[HN Gopher] Telegram: Payments 2.0, Scheduled Voice Chats, New W...
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Telegram: Payments 2.0, Scheduled Voice Chats, New Web Versions
Author : f311a
Score : 176 points
Date : 2021-04-26 12:56 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (telegram.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (telegram.org)
| gordon_freeman wrote:
| I am just genuinely surprised by the pace of launching new
| features by Telegram. I don't know how many developers they
| employ but this is impressive nonetheless.
| alskdj21 wrote:
| The web apps are super interesting. Its light and fast. On par
| with the desktop client. Meanwhile, Facebook Messenger takes eons
| to load, Discord's web client's initial load will hog up my CPU.
| It will be interesting to see the technology behind this.
|
| edit: Links for those interested
|
| Web Z: https://github.com/Ajaxy/telegram-tt
|
| web K: https://github.com/morethanwords/tweb
| f311a wrote:
| Telegram team has a long history of using vanilla javascript as
| optimal as possible. It all started at VK.
| capableweb wrote:
| "vanilla javascript" usually refers to something like
| manipulating the DOM directly, without using frameworks,
| transpiled languages and similar. Both of them seems to be
| using a bunch of different tech, from typescript to wasm, jsx
| and more, not sure I'd call that vanilla javascript.
|
| On a second note, I'm surprised that both the new web
| versions are so similar. Seems just a couple of margins
| changed and other minor changes (profile picture filling the
| background vs being a centered circle for example), but built
| differently. Wonder if they both worked towards the same
| design maybe?
|
| Edit: found explanations to the multiple-codebases behavior
| further down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26943653
| aszen wrote:
| i think both of them are not using any framework, one of
| them uses an inhouse library which resembles react but
| overall i would say it's pretty vanilla (as in no frontend
| frameworks)
| capableweb wrote:
| You might be right in the first half, but TypeScript
| (which they seem to be built in mostly) is not vanilla
| JavaScript, no matter what library or frameworks you use.
| f311a wrote:
| They had a contest with requirements to the codebase:
| https://contest.com/javascript-web-3
| samat wrote:
| this is gold. thank you!
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| With every Telegram update, I keep hoping that they improve their
| video chat. As it stands, it is much lower quality compared to
| Skype or Duo.
| athorax wrote:
| My n=1 anecdote is that is largely depends on the phones being
| used for the video chat. My OnePlus 6t works great when talking
| to a Samsung Galaxy S10e, but is terrible when talking with
| someone using a Galaxy S9+
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| I found the quality to be lacking (looking like 480p) with
| desktops using the standard Logitech webcams.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm actually finding the responses between Telegram and Signal's
| announcements interesting. While there were some shady things
| with Signal a lot of people were upset about the feature in
| general saying that a messaging app should just stay a messaging
| app as well as callbacks to how Telegram failed. So I was kinda
| surprised to come into this thread finding everyone being so
| positive and encouraged by the superapp aspects.
| eitland wrote:
| Signals selling point was secure messaging.
|
| Now they seem to be diverging from that.
|
| Telegrams selling point was a better WhatsApp, and IIRC this
| started back when WhatsApp was still unencrypted (yes, not
| point-to-point encrypted but unencrypted).
|
| Since then they've always taken the lead over WhatsApp
| everywhere except on E2E-encryption.
|
| That's the difference IMO.
| rOOb85 wrote:
| Signal is _still_ a secure messaging app. Signal will always
| be a secure messaging app. They have ignored feature requests
| to maintain secure /private messaging. Secure communication
| is paramount to signal.
|
| There is 0 evidence signal is diverging from being a secure
| messaging app. Are they adding non-chat related features?
| Yes. Are they making their app any less of a secure chat
| platform? Absolutely not.
| Saris wrote:
| At least for me it was due to Signal pushing it with their own
| cryptocurrency as the only option.
| wrinkl3 wrote:
| Imo the main difference is Signal locking you into an arcane
| cryptocurrency, while Telegram provides you with a large choice
| of mainstream fiat payment processors. I agree that the
| features are not that different, but Telegram's approach feels
| much more palatable.
| rOOb85 wrote:
| Telegram does not care about your privacy. It's always been
| an after thought. Of course they would implement non privacy
| respecting payments.
|
| Signal is _all_ about privacy. It trumps everything else.
| There are no "mainstream" payment options that align with
| their privacy requirements.
