Russians are very advanced when it comes to the internet.
I do not doubt that for marginalized groups such as the LGBTQ comunity, who have to watch every step they do. But given the restrictions placed on everyday online services in Russia I'd assume the average citizen has harder time.
Doesn't mean anything. Especially for groups who just want to communicate.
A subset of society that's marginalized at best and killed at the worst doesn't care about who can read and influence their communication? That seems highly shortsighted to me.
There is not enough evidence to support the probability of telegram making steps to make finding gay people easier for Russian authorities.
That we know of. Given that the company behind Telegram has been involved in various sketchy situations I wouldn't bet my wellbeing on a service that might or might not share information with a corrupt government..
A subset of society that's marginalized at best and killed at the worst doesn't care about who can read and influence their communication? That seems highly shortsighted to me.
That we know of. Given that the company behind Telegram has been involved in various sketchy situations I wouldn't bet my wellbeing on a service that might or might not share information with a corrupt government..
Share informarion with Putin? No, very unlikely. Ban opposition channels during elections? Confirmed yes.
Apple banned opposition's apps durung elections too. And Google.
Average Russian knows more about VPN than most others because of tons of restrictions. And telegram only helps with that by providing workaround and info about proxies.
doesn't care about who can read and influence their communication
Groups chats are private by default, you have to change that by yourself to make it public. There is no evidence that anyone else would be able to read it whatsoever while it's private. The only danger comes from actual members who may invite unwanted people or share screenshots of the conversation.
the company behind Telegram has been involved in various sketchy situations
That's the only thing you have. Any other company that could provide a service with similar features would have to be involved in very similar sketchy situations and there is no way around that. Signal doesn't care about public communication features which puts it into a whole different weight category. Also signal would hardly care to help Russians restore access if it gets blocked.
You must be in Russia. I am basing this on your writing style. Although your English is good, you seem Russian.
Telegram isn't always private, but it does allow people to blend in with other users. There are other more private Apps, like SimpleXChat, but with fewer connections to a SimpleXChat server LGBT people could be afraid they would stand out if they all started using it.
It's not a matter of finding a more private app. It's about keeping a group and have an opportunity to expand it, reach more people who would need to be a part of it. Any app in Russia that is not telegram would be too obscure for that. For now it's a perfect balance between privacy and reach.
Not sure about Signal. I remember times when it was phone number focused. Having visible phone number in Russia means FSB might knock on your door.
The only thing better than telegram I can think of and relatively popular is Matrix. But even in my university I don't know about anyone else, who uses it.
Telegram requires a phone number. That's a none starter for me. There's a huge number of services that don't. This might as well be a honey pot for trapping more lgbt people. Russia has used dating services before in their crackdowns.
It does and it sucks. But you can still have adequate protection because knowing your number won't help authorities much. They have to find you in some group they deem illegal for anything to happen. They must find your account first, then add your number and see if that's your account. Telegram did some improvements on that issue at some point, so it should take much longer and more resources to do.
Also it's relatively easy to get a sim card not tied to your passport in Russia. Also using a cheap sim from another country is also an option, since you can set up a cloud password so that even if someone has your sim they won't access your data fully.
This might as well be a honey pot for trapping more lgbt people.
A service requirement of a telephone number is not a honey spot. But sure some groups are honey spots. Yes, authorities mainly operate within the service. It can get to overwhelming extent but that mist mean they don't have real backdoor-like access.
There's a Russian guy I know in some... adult roleplay circles.., kinkiest chap I know. I worry about him... He tried telling me Telegram was "safer", didn't know what he meant.
I'm literally interacting with you right now. Did you think I couldn't see you were from lemmy.ml? Do you think you're the only one from lemmy.ml who comments in this community?
I'm literally right here interacting on that exact topic right now. I've seen plenty of discussions from the people mentioned about the topic and newsflash, they don't say that. Y'all just would much prefer to pass around rumors and dismissive charicatures rather than investigating what we actually believe.
It only really impacted me and a few others on Blahaj/196. She "swore off" the rest of Lemmy (still has it, still uses it) and said that being on Hexbear was better for her than other spaces online, and anyone disagreeing, even other trans women, were all wrong.
I don't understand why someone would downvote you or why this opinion would cause an impact of any kind? People say all sorts of crazy things online. Was she particularly rude, trollish or baitey?
