postmodernbrute's comments

She was allowed to speak far more than any trans people has been allowed to speak - she is speaking on The Economist. I do not see any trans people speaking on The Economist. The same applies across the entirety of published British media. That you willfully ignore this epistemological injustice, does not render it irrelevant.

The university ground is one of the very few places where real transgender people, along with other socially marginalised groups, are generally allowed to speak, and allowed to speak for themselves. They are particularly visible on campus, precisely because they are effectly not allowed to speak in other places. Such as The Economist and other print media.

And yes, certain "debates" are quite dirty. Debates are not neutral fields of free intellectual inquiry, but potent manifestation of prevailing epistemological injustices. It is shocking and depressing, that certain people must again and again defend their own existence in "debates" premised on a claim to the absurdity of their condition. It is shocking and depressing, that sincere experiences of trans people are not taken, but rather must be put under the forensic lens of "debate" to be constantly challenged and invalidated. These "debates" are dirty constructs, serving as a powerful mechanism of collective gaslighting.

Right. Another loud article published on a very mainstream media about how a very established academic is being silenced and prevented from "debate". I wonder, if one collates all the articles on British media about transgender people, how many of them would actually concern the daily experiences of real transgender people, versus how many that consist of an established writer complaining loudly that they have been silenced?

Or to put it more quantitatively: how many words uttered by real transgender people have been published on British media, and how many words of these brutally silenced "gender-criticals"?

Of course a VPN can bypass geo-restrictions. Internet censorship is a geo-restriction. And companies who cooperate with a government can very well turn that specific kind of geo-restriction into other types. And most importantly, will the people of Myanmar understand the usage of a VPN as bypassing geo-restrictions? Most certainly, and that also is how I understand the usage of a VPN.

Also mentioned in the post that the description has been fine for a long time. The timing of an enforcement is always political.

I wish more people see this and put the people most affected by this decision at the forefront, rather than privileging metaphysical concerns of the uninvolved and uninterested Westerner.

Right, but the military junta is totally fine, even if they are at this moment firing on civilian protestors.

Bitcoin and other crypto coins are very inaccessible. Even disregarding transaction fees, you can't really get bitcoin without giving your payment details to someone.

Yes, countless VPN providers do need your payment details. And that is a risk. The comfort in that risk however is that anyone with knowledge of your VPN payment still doesn't know what you did with that VPN. With a messaging app however, you are risking your entire online identity.

Just deny location access to the app.

Facebook Messenger is tied to Facebook. Which is necessarily tied to a real name identity. Ditto for SMS. Telegram on the other hand is only minimally connected to a phone number (only need to be used once), with no real name requirements. It offers sufficient anonymity while allowing public gatherings. And of course, Facebook is much more likely to cooperate with law enforcement & national security apparatus in any given country compared to Telegram.

Telegram now has 550 million users according to the article. Facebook Messenger has 1.3 billion users - more twice as many, but I won't call that a "much wider adoption".

People have been arrested for merely using an anti-censorship proxy in my side of the world. There is a real danger, even if you have never witnessed one.

Exactly - Telegram can be used for public gatherings precisely because one can stay anonymous. It's more like Discord in that respect.

Wire is a bit of a mess. Client is buggy, cross-platform usage is difficult. At least that's my memory of it.

You can cloak your phone number & not allow others to reach you via your phone number. Which means that the authorities cannot match your phone number to your Telegram identity, even if you posted in a public chat. This feature was implemented last year during Hong Kong protests to protect against government efforts to identify protestors by enumerating the limited phone number space in HK. There is also a password option to protect against SMS surveillance.

As to whether Telegram itself would cooperate with data requests from your government - that depends on which government it is, and in the end is up to personal judgement. I don't think there's any reason that Telegram would betray me to the Chinese government, for example, while I won't at all trust Facebook for that. Facebook, and Zuckerberg himself (for how long did he stick to that Wuzhen avatar?), tried hard to appease the Chinese government for such a long time.

International megacorp are generally the worst to trust in that respect. To many of us in authoritarian places, the illegality of Telegram is itself an attraction.

But there wasn't another communication tool that was similarly popular and trusted among the Belarus people. And that, is the difference. Their choice in this protest matters much more to the reporting than your opinion as an outsider.

Why do you consider Signal & WhatsApp, but not Telegram, to be the acceptable “pre-existing” solution? Because you are used to them in the West?

Protesters in Hong Kong have been using Telegram. And they did use it to start a massive city wide riot.