Last week, several pro-Palestinian Telegram channels were blocked in European countries, including the “Palestine Archive ??” channel with more than 15,000 followers and the “Resistance News Network” (RNN) with more than 166,000 subscribers. The exact justification of the ban are not known. While Telegram did not respond to a journalistic request, the RNN said that there was no reason for the closure. Anyone who tries to open up the channel in the affected countries now will receive the notification that they cannot be not displayed because they “violate local laws”. RNN and the online outlet The Cradle have spoken of an EU-wide ban.
While the legal basis for the blocking remains unclear, the political reasons are obvious. RNN itself explained to Peoples Dispatch: “We believe RNN was banned because we shed light on the reality of resistance on the ground, which upends the mainstream zionist narrative.“
Kind of hilarious how people in the west would always claims that the differentiating factor between them and countries like China was freedom of expression. Turns out what was really happening was that majority of people in the west were just swallowing their state propaganda uncritically, and there was no need for heavy handed censorship. Now that the state is losing control of the narrative heavy handed measures are promptly introduced.
As always, the west is no different from its adversaries, but people in the west are gullible enough to think they’re special.
This isn’t a privacy issue.
Censorship and privacy are closely linked but you are right they are different subjects. Telegram blocking access to certain channels based on region overlaps into privacy territory for me but people are free to down vote the post if they disagree.
The article is a month old but many users are reporting on new bans since yesterday.
The solution is to not use Telegram, and fuck the govs
how to miss the point entirely
Telegram is not a social for counter the censorship and be private, it’s not good at all to use Telegram for this kind of messaging + with the arrest of Durov, it will even more difficult to counter govs when using Telegram
continuing to miss the point I see
Telegram is awful, but that’s mainly because it is readily bent towards the interests of malicious state actors like we see here. This headline is produced by two things being bad, not just one.
Zionism has corrupted the West.
The West created Zionism. Zionism is a Western settler-colonialist project, as was the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Nazi Germany, to name a few.
Europa The Just acting unfairly? No way!™