|
| It's not a 1:1 comparison. They both want to achieve the same
| goal(payment integration) buy have vastly different
| requirements.
| godelski wrote:
| I see that as a big difference too, but still a large
| fraction of the complaints were purely about the payment
| aspect. Remembering back to Telegram's payments 1.0 a lot of
| people were excited about it then too. I'm just curious why
| people are much more cynical about Signal.
| [deleted]
| est wrote:
| > With the new web versions you can get instant access to your
| chats on any device - desktop or mobile. These apps are
| incredibly efficient, requiring only a 400 KB download (that's
| like two photos of a medium-sized cat) and no installation.
|
| webz.telegram.org and webk.telegram.org look amazing.
|
| That's web apps done right. Small .js files intead of 20MB
| main.min.js crap.
| [deleted]
| WA9ACE wrote:
| webk transferred 627 Kb, and is fully functional. Slack,
| Discord, Teams, and friends could all stand to trim their web
| application's bloat a bit and take a lesson from this.
| holler wrote:
| I'm working on a new realtime discussion site
| https://sqwok.im and one of my goals is to keep it as
| lean/fast as possible, both as a competitive angle & because
| I find it interesting. So far I get ~445kb transferred, but I
| have plans to lower it even further with a combination of
| caching and other strategies.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| I don't understand why there are 2 slightly different websites.
| Both are good, just with minor changes to the fonts and
| spacing.
| fullstop wrote:
| Telegram devs compete internally.
| WA9ACE wrote:
| From what I can tell so far webz appears to be using
| significant amount of wasm.
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| They did this a while back with their Android (and iOS?) apps
| --they had the core Telegram app, and Telegram X. Both had
| 90% overlapping features, but some subtle differences. It's
| long enough ago that it's a bit fuzzy in my head, but I think
| X had slightly better reply gestures, and maybe chat pinning.
|
| Later I think they absorbed the X features into the core app.
|
| I can't decide if I think it's an awesome strategy to launch
| a self-competing project, or if it just leads to terrible
| internal issues. I'm leaning more towards the former--I'm a
| huge believer in the instructive power of contrast, and it's
| a lot "safer" to contrast against another one of your own
| products than a competitor. You control much more of the
| "experiment", and you don't run the risk of cannibalizing
| your own users.
|
| Plus, from an engineering standpoint, it forces you to have
| portable technologies and configs, and probably gives your
| team opportunities to learn from greenfield stuff that can
| then encourage refactors or other paying-down-tech-debt
| activities.
|
| It's also just dang impressive that they're able to spin up
| multiple versions of the same app, and deploy them, and
| maintain them. That speaks volumes to me about their internal
| systems, build systems, resource allocation, etc.
| solarkraft wrote:
| OTOH as far as I remember much of Nokia's issues came from
| internal competition involving sabotage of other teams. Not
| that that has to happen, but the incentives are a tiny bit
| dangerous.
| MildlySerious wrote:
| Telegram outsources parts of its development into multi-stage
| coding contests[1] with prize money. I don't know why they
| decided to keep two separate versions in the end, but I
| assume they both came out of the Javascript contest.
|
| [1] https://contest.com/
| owaislone wrote:
| Yeah that's a bit strange. My guess is that they use
| different tech or techniques under the hood and eventually
| one will be picked as a winner and become just
| web.telegram.com or they'll take ideas from both and merge
| into a single one. It kinda looks like a poor man's A/B test.
| sahaskatta wrote:
| Is it E2E by default yet?
| barbazoo wrote:
| I guess it's not a shortcoming if privacy isn't their primary
| selling point. It seems more like they want to be like wechat,
| packed with all the features you need to never have to leave
| the app.
| temp667 wrote:
| I thought they were focused on convenience etc vs the E2E
| security model (which makes onboarding devices harder etc).
| Have they put out a roadmap to E2E everything? That would be
| somewhat major but surprising given they seem to be doing well
| with current approach (ease of use / features).
