Paul Cantrell (@inthehands@hachyderm.io)
hachyderm.ioSo…there is a concerted campaign, with Musk as its mouthpiece, to discredit Signal and get people to switch to Telegram. It’s disinformation, but there’s also useful information in it. The useful information is that a hideous, powerful, right-wing crank — or whoever’s yanking his chain — really, really wants people to use Telegram.
We’ve long known Telegram’s security is weak. But now, in light of this new information, we should move forward assuming that Telegram is actively compromised.
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Yes.
It think there are a lot of factors at play. Musk wants Twitter* to be an everything app and has mentioned plans to add e2e encryption to the dms. Telegram already had an iffy relationship to people who look for encrypted platforms so he probably wants to set up that idea to get people onto Twitter instead, especially as the right’s relationship to the platform is absolutely getting worse.
A big chunk of far right Telegram has moved off the platform recently after quite a few of the groups that got their start from anti-lockdown demos had members get arrested for terror charges. They seem to blame the fact that Telegram is backdoored but they constantly fed-post in open unencrypted channels anyone can read anyway. The police probably do monitor those channels but if I were to guess how they got caught, my bet is honestly that they just put in reports to the cops about each other because being fascists usually goes hand in hand with being horrible people.
I’m not sure how much he actually reads on far right Telegram but there is evidence of him at least following some channels where this sentiment can be seen. If I were to guess he saw oppotunity in bringing that audience back to Twitter.
* I refuse to call it X
EDIT: fix early accidental submission
Idk how secure telegram is but cmon signal is shady AF . They won’t let fdroid have it cause they want to sign their own keys or some shit but there is a speculation its because they can roll out custom apk to targets which governments want which is just not possible if it is hosted by someone like fdroid . Even telegram allows that and they even allow third party apps which signal won’t .
SimpleX and briar is the best option if your actually worried about privacy .
I do see it weird but publishing on F-Droid means almost nothing. If you are scared of their pre-built apks, compile from source instead. If Telegram and Signal are bad, use SimpleX.
It means a ton to me and a lot others and no one has to compile from source every time .
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Signal isn’t owned and run by Meta though is it.
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I was comparing Signal to WhatsApp, not to Telegram
When do they not spread FUD?
Yes, “because one of their council is leftist pro censorship”
Like this crap
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Like this crap
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
telegram is the real FUD here. its closed, not encrypted by default and all messages go through a centralized server.
Not e2e encrypted ≠ not encrypted.
Client is open source and you can use your own client with custom functionality if you like. I imagine nothing stops anyone from adding their own e2e implementations on top of it.
SSL on websites also is encryption. Still you can post your precious pictures “encrypted” via SSL for the whole world to see. I think everyone knew what was meant with encryption in this context.
I think not.
i know but neither encryption, nor foss clients matter much if it has to go through a closed server. thats kind of half the point of encrypting stuff. at least telegram supports it but cmon.
its like saying facebook is private because your browser is foss and you use https.
Anything goes through closed servers. Even more, serverless chat protocols tend to go through multiple users PCs (they are not open to you).
I’m pretty sure telegram doesn’t support plaintext transfers.
I didn’t call telegram private.
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I don’t think it has anything to do with the “right wingers.” I think many people and governments seek to discredit anything they can not control. Its basic misinformation tactics.
As far as Elon goes, he says crazy things and shouldn’t be believed.
They do this periodically. We saw it during Occupy, the Arab Spring, BLM, now Palestine (again). As a general rule, when folks go into the streets, the tighty righties start up the FUD.
There is a reason why spooks learn tradecraft - threat modeling, procedures, awareness, and techniques - more than they learn technology. It would behoove folks to to learn a little about that before hitting up the appstore.
Talks about other people creating FUD, then links to a post asserting telegram is compromised without citing any sources about anything discussed in the post. 🙄 FUD indeed.
I’m not saying it’s broken, but it has some design choices and functions that makes even Whatsapp a better choice for privacy minded people. Like rolling their own crypto and not having e2ee as default.
Anti-libre software, WhatsApp, bans us from proving it has E2EE, bans us from proving any of its claims and bans us from removing malicious source code.
Telegram is Service as a Software Substitute (proof app needs service and we are missing server software for it: broken app).
Yes there is FUD around signal. But they are not offering any better solutions.
Signal has some structural issues, and isn’t a good solution for all threat models (i.e. if your a government who doesn’t fully trust the USA, then signal isn’t for you)
Any conversation that doesn’t talk about briar, simplex, etc is deeply flawed since only they attempt to address the fundamental structural issues with signal.
Don’t use that centralized chat service, use THIS centralized chat service - is just FUD… and isn’t a helpful conversation.
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how? i tought it was e2ee and open source?
https://hackertalks.com/comment/1056851
The security of your key is determined by the strength of your passphrase. Am I missing something?
https://hackertalks.com/comment/3441244
Uploading your private key to the cloud is a very risky thing to do regardless of your threat model. And there are many threat models that absolutely cannot do that. So it is worth indicating as one of the weaknesses of signal
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Don’t use a centralized chat service. Use a decentralized chat service. XMPP uses the same encryption for it’s e2e encryption, is decentralized, and super light weight for both the server and the client.
And “super easy” to use. To get your friend onto it, first you have to host a server, then they have to install a client with an interface from the 90s, activate the XEPs for encryption on their client and ensure the server supports it too, exchange usernames, create an encrypted connection and exchange random codes over another medium to ensure you’re talking to the right person.
NOW you can start chatting with the other person and hope the server doesn’t crash. ECPC
Anti Commercial-AI license
Or, you can skip the unhinged rant, use monocles or dino, and a public server.
Also, hosting a server is much simpler than something like matrix. You can host an xmpp server on a pi and that is more than enough. Or, just use a public server.
So difficult.
I like how you included steps that absolutely aren’t required and haven’t been for like a decade to make your statement more hyperbolic.
XMPP is nice, but OMEMO is brittle.
Haven’t ran into issues with it yet, and this is my preferred PM method. When does it break?
One account, multiple devices logging into it (in my use case, personal laptop, work laptop, two phones).
Telegram isnt really e2ee so he wants to champion the less secure option. Gee, I wonder why???
Its Russian founder recently praised Musk in an interview for Tucker Carlson.
Is narcissistic disorder a prereq to be a billionaire or is it just a common symptom of having too much wealth for some.
Yeah sort of. I think those types of disorders get rewarded in many cases. It’s exceptionally profitable to exploit labor, mislead the public, and plunder the planet. When you have a conscience and empathy, that’s a lot harder to do, especially if you already enjoy a certain level of financial security.
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The fairest thing you can say about CrossFit is that it’s a nicely unique string to filter out. :)
Musk himself hasn’t actually provided any sources either, all his statements made on Twitter recently are basically pulled from thin air, almost like vague references
I’m sure it has nothing to do with musk planning his own encrypted Twitter DM feature.
That already exists, but it’s weak in terms of encryption.
It’s pretty easy to find articles confirming the Musk/Signal thing https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=musk+signal&iar=news&ia=news
Of course most of the rest is speculation, but… the article seems honest enough about it?
https://kolektiva.social/@Voline/112437280384669007
It was the first result when i searched for “musk signal”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/in-the-battle-of-telegram-vs-signal-elon-musk-casts-doubt-on-the-security-of-the-app-he-once-championed/ar-BB1mgWJn
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