And large subnets were blocked back then, blocking many unrelated websites/services at once. IIRC even some of RKN's own services were temporarily disrupted by that, but generally they don't shy away from inflicting collateral damage. There's no shortage of cases of blocking large websites for humorous or silly pictures and texts (not even political), too.
Seems like very elaborate pr stunt and what exactly did they stand to gain from this? I’d hesitate to explain something with a great conspiracy what is much simply explained with incompetence
They gain a lot of coverage as an unbendable brave service that does not bow to the requests of Russian government. So all the dissidents start using it for communication.
And the only downside is that RKN will have an even worse reputation... Which already was beyond worse of the worse, so nothing is really lost.
Telegram is already shady, it has no clear funding source while having the highest operating cost of any of the main stream chat apps due to it storing everything you send with no limits.
There is no e2e encryption, it has access to everything you do, its often said to be an alternative to WhatsApp, but its mostly worse in privacy, WhatsApp has proven encryption at least, and encrypted backups on android, while on apple its basically a back door.
And the explanation up to now is that durov is paying for everything for the faint of heart, which I really don't believe.
Matrix on paper is a good alternative, but its clients are not even close, and I speak as a daily matrix user.
Technically telegram does have optional e2e but group chats weren’t supported last i checked. Source on operational costs? Dont they have “telegram premium” thing to earn money now?
> Technically telegram does have optional e2e but group chats weren’t supported last i checked.
And aren't supported on desktop either, no body uses them, they are severely limited on purpose.
> Source on operational costs?
Telegram saves everything you do on the platform, every message, every picture, every video, every file with no limit.
They market it as a feature, on their twitter they often say you can use it as cloud storage.
This absolutely costs more than WhatsApp or signal, which only use servers as relays.
> Dont they have “telegram premium” thing to earn money now?
Its a very recent thing, and it has a very minimal effect, and the previous years didn't just pay for themselves.
> Telegram is already shady, it has no clear funding source while having the highest operating cost of any of the main stream chat apps due to it storing everything you send with no limits.
It's founder, Durov, is a billionaire and he has quite clearly stated he's bankrolling it but looking for monetisation avenues for Telegram to become self-sufficient - first it was some token scheme that was shutdown by the SEC, now there's Telegram Premium.
Durov is also known to lie a lot. He claimed that Telegram developer's were moved abroad from Russia, while in reality they were working out of old VK office, just a floor below.
And that VK was a company supposedly taken away from Durov. Also, Telegram's early versions bear the striking similarities with VK own products. As if Telegram was developed internally in VK and then spun away as an independent company.
1. Allegedly, Telegram was created when Durov was fired from Vkontakte and has to flee Russia. In reality, Telegram office was colocated with Vkontakte office on same building (famous Zinger's house in center of St. Petersburg) for years after alleged split. It was revealed in former employee vs Telegram court case.
2. Telegram had won over RKN by support of Google/Apple. RKN could not ban appstores and push notifications, so Telegram could constantly change IP addresses of proxy servers and send them to applications using push notifications.
RKN allegedly failed to pressure Apple/Google to ban Telegram app in Russia, despite trying for years.
When Navalny's team tried to employ same tactics, RKN was able to ban their app in both appstores in week or so. Same for LinkedIn.
It is known that Google and Apple did accept the demands to block apps both before and after the Telegram affair. What we don't know, is did they even receive that demand? Every new sources that the demand was sent sources to RKN press release on their own website (I checked about 50 news reports, that all referenced each other and RKN). When asked about blocks (of LinkedIn), Google's spokesperson said that they follow the regulations on the local markers.
We need Apple/Google to confirm, if they did ever receive the demands to remove Telegram from their app stores. If not, it is a big big red flag.