Telegram is currently the target of legal/regulatory investigations by Russia (alleged extremism), France (likewise), and India (alleged facilitation of national exam leaking/cheating). I'm guessing the latter since it's the most recent and arguably has the most fiscal heft.

Also very surprised to see Telegram was reliant on GoDaddy, notorious for its lack of transparency.

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ilaksh 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But Telegram hasn't engaged in that, some of their users have.

I think the issue might be that although Telegram has a lot of abuse takedown activity, they do not permit access or direct action by authorities. If I recall, they have reiterated many times that some level or types of messages always remain private.

Maybe that's the issue is that a lot of illicit activity is going on in private channels and whether or not their filtering addresses it at all, authorities see the activity and have no access for court cases or direct action against it, so they can imagine it is quite rampant.

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anigbrowl 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not making an argument about who's right or whether these disputes have any merit, I'm just trying to guess who might have had the inclination and legal resources to make this happen.

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kajman 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I always figured telegram got the screws turned on them all the time because their lack of E2E encryption meant it was viable to demand they proactively police the platform in the first place. Maybe Signal would just be outright blocked in these locales if it was anywhere near as popular, though.

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inigyou 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

They generally don't have to proactively police it, but they have to answer court orders in every country that has courts, or they'll be in trouble in that country. And countries are free to cooperate with each other to enforce these.

Pavel Durov was arrested when he traveled to France because Telegram was noncompliant with French court orders. You can ignore them in Russia... you can't ignore them in France. And you can ignore Russian court orders in France but not in Russia. And the Russian or Indian court is free to ask the Montenegrin government to suspend your domain name and the Montenegrin government is free to agree or disagree.

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hnlmorg 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Signal is already well known to governments. In fact a few years ago there was a report in the UK media about how some governments used signal instead of official channels like email and did so because of Signals disappearing messages feature (ie making those MPs less accountable).

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einpoklum an hour ago | parent [-]

More recently, a Signal chat record leaked, between US national security advisor Mike Waltz, US VP JD Vance and others, regarding the ongoing illegal assassinations in Yemen:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/24/politics/yemen-strikes-jo...

and it didn't leak because of Signal's security, but because an Atlantic maganize journalist was added to the group chat by Waltz.

	▲	esseph an hour ago \| parent [-]
		We are clear on OPSEC

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milkshakes 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

in fact, telegram does support e2e encryption ("secret chats")

	▲	ivanmontillam 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It does, but it's not enabled by default; and that's the point.

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inigyou an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Telegram shields its users from such requests.

Other platforms either don't have the requested data (Signal) or willingly hand it over when they get a court order to (Facebook). When Telegram gets a court order it ignores the court order and then makes Pavel Durov hard to physically find and therefore arrest. One can only guess what motivations he has for this.

So courts seek alternative enforcement mechanisms.

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axus 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not every country has DMCA safe harbor for service providers. A crap sandwich may taste horrible but it has bread.

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joe_mamba 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>But Telegram hasn't engaged in that, some of their users have.

Yeah, but government workers just want a legal slam dunk to call it a day and collect the glory, and it's always easier to go after the platform where the crimes are being discussed, rather than after the individual users actually committing the crimes.

It's how government, prosecution and law enforcement jobs are incentivized.

	▲	inigyou 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's more likely they did go after the individual users, by sending a demand to Telegram to identify the users, and Telegram refused.

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indolering 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Montenegro (.me) seems to be aligned with the EU. But I would have expected there to see a legal ruling in France before Montenegro would do this sort of thing.

I wouldn't be surprised if GoDaddy caved to request. They are known for giving up domains to anyone with a badge and a fax machine!

	▲	inigyou 31 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		serverHold status means registry, not registrar, hold - the relevant protocol (not WHOIS) has the registry as the server, as you'd expect. But you are right about GoDaddy and they are a strange choice.
	▲	dylan604 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Is the badge really that much of a requirement? I mean, if you have a fax machine, you must be a legit source to make that request.