Protected Content, Delete by Date, Device Management and more

I think this trend of preventing people from copying is worry some as:<p>- people might have a <i>legal right</i> to make copies<p>- it&#x27;s opens up a lot of potential for abuse, as it&#x27;s harder to safe proof of abuse.<p>- it gives people a false sense of security (e.g. when sexting)<p>Couldn&#x27;t they instead e.g. display low resulution images for screenshots or similar?<p>That should be good enough for artists in my experience. (I mean there are artists which live draw the art on e.g. twitch they then sell, it works as the image quality you can easily extract is just not &quot;good enough&quot; for most potential buyers, and if we idk. throw AI sharpening tools at it then we could also throw tools at it which circumvent telegrams protections).

Just tested this. In a group with this enabled, indeed, the iOS app results in either a black, transparent, or otherwise missing screenshot of the area of the screen displaying the media. In the few minutes I played with it, I wasn&#x27;t able to bypass it.<p>However, the chat is viewable in Telegram Web (K). Web K even offers to download the picture, which actually downloads the file.<p>Additionally, Telegram Desktop for Mac similarly allows screenshots as usual and isn&#x27;t affected.<p>In the past I have seen some other apps implement screenshot prevention on iOS usinf something that &quot;cloaks&quot; the screen when the button combination is detected, and when the OS is about to background the app. This is the method Fido My Account (mobile carrier in Canada) uses (current version allows screenshots, but blocks the info from the app switcher).<p>The method Telegram is using appears to be rather seamless, as it does not show the screen going black or anything when the screenshot is taken. Stack Overflow seems to discuss two solutions, one using DRM video, and another using some password field hackery. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;18680028&#x2F;prevent-screen-capture-in-an-ios-app" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;18680028&#x2F;prevent-screen-...</a><p>This is the most likely case, as the behaviour is similar to what happens when you take a screenshot of DRM netflix; it appears it is drawn by the hardware and not in the OS framebuffer, and thus shows up as a black box.<p>Of course this is not really security, but Telegram, despite being open source on the client, does have in the ToS that apps have to implement the &quot;secure&quot; features of secret chats properly, or risk being blocked. Recently they have been sending info out to bot developers that says apps that don&#x27;t implement the ads in channels will be blocked as well, but I&#x27;m not sure if they will really enforce this.<p>&quot;We ask that you make sure that these sponsored messages are supported and properly displayed in your app by January 1, 2022. Unfortunately, Telegram cannot financially sustain apps that support Telegram Channels but do not display official sponsored messages – such apps will have to be disconnected.&quot;

While I&#x27;m not a fan of Telegram&#x27;s security model, I have to say that their dedication to create an awesome product is admirable.<p>EDIT: Just to be clear given the title, I&#x27;m not pro DRM, and we can be pro or against auto-removable content, but I just love how they implement features that their users are asking for and the quality of their apps.

So, &quot;Privacy by obscurity&quot;? Who thought that was a good idea? And how do they plan to restrict screenshots on iOS anyway? This is wrong on so many levels. If someone has access to a material on their own device, Telegeam can only make it inconvenient (but not impossible) to save&#x2F;forward content, and since it&#x27;s not real privacy, this only makes people to move away from Telegram to, say, Discord or alternatives, just as me and many others around did.<p>Good move Telegram. This is how you ruin your otherwise-great platform.

The title is editorialized&#x2F;sensationalized. Original title: &quot;Protected Content, Delete by Date, Device Management and More&quot;

This reminds me of old websites blocking right clicking on a webpage since that&#x27;s how you viewed the source code, yet there&#x27;s always a way to get the source. Same in this case, there&#x27;s always a way to capture the &quot;protected&quot; content.<p>Edit: granted, not only old websites do this. Instagram lays a full width&#x2F;height transparent div atop the picture to prevent right-click copying of the image.

It&#x27;s more a bathroom door lock than DRM. It&#x27;s not meant to be unbeatable - it&#x27;s to prevent accidental embarrassment, and most likely to be used by small groups of willing participants (as in &#x27;group chats&#x27; or the &#x27;secret santa&#x27; example, perhaps)?

This trend to prevent others from saving content is stupid. Are people not going to read the content? It’s already “saved” and of course doesn’t stop people from using another phone to screenshot or simply typing up the contents<p>**<p>Oh and this is yet another kick in the face to people with accessibility issues.<p>**<p>As an aside, once AR is mainstream I expect that apps will only display encrypted text and some pair of smart glasses will be able to be configured to decrypt and display the play text all on the client (glasses) such that such issues are removed.

&quot;Telegram Introduces DRM&quot;<p>Just want to point out that it&#x27;s not actually DRM. Just Telegram giving users the option to prevent message recipients from downloading content.

...in regular chats. It&#x27;s always been there in encrypted chats. Or is that not what the editorialized title refers to?

I wonder how they prevent a screenshot from happening on their desktop client or do I just not receive protected content on desktop.

My favourite screenshot tool is the camera on another phone.

I hate &quot;DRM&quot; as much as the next person, but ... am I the only person that sees this as a great feature in the particular content it is implemented for?<p>This isn&#x27;t like classical DRM where the intent is to stop you from owning content you already purchased.<p>This is effectively a way for group&#x2F;page holders to ensure control over content that is not meant to be shared beyond that context.<p>Yes I know that technically if you post a picture of your kids in the group someone could still take a physical screenshot from another phone, but the point is reasonable friction, not an insurmountable tech barrier.