She thought that the group of trans people that run 196 was somehow enabling transphobia and other horrid things when we constantly removed it.
And when we removed it, she said it was better for communication if kept things up to show the idiots.
And then when I kept it up, she got mad at me for not instantly banning and removing them.
Like everything 196 does was inherently a master plan where we messed with all users just for her.
She's banned because she constantly went "I can't wait to leave this place" and never did. So I left the ban note along the lines of "If you want to leave, you can. You're not, you're harassing users and defending tankies, so take this time to breath some air."
Hm. As long as you only interact with Lemmy through a (trusted) VPN, or even through Tor, you're just as safe using Lemmy as you would be any other website. Servers can always see your IP by default, and the owners of those servers can be coerced to give it away by whatever external forces. If you hide your IP, they can't. That's pretty much it.
Here's a hint: I think a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine should involve a new referendum organized and monitored by an impartial body (so not one picked by either Russia or NATO) before I was comfortable with Crimea or other parts of Eastern Ukraine joining Russia.
It's a good compromise because it leaves everyone unhappy.
Or Russia can get the fuck out of Ukraine. Your "compromise" is letting the mugger only take half of your wallet.
Giving concessions to Nazi Germany is how the world let WWII happen in the first place. Russia has been allowed to fuck around for far too much. They should have been stopped when they invaded Georgia. Letting them have parts of Ukraine will only give them time to regroup and possibly invade either Ukraine again or some other nation.
before I was comfortable with Crimea or other parts of Eastern Ukraine joining Russia.
Are you currently in Crimea? Other parts of Ukraine? Is this really your call?
Your “compromise” is letting the mugger only take half of your wallet.
People aren't property, you don't get to keep them just because you own them. They have self determination.
Are you currently in Crimea? Other parts of Ukraine? Is this really your call?
No, it's theirs, which is why I want them to have a choice! I'm the one that wants to let them choose whether they join Russia or stay with Ukraine. You're the one that wants to hold them against their will if they truly want to leave.
I'd be comfortable with allowing them to do what they want. Why do you not want the same?
Zelenski wants guns and bullets. What do the People want? Do Crimeans want the US to give Ukraine more guns and bullets? Or do they not count for some reason?
Casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian War include six deaths during the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, 14,200–14,400 military and civilian deaths during the War in Donbas
So I'm guessing what a large number of them want is for Russia to unkill their friends and relatives. But then most of the ones who want that have been driven out, arrested, or intimidated into silence.
They didn't get a choice to get invaded by Russia in the first place. Why should they get a choice about whether or not Russia should stay there, especially after Russia has either driven out or arrested people trying to get the occupied areas out of Russian hands?
Interesting. How about a counter-offer? Russia gets the fuck off the Ukraine, pays reparations, and maybe in a decade or so of being nice the rest of the world starts trading with them.
Ukraine has/had an imperfect government, that doesn't mean they deserve to be invaded. My government is far far from perfect that doesn't mean I should be punished with bombs going off on my block and my children kidnapped.
Fuck Putin and fuck his supporters and fuck anyone who both sides this crap. Russia could have sat there and broken their own people forever and no one would have raised a finger to stop it they invaded a neighbor that was zero threat to them. For what? So an elderly despot could enjoy his fantasies of restoring a dead empire.
Interesting. How about a counter-offer? Russia gets the fuck off the Ukraine, pays reparations, and maybe in a decade or so of being nice the rest of the world starts trading with them.
The rest of the world is trading with them. It's just the NATO bloc that has cut them off, which is now bifurcating the global economy. It's one of the main reasons for inflation all throughout the West, because our currencies are now not being used by a growing segment of the world economy.
Your counteroffer isn't happening and if we keep this up things will only get worse. We can't dictate terms. We have to negotiate.
Ukraine has/had an imperfect government, that doesn’t mean they deserve to be invaded.
Ukraine had a pro-Western revolution/coup that removed Russian allies and replaced them with NATO allies. It doesn't matter if they "deserve" to be invaded (I don't think they deserved it, for the record), Russia merely did what was in it's geopolitical interests.
Fuck Putin and fuck his supporters and fuck anyone who both sides this crap.
