Telegram, Freedom, and the Uncomfortable Truth About Blocking

Yesterday, Pavel Durov published a strong statement about governments trying, and failing, to block Telegram. According to him, Russia is now repeating what Iran attempted eight years ago: restrict Telegram to push citizens toward a state-controlled, surveilled alternative. His conclusion is clear; restricting freedom never works, and Telegram stands for privacy and free speech, no matter the pressure.

As a Telegram user, I genuinely love the product. But as someone who has seen this story from the inside, I think the reality is more complicated.

Why I Love Telegram (as a User)

My relationship with news has completely changed because of Telegram. I don’t visit news websites anymore. I don’t watch TV. I consume information through short, direct, unfiltered updates.

I follow journalists from different political angles, experts in specific fields, and people who actually know what they’re talking about. Telegram lets me build my own “newsroom.” Yes, there’s spam. Yes, there’s noise. But overall, it works, and it works well.

So when Durov talks about freedom of speech, I understand the emotional appeal. Tools like Telegram do matter.

But Here’s the Part That’s Hard to Swallow

From hands-on experience, I can say this clearly: When governments like Iran or Russia really want to block an OTT service, they succeed.

Not with a single switch. With layers.

• DNS blocking (easy to bypass)

• IP blocking (more painful, but manageable)

• Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) (this is where things die)

DPI doesn’t care about rotating IPs or clever tricks. China, Iran, and Russia are very good at it. At this stage, UX collapses, users drop off, and the service slowly bleeds out. Yes, VPNs and proxies exist, but they’re not mass-market solutions. They work periodically, not reliably.

And if the government is fully motivated, there’s always the nuclear option: whitelisting.

Whitelisting: How Governments Really Win

Instead of blocking “bad” services, a government blocks everything, and only allows approved services.

This isn’t theoretical. Iran has been building its National Information Network (NIN) for over a decade. When the global internet is unplugged, local banks still work. Payments still go through. Government services remain online. For most citizens, this becomes the internet.

Yes, it hurts the economy. Sometimes badly. But these governments have shown they’re willing to pay that price, at least for a while.

So when a free communication service remains accessible under such regimes, there are only a few explanations:

• Blocking it would cause unacceptable collateral damage

• The service is useful for surveillance

• Or… some level of compromise exists

None of these are comforting conclusions.

The “Telegram Test”

Here’s where things get interesting. To block a service like Telegram, which "hides" behind Google Cloud, Amazon AWS, or Cloudflare, a government often has to block entire cloud IP ranges.

But blocking those IPs can break banks, hospitals, logistics systems, startups, even government infrastructure itself. That’s why governments sometimes back down. The collateral damage becomes too high.

If a service remains accessible in a country that claims to ban it, without heavy VPN usage or serious friction, that could mean one of three things:

1. Collateral Damage Fear - Blocking would disrupt critical cloud infrastructure, so the government quietly tolerates it.

2. Surveillance Preference - Since a solution like Telegram is not end-to-end encrypted by default, authorities may prefer keeping it alive rather than pushing users to truly secure alternatives like Signal.

3. Operational Compromise - The platform complies with certain local demands (removing content, restricting channels, hosting infrastructure locally, etc.) in exchange for remaining accessible.

   
   

These are systemic possibilities, not claims about specific actions.

Telegram’s Security Trade-Off

Telegram has always positioned itself as “the secure one.” But security on Telegram has never been the default.

• 1-to-1 chats are NOT end-to-end encrypted by default

• “Secret chats” are optional, hidden, and friction-heavy

• Group chats are never end-to-end encrypted

This is not a small detail.

WhatsApp and Viber chose a different path: full E2EE by default, everywhere. Telegram chose convenience, sync, large groups, and powerful features, and those come at a cost.

I’m not accusing Telegram of wrongdoing. I’m stating a fact:

A higher percentage of Telegram communication is technically accessible to Telegram itself.

And that matters, especially under pressure.

So What’s the Truth?

I don’t know what Telegram does or doesn’t do behind the scenes, and honestly, that’s not the point. Whether leadership is sincere or not is almost irrelevant. Systems behave according to their architecture, not their intentions. I also believe that “governments always fail to block platforms” is a comforting myth. Technically, they can succeed. Practically, they often hesitate, until they don’t.

Freedom of speech isn’t protected by slogans, it’s protected by defaults. When encryption is optional, when privacy requires extra steps, and when scale depends on central control, the system bends toward convenience long before it bends toward freedom. That doesn’t make a platform evil. But it does make it fragile, especially when real pressure arrives.

I genuinely want people anywhere in the world to communicate privately and freely. But freedom without transparency about architecture and defaults is fragile.

In environments like these, architecture matters more than ideology.

Defaults decide more than declarations ever will.