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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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Facebook should be better at moderation. I'm not familiar with the Child Porn myself, but I think this is a problem with moderation that relies on reporting versus somewhat more proactive moderation, such as automatically scanning content (with human review).
I expect the moderation to frustrate the efforts of scammers, extremists, and terrorists so that scams are no longer profitable and so that they can no longer spread hate and terror as effectively.
Scams will always be profitable. The difference between scamming someone in real life and scamming them via the internet isn't all the much different.
Scammers use phone calls to scam people too. Are you suggesting we tap and monitor everyone's phones for keywords?
The thing about privacy is that you seem to be willing to let people or organisations (that we can't prove have our best interest at heart) violate people's privacy in order to get the result you want. And there's no proof that you will get that result.
Meanwhile someone who's human has to make the determination that something is criminal or something is CP and that means we have to pay people to comb through all that data.
That's very taxing on the individuals involved. It does harm to them.
Now I'm sure you'll say something about expectation of privacy when submitting anything to the web. But people do have the expectation of privacy online. Take a look at people who are deliberately de-googling or up in arms about web sites collecting their data to target them with ads.
It is! People are wary of scams, it's not worth wasting an hour trying to scam one random person anymore. Spending a few hours trying to spam millions of people is a worthwhile use of a scammer's time, especially when there's no risk of being banned or caught.
That's not a solution I would pose for that problem, no, but there are laws in place intended to reduce spam calling, and many, many tech companies are proposing many, many solutions for that, and nobody is saying "oh no, what if you accidentally classify an innocent telemarketing-spammer as a scammer?" Good riddance.
I think people should use e2ee-enabled chat services if they expect privacy. Telegram users don't bother turning on secret chats because they lack all of the features that make people want to use telegram. I think Whatsapp users have a much more reasonable expectation of privacy, and Whatsapp still goes through efforts to reduce spam and misinformation on its platform. I think Matrix users have a more reasonable expectation of privacy (since encryption is on by default, and can be used in group chats and spaces and on calls and with every other matrix feature), but Matrix servers still do not federate with Al Qaeda rocket.chat servers, because they know better.
Telegram has to. It can afford to. I'll remind you that I did not set criminality as the bar.
Now think of what it does to the rest of the people who have to see it. If you can pay one person to willingly review content for child porn that couldn't be identified in advance so a million others don't have to see it, is that really the worst thing?
Data collection feels very different to me, but you're specifically sending your messages to Telegram. Like, Google scanning my emails is something I have trouble objecting to (although I object to the use of that information for ad-related purposes, of course).
By "de-googling," do you mean the whole "right to be forgotten" thing? I think that's nonsense, clearly at odds with the right to remember, and largely used by wealthy assholes to deflect attention from shitty things they did.
You object to the business model of the free service you subscribe to? That's what you basically said. You want to use Google's free email service. You agreed to allow them to collect your data and target you with ads as is their business model. But you object to them collecting your data to target you with ads. That doesn't make any sense.
Spear phishing and so on are still a thing. Scams via regular SMS messages? Still a thing. It absolutely is profitable to target one person depending on how you target them and what you get in return. These scams and the businesses and companies that fight them are constantly playing whack a mole. They wouldn't bother to continue trying to scam via email and SMS if it wasn't profitable still.
Saying Telegram has to monitor their users and the content sent via the service and suggesting that they should (as an extension of that) violate the privacy of the users to monitor them all for illegal activity because they have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" is an interesting take. Even the police are supposed to subpoena your texts if they can show reasonable cause.
You're throwing reasonable cause out the window. If it's an app for private messaging the people who use it have the expectation that their messages are private. This isn't a forum we're talking about. It's not twitch. They are sending messages to a specific recipient. They aren't making a public post on Facebook.
Telegram is incredibly aware of Hamas's channels and still doesn't feel like doing anything about it: https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/25/23931710/telegram-android-block-hamas-channels-google-play-guidelines-war-israel
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.
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.
Explain that? How is it public?
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
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?
It's a Hamas channel! They're not warnings, they're threats! And they're recruiting! And they know those users are sharing video of their attrocities in other Hamas groups! And the al-Qassam Brigades have a public channel too!
The mole is out in the open, sticking its fingers in its ears, and laughing at us, and Durov is saying "yeah, that's a fine mole, no idea why I'd whack it." It's gaining steam! They're openly using the names of terrorist organizations and recruiting new members constantly and telegram isn't even considering a response.
No, it absolutely will not.
He referenced Ashkelon. There are zero Israelis in Ashkelon following Hamas on Telegram. Israel knows when to evacuate its citizens, and unlike Hamas, actually does so when necessary. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Hamas is threatening Israeli civilians before targeting those civilians. THE THREAT IS THE FIRST CAUSE OF THE TERROR. This is what terrorism is! They threaten violence on civilians, they do the violence they threatened, and then they celebrate it by sharing videos! They threaten, plan, and celebrate on telegram, out in the open!
There's a funnel. They start on twitter, just kind of innocently saying "follow me on Telegram." Then they say "alright, this broadcast channel will tell you exactly what token to buy, and when! Do exactly that!" It's a pump and dump scheme, some people fall for it. And then the real rubes get into those 1-on-1 secret chats with the scammers where they go ahead and give out their private info.
A tech company like Telegram could, in theory follow this funnel through the unencrypted channels. It's obvious enough from the information you and I have.
These channels are all operating openly. You know they're all pump and dump scams, right? They're not in secret chats, they're huge channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Can we stop pretending that ignoring the problem is a better solution?