You are still defending them? Why? I am sure you aren't being paid for weekend work. Anyway I block Russian shills but feel free to earn your potatos by replying.
I mean, it‘s pretty unimaginative to label these guys Putin shills. These guys are fed up with the way the Western world is run. They are fed up with the hypocrisy of liberal politics. And maybe there’s something to it, no? The way all others are preaching nationalism, the sanctity of our markets and success, hexbear to me really feels like a bit of fresh air.
I kinda don't want to dip my toes in this, but here goes:
I agree that it's occasionally a breath of fresh air. The issue I've always had with Hexbear is they've more or less replaced one version of American (and to a lesser extent European) exceptionalism with another. Where American nationalists consider America to be exceptionally great, Hexbear considers it to be exceptionally evil. They routinely attribute domestic incidents in different countries to American meddling--regardless of evidence--even when those events either achieve nothing for American geostrategic goals or actively harm them. America as the "great Satan," etc.
Just an example because I remember it: Imran Khan lost an internal power struggle in Pakistan. He was probably the most west-friendly candidate left there, but Hexbear blamed a CIA coup https://hexbear.net/post/186331
In the same vein, they permit or even encourage Chinese aggression against the Philippines, within the Philippines' own exclusive economic zone. You can't substitute one form of imperialism for another. It's a trap I see a lot of leftists fall into.
I think most of 'em are alright. Just growing into leftist thought still and grappling with the moshpit that is international politics. Also they're funny lol
People, observe the rhetorical devices of tankies. They do not engage in meaningful discourse. They answer with non-sequiturs framed as innocent questions. They present themselves as free speech defenders, yet they use this free speech to defend the most oppressive regimes in the world, though most often implicitly as their whole thesis becomes an obvious sophism were it to be explicitly stated:
America bad, therefore Russia/China/NK good.
It's the exact same rhetorical devices that /r/The_Donald used during the '16 election, only with a different goal. It's the methodology of people actively working against their own self-interest, shitting all over rational discourse because they found themselves in a self-reassuring echo-chamber of anticonformism.
Well, if you are calling for people not to engage with these groups, then you are compliant in creating these echo chambers. Yours and theirs. This is what happened with the disenfranchised people at The_Donald. Framing them like idiots, with some collective nefarious goal is laughable at best. While you don’t approve the way they communicate, they are still pretty good at exposing liberal hypocrisy. If you pretend that doesn’t exist and just want to shut up growing factions of society, you are working against your self interest all the same.
Oh you poor things, the lack of attention we give you is what allows you to thrive. I'd almost shed a tear if there was an inkling of truth in those ramblings.
Being a tankie doesn't mean that you agree with everything any non-Western state does, it just means that you're critical of war and are willing to consider internationalist perspectives.
Yeah, I don't fully agree with their decision to intervene in the Ukrainian civil war, just as I don't agree with Ukraine's shelling of Donbass in violation of Minsk II, or with the coup and banning of opposition parties that led the disputed territories to declare independence.
The best case scenario, as has been the case since the start, is for a peace agreement to be reached as soon as possible to prevent further loss of life. Which reactionary government controls the disputed territories isn't worth people dying over.
Yeah, I don't fully agree with their decision to intervene in the Ukrainian civil war
Of course Russia had nothing to do with the war. They would never fund and support the separatists, or spread anti Ukrainian propaganda amongst the Russian speaking population, because Putin loves democracy and just wants the best for everyone, of course. /s
You said you "don't fully agree" with Russia intervening in the civil war (by shelling kyiv I guess, because theres definitely civil war there). As if they didn't provoke it in the first place to justify their invasion.
I also wouldn't expect people who are criticial of war to say that they "don't fully agree" with Russia waging a war of aggression and commiting mass murder and war crimes in Ukraine, I would expect some actual condemnation of such atrocities.
Thank you. We can either have a good faith discussion based on facts and evidence and what was actually said, or we can have this cable news-tier bullshit of putting words into mouths and bad faith mischaracterization. I'd prefer the former.
Now, your claim is that Russia started the civil war as a pretext to invade and that the separatists are just Russian proxies. On the other hand, the Russian narrative would claim the same thing about the Euromaidan coup. I treat both of those claims with roughly equal skepticism. I don't doubt that both movements have some degree of organic support, or that both have received foreign funding and support. I'll also note that, for example, the American revolution had support from the French, so I don't consider either movement accepting foreign support automatically disqualifying.
