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Russian government is routinely blocking other chat systems. LINE, CacaoTalk and WeChat are currently banned.

>Got a source for the first claim?

Here:

https://medium.com/@anton.rozenberg/pavel-durov-sued-senior-...

The first claim? The "hounded by Russia" one? I'm not familiar with the story, but some quick searching reveals this:

https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/16/telegram-fined-by-russia...

The prime source seems to be founder Durov's social-media posts, retelling his communications to/from regulators.

So... Like any other cloud infrastructure?

A common misconception with "Security by Obscurity" is that it's always a bad thing.

It's only a bad thing if the obscurity is critical to the security of what you are protecting. For example if you make your API completely open, but obscure it inside an app and make the domain hard to discover e.g a random string that's obviously not good.

However if you use obscurity as an extra layer in a system that is secured by other means such that removing the obscurity would not have an adverse effect on the security of the system that's fine. Hence there's no reason not to obscure things to make it more difficult for an attacker as long as that's not all your security.

I think it is against physical seizure and tampering. A good part of security against that is obscurity, don't you think?

Why would you assume it's "just security though obscurity" and not "security plus obscurity"? Or that "obscurity"" as a security measure is a tragic weakness.

This is a trap a lot of people fall into and I don't know why.

Is it technically impossible to have end to end encryption with full history, even synced? As long as you have the decryption key, you could have synced encrypted history, the best of both worlds, right?

You're making the mistake of assuming "better" is a single vector.

Signal is more secure, yes. However its UI, UX, accessibility, feature sets and performance are absolutely in baby shoes.

According to Signal's FAQ:

Signal periodically sends truncated cryptographically hashed phone numbers for contact discovery. Names are never transmitted, and the information is not stored on the servers. The server responds with the contacts that are Signal users and then immediately discards this information. Your phone now knows which of your contacts is a Signal user and notifies you if your contact just started using Signal.

However; I don't know if their server is peer-reviewed on a regulary basis, nor do i know if the software (besides the used ciphers) is also peer-reviewed. Can't find anything on it.

This is just wrong, pls stop spreading misinformation.

The gcm dependency was removed 10 months ago: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/commit/1669...

You can get the apk outside of gplay on their website: https://signal.org/android/apk/

But wouldn't you have liked to shop around for those free-but-paid-from-your-taxes services? And benefit from competition between providers which drives prices down and quality up?

Government are ultimate monopolies: always getting worse and more expensive.

Maybe you are thinking about a handful of functioning, high quality governments (US, Germany, Nordic States) but I am thinking about the great majority of the governments on the globe (Africa, Asia, E Europe) which provide really crappy, expensive services.

The whole private charity stuff also creates perverse incentives. The better people who do donate to charity, are the ones who are left worse off, whereas the bad ones who never do, are the people who benefit.

That’s the nice thing about a system of taxation, in that no one is penalized additionally while doing good.

> Besides, it’s not about just me: the whole point of taxes is that it gives options to everyone, not just those lucky enough to be born to wealthy parents.

Then how does this thinking fit with the reality of taxes increasing everywhere, year after year? Does that mean that services are getting better? Because you know, it's actually the opposite. It's getting worse: more and more illiteracy in schools, inflation of degrees that don't get you any job, more unemployment (or stagnant at best), healthcare with less and less services... etc.

It does sound like he is against all taxes. Without taxes it's hard to have anything that you'd recognize as a government.

I think the perception that social security and retirement deductions are taxes stems from the fact these are obligatory. Insofar as we have no choice in the matter these have all the properties of taxes. With the caveat it is difficult to compare one country to another because the value of government services you get is somewhat subjective, I offer the following data point for France: if a company outlays 100k, the employee would take home about 58k before income tax. A single person would pay 10k in income tax on that. All in he would therefore have 48k to spend. This might be useful for those of you wishing to evaluate the cost of hiring in France.

As long as it is compulsory, it is a tax. Whether it goes to your health problems or your street is irrelevant. If you have no control over the money, it is a tax.

Which is an excellent way to make sure the incentives of the government and its people are aligned. \s

> Tax burden in Germany for middleclass is at around 70%. Beeing a software engineer in germany means that you code 8months for the government and 4months for yourself.

> The western governments introduced more and more “hidden” taxes. So just looking at income tax is not fair.

Please don't pluck figures like that out of thin air - I worked in Berlin as a developer and I easily took home ~60% of my monthly salary (placing tax at around 40%).

Those taxes already comprise of Social Security* (roughly 20%) and income tax (the remainder 20%).

* Health, Retirement, Unemployment etc.

And you didn't get healthcare, free education for 20+ years, subsidised student loans, retirement money, police, fire department etc. from the state? You really should stop and think what you get from the state before you criticise what the state takes from you.

Any credible calculation[0] puts the tax burden of all groups at 50% at most (and most middle class is not taxed at that number) – including all taxes, contributions, levies, and VAT. You would have to add the employer's contributions to that number (but they are less than 10%).

A better measure would be the tax quota (gross national product divided by all taxes and contributions) which is about 35%. This is the effective rate the state gets for everything it does.

[0]: Such as the RWI study which really can't be accused of downplaying the numbers http://shop.freiheit.org/download/P2@675/96532/A4_Steuern%20...

70%? How do you come up with that?

It's roughly 40.5% for most middle class people. If your salary is 4,000€ per month, you get wired 2,380€ to your bank account. Income tax, social security contributions, retirement contributions etc. already deducted.

You could add 19% VAT for all purchases on your tax burden, but that's not 70%.

> Tax burden in Germany for middleclass is at around 70%

Even under a charitable interpretation this is simply wrong.

I suppose you have no first-hand experience, but have read that on social media?

That's just a big lie, it's nowhere to 70%. Besides it will vary depending on your salary, your state and your personal situation (i.e. kids, married, age).

Also worth noting that that tax includes full health insurance.

You can easily calculate your take home pay for Germany here: http://www.parmentier.de/steuer/steuer.htm?wagetax.htm

You're almost certainly including social security here, health care and retirement. This is not exactly a fair comparison, as in countries with lower tax burden you have to pay for those yourselves.

34% for a family with one child in Munich, 30.5% on capital gains.

You're implying that government does nothing—or at least nothing positive, which is a specious argument at best.

There's also the most hidden tax of all: inflation.

Comparing tax rates with the Soviet Union is totally meaningless because the economy was fundamentally supply-limited.

It’s not that people didn’t have money — they didn’t have anything to buy that they actually wanted. The same applied to the government-owned businesses. The economy was flush with rubles that everyone desperately wanted to spend on something. The tax rate was just optics.

Top marginal income tax rates under President Eisenhower (a Republican) were in the low 90%s.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/...

If you compare the West to the USSR, you certainly don't know what you are talking about. Taxation in the East block was really not the problem.

That's true of (most of) Europe, the US taxes are lower.

This is a very recent interpretation. It is legally true, but it goes against the true meaning of the word.

When you work for a charity, do you ask for a raise? Do you get a bonus if you collect more money? How much to you get to keep?

Not even mentioning that sometimes the money goes through a chain of charities, all making a living out of it, but leaving almost nothing for the final beneficiary.

Operational expenses. Sure. But I am taking the situation into consideration. And I am not denying the fact that Durov needs to make money, eventually, to cover expenses.

The problem is on the word monetize. It seems like the idea might be to sell ads which will eventually require some form of personalization even though it is not explicitly sold. Just like what happened with whatsapp. It is free but we saw what was tried with FB integration.