Look. I don't support Hamas in the same way that I don't support the Israeli government. They're both basically terrorist organisations at this point. Shelling Gaza with no regard for civilians and children is just as bad as targeting children and civilians for the purposes of a terrorist attack. Your own article disputes what you've said. But if you've made up your mind that one group is worse than the other and therefore one group deserves to be punished (as it would appear based on your comment), then I don't see the point in this discussion.
This thread has quickly become less about scammers (as you first claimed) and more about giving a voice to terrorist organisations, which I don't necessarily agree is a good thing but is something that won't be stopped by deleting a channel. More will pop up. Disenfranchised people who have been hurt repeatedly will act out. Relieving them of an avenue to voice their opinions doesn't stop them and it often makes things worse.
Nobody is forcing you or anyone to use telegram. You've gotten increasingly more upset (it would seem based on your replies) that I am not automatically condemning Hamas or Telegram's CEO and you go out of your way to ignore my questions about privacy when it concerns private messages. Additionally you are hyper focused on the Hamas channels angle as if it's the only thing in your original post.
Israeli's aren't the only civilians dying in the crossfire between Hamas and the Israeli government.
I'm a mixed bag of agree and disagree on these points but I'm only going to point out that the "De-Googling" trend doesn't really have anything to do with the right to be forgotten. It has more to do with enshittification - Google shutting down services, making their current services harder to use, charging money for what used to be free services, charging more money for already paid services, adding ads, etc etc. Basically people finding alternative software to Google because Google's practices have become increasingly volatile and their services less and less reliable.
To hear people on the privacy subreddits and even the privacy Lemmy communities tell it, it's absolutely about the data these companies are collecting. I'll grant you it's about what the companies are perceived to be doing with the data the collect (serving ads), but I don't think I personally ever made the point that op did (that it was about right to be forgotten).
Either way, I think op may have missed my point. As technology evolves people will find new ways to abuse it. And there's a level of privacy people should have the expectation of, and our privacy laws don't do enough as it is. Op is really suggesting that we further violate everyone's privacy in the name of protecting them and they don't want to hear that it's a bad idea or one where we would have to put our trust in a company or companies to apply this monitoring.
They also don't seem to want to hear about the burn out rate of people tasked with moderating content and validating that that content is against TOS or breaks the law. Having humans trawl communities or even just messaging app text data for CP and scams is bound to have a detrimental effect.
Sure. But I can't blame them for collecting data that I literally decide to send them for no reason but my own, I can only blame them for using that data in a shitty way.
If I post something on Instagram, I know that they're collecting the photo I post, that's how posting works, that's not the issue. The issue comes if they try scanning peoples' faces to invade their privacy, or build an advertising profile about me. Sending unencrypted chat messages is not that different.
If I download Whatsapp, and I enable the contacts permission, and it uploads all of the Contacts data on my phone, that's super not okay, because I never wanted to give them that data in the first place, they just jacked it.(I disable contacts permission for whatsapp on my phone, but most users would never know that data gets uploaded to begin with.
Users are responsible for the conduct and permissions they give to companies. Absolving them of that responsibility doesn't make sense ethically or legally. We can't just say "they didn't know because WhatsApp didn't tell them". That's not really an accurate statement. They more than likely agreed to use the app and in exchange they would receive free use and WhatsApp would receive that data. But they more than likely didn't read the agreement before agreeing. That's on them.
But not in the same way that it's on them if they don't know that when they post a post to facebook, facebook has the post.
one of these things is sheer vapid stupidity, one of them is a failure of extreme vigilance in a modern nightmare society.
You can make a private group on Facebook where you can exchange messages without anyone who lacks system access being able to view them. That's how CP rings hide what they're doing. And Facebook allows it until someone reports it or the cops subpoena that data. Which is basically the same as every other messaging platform or social media site that allows such functionality. So what was it you wanted them (Facebook, or WhatsApp, or signal or telegram) to do? Delete the accounts or known terrorists whether they are or aren't using the platform for terrorist activities? Because I don't really understand what you're advocating for. You appear to very much be advocating for people's private messages to be scanned and possibly read by a human being if they trip the algorithm. So yes. You are advocating for an invasion of privacy.
My point here was that people would be stupid to expect that their information is private from facebook.
I also have to imagine that you're wrong, I'm sure they have proactive means to scan for CP and ban it whenever they become aware of it, and just don't have the means to always ban CP groups immediately. Like, knowing your company controls child porn and allowing it to remain in control is a great way to end up in prison, most corporate douchebags prefer to avoid prison if they can. Like, Zuckerberg does not want to go to jail just so he can get a few more ad bucks from pedos.
I feel very weird defending Facebook, they're quite evil, but your conspiracy theory is silly.
You seem like you're focused on private groups, which I think are still problematic on Telegram as they are on Facebook, but you're really neglecting the issue of the fully public broadcast groups Hamas is known for, and known for engaging in terrorist activity on, including the al-Qassam Brigades! Why can't Telegram ban the fucking public channel for the al-Qassam Brigades? Doesn't that just make the issue so obvious?
That would be good, but also, if you know somebody is a terrorist, isn't that at least enough cause to look through their non-encrypted chats to see if they really are or are not using the platform for terrorist activities?
Meh. If your public messages and stories and large group messages (which are really not private in any meaningful sense) trip an algorithm with high confidence, then scanning your unencrypted kinda-private-ish messages after that doesn't seem like a big problem, and human review after a high-confidence trip there doesn't seem too bad either.
Ohhhhh that de-Googling. Yeah, I've done a bit of that, disabled the Google app on my phone entirely since Firefox does its job better, but I'm on Android and doing all that setup every time I get a new phone is just a headache.