"He has kind of an old-school cyber-libertarian world view where technology is there to set you free," Maréchal said. WhatsApp, a rival messaging platform, introduced some measures to counter disinformation when Covid-19 was first sweeping the world. In the United States, Telegram's lower public profile has helped it mostly avoid high level scrutiny from Congress, but it has not gone unnoticed. He floated the idea of restricting the use of Telegram in Ukraine and Russia, a suggestion that was met with fierce opposition from users. Shortly after, Durov backed off the idea. But Telegram says people want to keep their chat history when they get a new phone, and they like having a data backup that will sync their chats across multiple devices. And that is why they let people choose whether they want their messages to be encrypted or not. When not turned on, though, chats are stored on Telegram's services, which are scattered throughout the world. But it has "disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments," Telegram states on its website.
from nl
