[HN Gopher] Telegram surpassed 500M active users. 25 mil new use...
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Telegram surpassed 500M active users. 25 mil new users in the last
3days
Author : reddotX
Score : 75 points
Date : 2021-01-12 19:01 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| paxys wrote:
| I imagine Signal is seeing a bump as well.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Unsure if you're a signal user and/or joking but I've had a
| steady stream of "X is on signal" messages the last week
| ffpip wrote:
| The number of my contacts on signal has increased from 3 to
| 35 in 2 days.
| malux85 wrote:
| Yeah me too, +15 or so contacts
| jsilence wrote:
| Are those Trumps Twitter followers? Or are they coming from
| Parlor?
|
| Serious questions. Not trying to troll.
| Throwawayjedi wrote:
| look at the tweet 89% from outside US
| AlfeG wrote:
| I guess this is a wave of WhatsUp-privacy-gate
| fsociety wrote:
| Some for sure, there have been rumors of Telegram groups
| starting up in the aftermath of Parler.
| chrissnell wrote:
| Almost none of my conservative friends used Parler. It really
| was a ghost town until Twitter banned President Trump and many
| signed up, hoping they could read posts from him there, but he
| was never on Parler.
|
| As for the surge in encrypted messaging, yes, a lot of this is
| conservatives no longer willing to use Facebook and Twitter out
| of anger or fear. Of my conservative friends, I would say that
| at least half have moved to platforms like Wickr and Signal in
| the last week. They are using it to replace private Facebook
| Messenger chats.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > It really was a ghost town until Twitter banned President
| Trump and many signed up, hoping they could read posts from
| him there, but he was never on Parler.
|
| All of my family and most of my in-laws as well as most of my
| friends here in Norway from outside work uses it since long
| time ago, but just the last few days two more Norwegians and
| one Pakistani friend of mine joined.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| Parler's user base really started growing in mid-late 2020 as
| FB, Twitter etc. became stricter about political content, and
| started censoring the President and other conservatives much
| more frequently.
| josefresco wrote:
| No, the second half of the headline is "38% came from Asia, 27%
| from Europe, 21% from Latin America and 8% from MENA."
| fernandotakai wrote:
| tons of people in LA/SA are moving to telegram from whatsapp
| due to the whole facebook debacle.
| danielrpa wrote:
| That's what I'm also observing. I'm having to actively
| raise awareness of Signal to my LA friends, because they
| are largely going to Telegram by default.
| jandrese wrote:
| So what's going on in the world that's driving the surge in
| signups? Hopefully not US political nonsense.
|
| I also really hope it's not intelligence agencies rushing to
| make new accounts to move their disinformation campaigns to
| new platforms.
| tw04 wrote:
| Facebook ruining whatsapp:
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/06/whatsapp-privacy-
| policy...
| ayewo wrote:
| Looks like you missed the massive discussion regarding
| Whatsapp's ultimatum to everyone if they want to continue
| using their service for free:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662215
| jandrese wrote:
| Yep that will do it. If I used Whatsapp that would make
| me want to switch too.
|
| Jan 6 was not a good day to announce such a policy shift.
| It got drowned out by world (well, US) events.
| eznzt wrote:
| Telegram does not have end-to-end encryption by default and group
| chats cannot be end-to-end encrypted at all.
| unicornfinder wrote:
| Which is why, as crazy as it may sound, telegram is genuinely
| less secure than WhatsApp for most people
| ffpip wrote:
| Telegram has not given _any_ private data to any government.
| They have been banned (that didn 't stop them tho) for this.
|
| Whatsapp backsups are strongly encouraged by the app on a
| frequent basis. You cannot control the backup settings for
| your contacts. Therefore almost every group is backed up to
| google drive. Google has allegedly given this data to the
| authorities because these chats have leaked in a popular case
| here in India.
|
| https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/how-ncb-retrieved-
| what...
|
| https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/bollywood-
| wh...
