Even if all this true, there’s unlikely to be a mass switch campaign until an alternative with better privacy and security gains the smoothness, flexibility, and platform coverage that Telegram has. Most people I know who use it do so because it runs everywhere, is nice to use, and isn’t a Facebook product (which while perhaps not being as bad as a foreign government, is a more prominently perceived threat for most people).
I really don't get the sentiment of everything Russia. Russia has the GDP of a province of China. Russia does not have a thriving manufacturing sector. Russia has increasingly less influence or power over the world. Why would powerful people in the US succumb to to Russia's influence? That just does not make sense. If anything, maybe the Lenin-loving Stalin-admiring Marxists would love Russia, like half of the university professors in the 50s loving the Soviet Union, to the point that they'd rather leak all kinds of information, including how to build atom bombs, to the Soviet Union. Oh, and New York Times even won a Pulitzer for praising the Soviet Union by the great Walter Duranty in the 1930s.
The "why" is definitely an important question, but it's certainly pretty obvious that views of Russia are relatively favorable among some on the right [1].
> Russia has increasingly less influence or power over the world.
Russia punches above their weight because people believe what they want to believe (and what their peer group they want to fit in to believes), and are easily corruptible by "small" amounts of money. And they have nukes.
They have nuclear bombs. A lot of them. And the person who controls them has little to lose in using them. So we have to be nice and keep that person happy.
That's diplomacy? That does not mean that high officials and the richest people in the world bought Russia's propaganda machine, if any, or worse, get bought by Russia, right?
Well the side effect of everyone playing nice with Putin is that he's most likely a multi-billionaire, possibly even in the top 10 richest in the world.
That actually looks like forcing their view, censoring you just because they might not like your position. Useful, you cannot do a thing. Your comment is simply gone. I might wanted to save it, but it’s no longer.
Yet, they did not bother to remove my useless neighbouring comment, only flagged it. I’m not surprised anymore. Not the first time I see this behaviour.
