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.
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.
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.
Like I said, apartheid part is irrelevant in a "dictatorship or not" definition. If most Israeli people don't feel themselves being under a dictatorship then it is not a dictatorship. What the regime does towards Palestine and its citizens is another thing. In fact, if you insist on calling it a dictatorship based on what happens to Palestine and Palestinians I'd feel as if you would assume there is no Palestine outside of Israel.
My point is that dictatorship mainly affects real citizens, making their lives worse. Israel cares about its citizens adequately from what I see. There are no grave political crisis or tons of citizens suffering from inadequate laws or false accusations. Israeli people are fine. There is only Gaza and Palestinians Israel is dealing with, and I leave that out of context because those are outside of political regime definition for me.
Occupation is never normal. I'm not ignoring it. Just saying that dictatorship is a different thing that is hardly related to it this case and otherwise too. Also my point is that it just looks increasingly stupid when people ar first blamed Israel for being bloodthirsty killers and then switched to "oh that's all because Netanyahu wants to remain in power", as if it would immediately cease if Netanyahu disappears.
Whatever you prefer calling occupied territories, I don't consider a subject for dictatorship. Dictatorship is something I consider an internal state of the country, so no other territories should affect it. An aggression on neighbouring territories can be a result of dictatorship but never a reason for it. So whatever is going on with "occupied" territories is not a subject for this discussion for me.
have been under Israeli Military Control since 1967.
You didn't see the comment tree? It's about Netanyahu. Are you going to pretend he is responsible for all of that?
If you ignore all of that
When we're talking about whether or not some person is a dictator - yes, its irrelevant. Dictatorship is about having a power against the will of too many citizens, also silencing them, jailing them, killing them etc.
If you consider a democracy
Don't need that. There are not 2 types of government. It may not be a democracy, but it's similarly difficult to qualify as a dictatorship.
Palestinian citizens are about 20% of Israeli population. Black people are about 14% of the US population. Both of them hold legal citizenships and rights but often face disparities. Does that make the US an apartheid by your logic?
As I said before, there is no line. You can't assume some regime fell into the other side after a short time. These things develop for years. Or could you try to classify the US regime? Surely it's not a democracy when people can only choose between 2.
Not helping. Apartheid or not, my criteria is how well government cares about its citizens, and that term ignores that. Political gain or not, my stance is that it started with October 7th attack, which was not prepared by current Israeli government, therefore it's correct to blame another party. Protesters doing their thing is good for everyone, we should start worrying when they are unable to do that anymore due to oppressive laws, police raids etc.
You're changing the subject by trying to describe it with unsuitable words. Your actual thought is that it's bad and should be changed, but you first tried calling it a dictatorship, then autocracy. People of Israel aren't living in such conditions yet. Better just get back to "doing war is bad" stance.