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| The unfortunate reality is that moving to Telegram is
| moving to a new Facebook. Yes, they offer a bunch of fancy
| features, unfortunately it's at the price of true privacy.
| All your data, for all perpetuity, will be stored on
| telegram servers where you hope that at no point in the
| future will they be compromised or forced to rat you out.
|
| This is not a problem that Signal faces as they do not keep
| any of your data.
| cft wrote:
| I switched to Telegram long time ago when Putin presented an
| ultimatum to hand over the private keys to its founder,
| exiling the founder as a result. He never had any problems or
| ultimatums with WhatsApp.
| skinkestek wrote:
| First off: Correct. Off all the people trying to say this you
| are the first I've seen who has nailed it!
|
| That said: Neither is mail.
|
| Mail is still useful for a lot of things.
|
| See also tptaceks take:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22371316
| eznzt wrote:
| I am not comparing it to mail, I am comparing it to whatsapp.
| skinkestek wrote:
| No, you are not comparing to anything, which is totally
| fine :-)
|
| I'm comparing it to mail.
|
| And if you want a more secure alternative, please go with
| Signal.
|
| WhatsApp leaks metadata east and west, and if you or any of
| the people you talk to enable backups all your chats end up
| in the cloud with a different company.
|
| So much for bulletproof encryption in that case.
| TheChaplain wrote:
| Been using Telegram for years along with WhatsApp, Signal and
| Line.
|
| Can without doubt say that Telegram nails it when it comes to
| user interface, features and userfriendliness. Girlfriend loves
| their animated stickers.
|
| Their bot-api is easy to use as well, created a echo-bot in no
| time. Only thing that annoys me is the lack of encrypted groups,
| but no one is really concerned about it.
| skrowl wrote:
| Telegram advantages over Signal:
|
| - The ability to message someone with just your username /
| without revealing your phone number
|
| - Easy to use from multiple devices (with full history the
| minute you install it on a new device)
|
| - Great bot api
|
| - Channels (like an rss feed, people may join to get info, but
| only the admins can post)
|
| - Much larger groups
|
| - Much larger per-file size limit when sending files
|
| - Message scheduling
|
| - Multiple accounts in the official client
|
| - Polls / quizes
|
| - Hashtags / stickers / animated stickers / etc
|
| - Uses an encryption protocol (now in it's 2nd revision as of 3
| years ago) that's been independently audited. (For comparison:
| Signal's encryption protocol was sponsored / paid for by the US
| Govt and is used by Facebook's WhatsApp. Telegram has been
| banned in multiple countries for refusing to turn over data to
| the govt as well)
|
| Signal advantages over Telegram:
|
| - E2E chats are the only type of chats offered.
|
| TLDR - If you use mostly 1:1 chats and E2E is important to you,
| use Signal. If you use mostly group chats or want ease of use
| to get your friends / family on board, use Telegram. Both are
| open source and have had independent security audits, which is
| better than WhatsApp!
| AlfeG wrote:
| - instant search. I use tg for notes. It blazing fast. Just
| try to search in Skype for something to compare
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| Signal is open source, Telegram isn't.
| 0xy wrote:
| Signal is closed source, considering their server code
| hasn't been updated in 9 months yet changes have been made
| on production since then. [1] This is a really dishonest
| argument.
|
| [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
| reddotX wrote:
| https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Wow. Now all the need is to add a feed
| nikhizzle wrote:
| On thing I love about Telegram is how easy the bot API is.
| Anytime I need a quick personal CLI to a service that works on
| mobile, I can get it running in no time. For example, I wrote a
| script to check flight prices and send me a telegram message when
| it hit a certain threshold.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| Do you know Signal-cli? I'm using it for all my Signal bots.
| https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli
| nikhizzle wrote:
| I do not, thanks for sending this my way!
| dirtnugget wrote:
| Still don't trust them at all.
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| And you would be smart not to. It's like people haven't learned
| from history and what happened to Facebook and WhatsApp. Moving
| to Telegram is simply moving to a new Facebook and hoping that
| they don't sell out or get compromised. All your data is stored
| by default on their servers and out of your control. Switching
| to Signal is the only real viable option going into 2021.
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(page generated 2021-01-12 23:02 UTC)