Telegram’s core domain t.me has been placed on serverHold at the .me registry, effectively removing it from global DNS and rendering all t.me links inaccessible.
The change occurred today, according to domain records. As of now, there has been no official explanation from Telegram, the .me registry, or backend operator Identity Digital.
A serverHold is a registry-level status that completely dead-ends the domain, preventing it from resolving anywhere in the world.
Good
I realize we don’t like Telegram but we shouldn’t be supporting exploiting control over DNS in pursuit of surveillance.
telegram *is* surveillance.
I think the fact that Telegram is constantly in legal hot water indicates that it’s not.
Ah yes, the messenger built by r*ssians in r*ssia, that used r*ssian AS, that was used by r*ssian army for three years. The one that rolled their own verily secure encryption (that doesn’t work anywhere but 1-1 chats), that was questioned from day 1. That was constantly unblocked and blocked by r*ssian government, that was paid by fsb, that r*ssian government literally said is theirs isn’t a surveillance machine. Right. Everything indicates that it isn’t.
Russia’s been actively trying to push their own Telegram replacement called ‘Max’, while throttling access to Telegram to discourage it’s use.
They have outright blocked Telegram before (2018) because they refused to hand over users encryption keys to the FSB. That sparked outrage and protests because of it’s widespread use, and was ultimately overturned because of it’s heavy use even within the Russian government.
The more recent throttling has been causing huge struggles within their own military units because they’ve become dependent on it, as well as struggles with their ability to push propaganda outside Russia.
Youtube, 13:35 for Telegram+Discord.