Actually, there is a moderation within Telegram; it is not at the scale of Meta & X in terms of the head-count. Telegram probably has 100x less employees than Meta (I don't know the actual number) https://telegram.org/tos/eu-dsa

It was unblocked because of the backlash from people, incl. Russian politicians who are heavy Telegram users. FSB has nothing to do with it.

>It was unblocked because of the backlash from people, incl. Russian politicians who are heavy Telegram users. FSB has nothing to do with it.

Saying Russian government would give a shit about people opinions, funny joke.

This was a bug that was fixed right after it was reported. The author of the article praised Telegram for the speed of reaction.

Durov has a French passport, so he will be charged as a French citizen. What is weird is that he sure knew that he was on the watchlist in France, though he has chosen to go there. Why?

I don’t understand how his passport changes the whole thing?

France can and will charge anyone on its territory no matter what passport you hold.

Usually courts are a lot more lenient with foreign citizens. Try to get jailed in Mexico as an French citizen - pretty hard unless you do obvious bad stuff.

From what I've seen, it's the opposite. Nobody wants an outsider coming into their territory and committing a crime. And it also makes you a flight risk, so that's going to factor badly into any pre-trial detention.

> Nobody wants an outsider coming into their territory and committing a crime.

Right but they don't want to deal with them either. They'll deport someone and ban them from entry (which can often be done essentially at will) rather than putting them through the whole legal process and potentially dealing with protests from their country of citizenship.

This is absolutely true, also.

In fact, in Illinois there is a specific statute to cover this. The Dept of Corrections can simply dispose of someone's sentence and hand them to ICE for deportation. I knew a Mexican guy who had a 6 year term and I heard from him 6 weeks after he was sentenced -- he was back with his family in Mexico, having had his sentence terminated and quickly deported.

For minor stuff, sure

For more complicated stuff, quite the opposite.

Other comments mentioned France doesn't extradite citizens.

Hybris. Some people once they have reached a certain level of status and wealth see themselves as untouchable.

Telegram is used heavily in both Ukraine & Russia. But I doubt it has anything to do with it.

Between Ukraine and Russia, Telegram is the only choice for Russia.

Ukraine has many many other options.

What else is there for Russians to communicate with the outer world?

WhatsApp is still quite popular and it’s not blocked.

The problem is not with communication with the outer world. The problem with other messengers is that everything you type there is monitored by CIA/NSA and Ukraine has access to this information. Telegram right now is the only secure messenger that doesn't leak them data on Russian citizens.

and the Russian govt has carte blanche access to Telegram. Russia invaded their sovereign neighbour Ukraine who the f cares about their forums for messaging. yawn.

Any source for this?

He hasn’t lived in Russia for a decade. From what I understand the reason he left is because he refused to give them access. He’d prob be arrested there at the airport as well.

I’m guessing you’re in SMS-land (USofA) where telegram (nor WhatsApp) never really caught on? Because telegram is HUGE outside of the US and China, including Ukraine.

Check out https://texty.org.ua/articles/112347/eight-signsof-danger-te... especially .

Yes, it's Ukrainian, but it's very detailed.

By the way, I'm not sure what reasons would Ukraine have to make up their accusations: if Telegram weren't entangled with Russia, why would it be such a big problem for them?

> and the Russian govt has carte blanche access to Telegram

That hardly corresponds with Durov's relationships and history with Russian government.

> Russia invaded their sovereign neighbour Ukraine who the f cares about their forums for messaging. yawn.

What does one even have to do with the other? Feels like obsessing a bit too much over a single topic.

I watched an expose on drone use in Ukraine and it appear they are using discord of all services...

Bad operational security. Still it is them communicating with each other using Discord. They use Telegram to communicate with the masses.

Link previews don't really work on mobile. Also they just create UI land mines. If I mouse over some area of the page I have unexpected content jump up. If a link preview hits the external link that's also potentially leaking traffic or tracking data from me.

I do not get why people are sceptical about link previews. When done right (without iframes), e.g. in Obsidian or via Linkz.ai , they actually add value.

Nice! I also like link previews from Linkz.ai. Here is the demo (also see how it opens the YouTube hyperlink): https://advancemed.com.au/medical-internship-australia-2025-...