[liberationtech] Telegram and Iran and of course Google Play - FYI

[Amin Sabeti]

Hi,

It seems Google has collaborated with Russian and Iranian governments as
they've suspended our app for the second time while they did an extensive
review before the second submission of the app.

While we fight back the Iranian government about blocking Telegram, Google
seems is in the evil side. Look at this tweet thread:

https://twitter.com/AminSabeti/status/997553178823548928?s=19

Cheers,

Amin

On Sat, 5 May 2018, 20:59 Yosem Companys, <ycompanys at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Amin and Nariman,
>
> I'm delighted to hear that you took the time to work on such an important
> initiative and for providing the detailed explanation. Please keep us
> posted on your progress and on what we can do to assist you.
>
> (And by "we" I mean the grassroots or netroots Liberationtech community,
> not Stanford.)
>
> Thanks,
> Yosem
>
> On Sat, May 5, 2018 at 5:05 AM, Nariman Gharib <nariman.gh at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Libtech,
>>
>> Last week Amin Sabeti and I have launched a open source app of Telegram
>> with Psiphon VPN built into it.
>> www.TelegarmDR.com
>>
>>
>> https://www.rferl.org/a/iranian-expats-launch-own-telegram-with-built-in-proxy-to-counter-filtering-at-home-/29204673.html
>>
>> In just one day it got more day 1m installs and also it was trending on
>> Google Play in communication apps category.
>>
>> https://twitter.com/NarimanGharib/status/991756403256840193
>>
>> Many of our friends have criticized us that we shouldn't developed this
>> or we shouldn't trust Telegram or... but we are care about people's access
>> to free and open content.
>>
>> Then a day after that I have received this email from Google that your
>> app package name and your app name are similar to other services and they
>> have asked me to change our app name and send it back again to Google, but
>> we don't want to do this because our users will get confused and they will
>> not trust in us anymore. so our app status is still suspended from Google
>> Play. p.s I already approached to Telegram and waiting for their help too.
>>
>>  https://twitter.com/NarimanGharib/status/991930080808067073
>>
>> Then I searched Google Play for "Telegram" and I found out this:
>>
>> https://twitter.com/NarimanGharib/status/992723876311457794
>> https://twitter.com/GEsfandiari/status/992728876156637185
>>
>> Then today I have received messages from Iran that there are some apps in
>> Iranian app market CafeBazaar which can bypass the censorship but
>> government officials didn't remove them yet. like this one:
>> https://cafebazaar.ir/app/ir.hotgram.mobile.android/?l=en
>>
>> but see what they did to Telegram app with more than 40m installs in Iran:
>> https://cafebazaar.ir/app/org.telegram.messenger/?l=en
>>
>> Sorry for long email!
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> --
>> PGP: 0xa53963936999cbb6
>> @NarimanGharib <https://twitter.com/narimangharib>
>>
>> --
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