I am living outside of Belarus right now in a country with decent government, so i don't really worry about this. But ofc i use my own wireguard vpn and mtproto proxy for telegram when i am traveling to Belarus. I am not going to censor myself, but it pays to be cautious.
As proven by the fact that a regime critic just caused a plane to be diverted, living outside of Belarus is by itself unfortunately no longer a guarantee for safety. So please be very careful.
I am a nobody, Raman was a prominent opposition figure even before aug 2020 and ex-editor of NEXTA (biggest belarusian opposition channel on tg). He was arrested because of his relation to NEXTA. Me? I am just a dude, who works\lives abroad and has to deal with shit that my beloved leader pulls off.
Reason why people in Belarus are getting arrested for stuff like commenting/posting, is because they leave their bio\phone number\sensitive stuff open or do it on socials that are working with cops (viber, vk, whatsapp etc). HN is perfect because you can use 5 minute mail to create an account. Regular cops wont be able to dox you unless they have your phone. It is very different if you got attention from KGB or other dudes. But you have to be prominent enough to do that.
And finally. I can post/comment on HN as much as i want because HN is very far from being of any interest to cops. Small site, most days purely tech themed, that is 100% in english.
I've checked again, and most posts about fines\arrests that i was able to find were related to screenshots of groupchats, and no data requests were done to whatsapp itself. My bad.
Viber worked actively with cops while their head office was in Minsk, even after Rakuten acquisition.
VK, and other companies that are located in Russia, especially those that are owned by mail.ru group, are actively working with cops.
While it may vary by the government or jurisdiction in question, whatsapp is definitely compromised at the LE/Judicial level in some places. This leads me to believe that in fact it is universally compromised, though I have no direct evidence to support that conclusion.
