the exclusion of computerprograms and games) is legal. Only the upload of copyrighted material is forbidden.
Not a bad system imo, the tax is so small that you dont really notice it so its a pretty consumer-friendly and piracy-friendly solution.
Altho I assume the swiss government gets away with it because it would be too expensive to lobby/legal for a copyrightsholder-favoured system compared with the small amount of people (let alone pirate) who live here.
You dont have to boil down everything to "left vs right" especially not in Europe. Because if you do, blocking a chat app is by definition a leftist thing to do because of the government interference.
Please keep the American team vs team culture away from Europe.