There is more of a social issue here... If Person A sends a message to Person B, who should get to decide when that message is deleted?<p>Telegram seems to have decided that either Person A or Person B can delete the message, without the permission or notification of the other.<p>I personally would prefer it to be the message is only deleted with the permission of Person A <i>and</i> Person B. Ie. &quot;Bob has deleted his copy of this chat, and requests you do the same. Delete Chat?&quot;

Imagine future, with Neuralink DRM. You go to tell your friend the summary of the movie you just saw, but thankfully the implant was able to disable your vocal cords just in time to protect the intellectual property of the copy right holder.

The tooltips on the images and videos are excellent. Now I want a comparison between iOS’s text recognition and a pharmacist. And it made me think of how 93% of paint splatters are valid Perl programs (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mcmillen.dev&#x2F;sigbovik&#x2F;2019.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mcmillen.dev&#x2F;sigbovik&#x2F;2019.pdf</a>, PDF, 7MB).

I wonder how do they handle DRM content in the open-source version of Telegram - Telegram Desktop (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;telegramdesktop&#x2F;tdesktop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;telegramdesktop&#x2F;tdesktop</a>).<p>Also, Telegram Desktop is licensed under GPLv3, which is an anti-DRM license. Something doesn&#x27;t add up here...

So since the client is open I can just compile a version that does allow me to Screenshot....

A lot of negativity here for this, but I see the benefits in some scenarios for privacy: We may want to share family pictures with more of our family, but not have those pictures piped out to social media&#x2F;the public. Especially for less technical users, this provides a reasonably decent protection from that occurring.

&gt; prevents screenshots and limits the ability to save media<p>I fail to see how this actually prevents what it is supposed to prevent. You can still take a screenshot on desktop, or you can take a photo with another phone of your phone with the &quot;DRM&#x27;d&quot; content. They just got rid of the &quot;Save&quot; button and probably revoked the permission for taking screenshots.<p>Is the client open source? If it is, you can just modify it then.

A nice idea in the opposite direction I saw recently was watermarking images, why create a fake felling of privacy when you can create legal liability ?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.signalusers.org&#x2F;t&#x2F;watermark-photos-videos&#x2F;18512&#x2F;3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.signalusers.org&#x2F;t&#x2F;watermark-photos-videos&#x2F;...</a>

The Internet and computers just keep getting more and more annoying. Is this really what people want?

I don&#x27;t use telegram, but I know it can be added as a bridge in Matrix - so if someone has that setup, surely this is pointless? Would the image not just be saved on the Matrix server? In fact with any sort of bot?

I wonder how this fares with android rooting, ios jailbreaking and generic desktop reverse engineering. Surely i can capture the screen video buffer in some way or another. And most probably someone dedicated enough would find the encryption scheme and key from the binaries to extract source media.<p>Back in the days there were apps in cydia to get a hold of all the snaps you received since they were just lying unencrypted inside a private sandbox.

Am I the only one that&#x27;s still waiting for them to implement synchronized end-to-end encrypted chats? Ideally using a well-known algorithm and enabled by default.<p>(In my opinion, Telegram has by far the best apps of all messengers out there, but I will never be able to get certain friends to use it until that issue is resolved...)

THIS IS COMPLETELY MISLEADING. Telegram just provides group administrators with an option of preventing bad members from secretly forwarding messages to other chats, or to save them locally. It has nothing to do with digital rights, nor DRM. It is a privacy feature, not a copyright feature.

I personally am happy about this feature, the main application for me will be to prevent the leaking of private information from smaller groups, obviously if someone was so determined they could easily get around it but for small groups of average users, removing the immediate option is good enough

Why is this called DRM?

This reminded me of the video on DRM called C.R.A.P.(Content Restriction Annulment Protection) by David Berlind of ZDNET:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Ww65z8HuIJ8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Ww65z8HuIJ8</a>

Ok. Since this is open source using an open protocol, what is the healthy client or fork?

&gt; Restricted saving<p>No one has two phones, or one phone and a camera.<p>Of course, that’s not remotely true, so what have they accomplished? If someone receives messages that they want or need to save, e.g. for legal reasons, this feature isn’t going to stop them.

You know, I think this is the right call. A lot of people have this instinct to screenshot and share things from private groups.<p>Making people jump through hoops means only the most egregious stuff would still be shared.

dang, please change the title of this post! This is far and away editorializing (with a deeply negative connotation) the original announcement.

Can apps on iOS disable screen recording or mirroring?

Are the client and the protocol no longer open?

So much for not editorializing titles.

I like the idea of &quot;Log In via Call&quot; since there have been some issues with SMS delays.

So you&#x27;ll just need a second phone to take a picture of the first?<p>Why is this even a feature?

And today I had to update before I was able to use Telegram. Stupid policy.

Let me just fork the client and remove the anti-feature… oh wait.

They are not preventing anything, they are just making it harder.

This is misleading. The new privacy protection features in Telegram are not DRM at all. They are just to prevent users from forwarding information outside of private chats or saving them, not related to copyrights at all (which is what DRM is meant to protect). Also, DRM is not mentioned in the changelog.

I expected more from HN. If anyone bothered to read the article (which, btw, was posted with a disingenuous title...shame on you OP), you would see that Protected Content is only available in Groups and Channels, and is not on by default.<p>It seems a lot of people don&#x27;t realize that Telegram is used for more than chatting with your contacts. Telegram Groups and Channels serve as a content delivery system, with access often restricted behind some kind of pay system like Patreon or Telegram&#x27;s own Payments API (think OnlyFans and private Discords). This is a boon to content creators as it protects their payed Telegram content from being easily shared into other Telegram Channels.<p>Telegram quietly transcended beyond chat app and into the social media arena a while ago. It&#x27;s about time HN caught up.

The problem here is not that Telegram disallows you from taking screenshots but that the OS, which should be on the side of the user, allows apps to disallow you from taking screenshots.