And if Hamas is violating their TOS while using the service, then they should do something about it. In the same way that Google blocks what scammers it can find who are using google voice numbers to scam people. But what you are suggesting isn’t that they take action against people or organisations that are violating the TOS or using the service to break the law.
You are suggesting they essentially listen in on every conversation or message sent on the service to find people breaking the law or violating the TOS. That’s not the same thing.
danhakimi@kbin.social 11 months ago
I'm not suggesting that!
They don't need to listen to private chats to see what Hamas is doing, it's open, it's public, they're not being subtle, and Pavel Durov himself has publicly commented on it. He just doesn't give a fuck.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Explain that? How is it public?
danhakimi@kbin.social 11 months ago
Did you read the article? Do you know what broadcast channels are?
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/25/23931710/telegram-android-block-hamas-channels-google-play-guidelines-war-israel
atrielienz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
So I did read the article. But telegram as a service allows users (some of whom are just civilians with no ties to Hamas) to warn people of imminent attack. That’s in the article. They (that channel admins) still have to add subscribers.
The thing is though, for telegram and messaging apps like it this is basically playing whack a mole. I know I said that before, but what I meant by it is that it’s better for the purposes of building intelligence and or sending their geolocation data to relevant authorities. If they close one channel more will pop up. IP bans and even device bans will not stop this from happening. You can create a telegram bot in like 10 minutes.
But deleting certain channels will detrimentally affect the civilians caught in the cross fire.
"Telegram CEO Pavel Durov wrote that he was hesitant to shut down Hamas-used channels in a post on October 13th, saying that “tackling war-related coverage is seldom obvious” and writing that Hamas had used Telegram a few days prior to warn civilians to evacuate an area before the attacked it " < from your article.
It’s the same thing with scammers. Most telegram scammers are using private messages that have encryption. So you absolutely are suggesting the telegram snoop through private messages.
So can we stop pretending that this is simply an easy fix?