Regardless, the question is what the best scenario is going forward. I don't see either side as being particularly concerned with the well-being of the people living there, or in actual democratic representation or anything like that. As far as I can see, it's just about US/Ukrainian state interests vs Russian state interests, and I don't really have a dog in that fight. The interests of states are generally disconnected from those of the people.
In my opinion, if people really cared so much about the Ukrainian people, then we should've been providing them with foreign aid for domestic development, long before any of this started. And if that had happened, the people would be happy and comfortable and loyal to whoever provided it. Instead, conditions declined, people became resentful and felt that there was nothing to lose, and now we have this conflict and people are being forced into a meat grinder against their will. It would be a better use of funds to accept territorial concessions and divert the resources used for war towards rebuilding. Likewise, Russia could've used the funds they're using now to relocate the people loyal to them into Russia. This was is wasteful and destructive and benefits no one but the people in power on both sides.
Now, your claim is that Russia started the civil war as a pretext to invade and that the separatists are just Russian proxies. On the other hand, the Russian narrative would claim the same thing about the Euromaidan coup.
I guess most the 400.000 - 800.000 Euromaidan protestors were CIA agents in Russias view then?
It's well known that many people in Eastern European countries don't trust Russia one bit after their experiences in the USSR. Of course there's enormous pushback when politicians in power try to strengthen ties with Putin (and cut ties to EU countries), it would be really weird if there weren't. The same would happen in Poland and many other Eastern European countries who were staunchly anti Putin long before the invasion, even though they don't have an immediate threat from a shared border with Russia.
In my opinion, if people really cared so much about the Ukrainian people, then we should've been providing them with foreign aid for domestic development, long before any of this started.
Before the war, people weren't really aware of the situation in Ukraine and there were 100 other problems that seemed more urgent, so there just wasn't any political pressure to do something.
As far as I can see, it's just about US/Ukrainian state interests vs Russian state interests
Western countries just stood by in the first days and did nothing, as they had no hopes for Ukraine surviving for more than a few days. If the Ukrainian public weren't willing to push back, they would've had no chance to stop the Russian advances and their government would've collapsed in days, just as both Russia and the West predicted.
It would be a better use of funds to accept territorial concessions
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fled from the occupied territories, and accepting that they will never get their relatives and homes back will be unthinkable for a large part of them, especially after the reports of forced relocations from occupied regions into Russia (including thousands of children) and all the suffering that Putin has brought upon Ukrainians. Maybe they will reach the point of making concessions if they see no hope of retaking the territory. Ultimately this has to be decided by the Ukrainian people.
I guess most the 400.000 - 800.000 Euromaidan protestors were CIA agents in Russias view then?
No, obviously, in the same way it would be ridiculous to claim that every single person who supports separatism is a secret agent for Russia. The claim in both cases is that the movement received foreign support, allowing it to convince more ordinary people to support it than they would have otherwise.
It’s well known that many people in Eastern European countries don’t trust Russia one bit after their experiences in the USSR.
Russia is not the USSR. And most people experienced a decline in quality of life, across every objective metric, following its collapse.
It's also well known that many people in eastern Ukraine have ethnic, cultural, and family ties to Russia, so it wouldn't be surprising if a lot of them wanted to have more favorable relations with them. This goes back to when the Soviets transferred the territory to Ukraine in the first place.
Before the war, people weren’t really aware of the situation in Ukraine and there were 100 other problems that seemed more urgent
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Americans don't actually care about Ukrainians, most people barely knew they existed and couldn't find the country on the map. The only reason people started caring is because they started being relevant to state interests.
Ultimately this has to be decided by the Ukrainian people.
No it won't. The Ukrainian people do not have the option to vote on whether or not to accept territorial concessions, because they don't have a democracy, and even what pretense of democracy they used to have has been suspended due to the war. The Ukrainian state may get to decide that, but that is not the same as the Ukrainian people. You don't seem to be separating the state's interests from the people's interests at all.
I've heard plenty of "LGBT Rights is wrong because it means forcing Western Values on other cultures" stories from Tankies. It was enough to prove Horseshoe Theory to me.