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| Nope. And groups don't even have security as an option.
|
| Basically they are amassing an enormous amount of personal
| data, chat logs, etc. while their marketing and the public
| opinion is still that "Telegram is secure". That's a disaster
| waiting for the company to be acquired or turn evil.
| eitland wrote:
| > And groups don't even have security as an option.
|
| What do you even mean by this?
| carlob wrote:
| E2E isn't even supported on desktop and web versions yet.
| out_of_protocol wrote:
| Having no E2E by default (or at all) is, probably,
| intentional.
| baxuz wrote:
| What are you talking about? Secret chats, which are E2EE, are
| supported on Unigram and other desktop clients.
| solarkraft wrote:
| But not tdesktop, which is the official desktop client.
| capableweb wrote:
| And judging by the issue for secret chats have been
| closed since 2016, they have no interest in implementing
| it either.
|
| https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/871
| f311a wrote:
| No, and they don't have plans to enable it. One of the reasons
| is technical: It's pretty hard to use E2E and support multiple
| devices.
| snotrockets wrote:
| It's as hard as doing E2E group chats, already solved
| elsewhere.
| paozac wrote:
| Zawinski's law 2.0: every chat application attempts to expand
| until it can process payments.
| Fogest wrote:
| Honestly I really like using Telegram since I switched from
| WhatsApp and I actually would find it pretty neat if I could
| use Telegram to interact with some local merchants.
| Unfortunately I am in Canada and I've yet to see any merchants
| doing this.
|
| My pharmacist is on WhatsApp and it's nice to just shoot a
| message saying "Hey I'll be needing a refill on xyz, thanks".
| He is pretty into technology and trying new things out so not
| too surprising he had incorporated WhatsApp.
|
| However here we already has support at pretty much every
| merchant for tapping to pay with phones or tapping with our
| credit/debit cards so I don't see a huge amount of benefits to
| this. For example the ordering of pizzas almost seems like it
| would just be easier on a website. Often when ordering pizza
| for the family we do things like getting half the pizza with 3
| toppings and the other half with 3 different ones. This would
| start to get annoying to order from a bot.
|
| So I am having a hard time finding use cases for the payment
| side of things in North America. I just can't think of many
| text based interactions I'd have with merchants that would be
| more ideal than using a website.
| maratc wrote:
| Don't forget this part (for completeness): "Those apps which
| cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
| gaudat wrote:
| Imagine if Durov put up a donation link on his channel. I
| wonder what happens if I use a real credit card in the demo
| shop.
| owaislone wrote:
| I just tried one of the apps and it had instant feedback when I
| gave it the wrong 2FA code. It felt too fast for any network
| calls to be involved. I looked at the network tab in my browser
| and sure enough no network calls were being made. It looks like
| they are using some sort of client side crypto to verify or at
| least reject tokens. Does anyone any idea about why they'd chose
| to do it client side or what I am missing?
| trhaynes wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_One-Time_Password
| owaislone wrote:
| Doesn't that mean the client holds the keys/secret of some
| sort is shared with the client so it can either generate or
| verify?
| mfollert wrote:
| you only need the pub key to verify
| ghostwriter wrote:
| is it possible to write and host your own telegram web client,
| a.k.a. are all the features the new clients use publicly
| available to third-party implementations?
| depingus wrote:
| Web Z: https://github.com/Ajaxy/telegram-tt
|
| web K: https://github.com/morethanwords/tweb
| [deleted]
| throwawaysea wrote:
| How can Telegram help us all move away from dependency on a small
| cabal of big payment players (PayPal, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard)?
| A big part of privacy and protection against censorship is
| avoiding these providers, who regularly stop payments for things
| they disagree with.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Can the new web versions be used as Electron apps? I find the QT
| Linux telegram official app to have abysmal scrolling
| performance.
| depingus wrote:
| You can self host them or run them locally.
|
| Web Z: https://github.com/Ajaxy/telegram-tt
|
| web K: https://github.com/morethanwords/tweb
| ilovefood wrote:
| Telegram really doesn't cease to amaze me with the amount of
| features it's packing and everything that is possible. Really
| tremendous development and engineering feat, especially at this
| scale. I love the app and use it constantly.
| fuzzybear3965 wrote:
| Telegram has some nice features from a user's perspective
| (arbitrary filetype file attachment, animated voice records so
| I can skip quiet portions, good chat search, private chat
| support, and video-/picture-/file-/message -specific search).
| But, one of the main utilities on Telegram is its bot platform.
| And, as a developer: Building bots with Telegram is difficult.
| This is mostly a documentation issue.
|
| AFAIK this is the main documentation page:
| https://core.telegram.org/bots/api which, subjectively speaking
| is really hard to read, and, objectively speaking, offers no
| sample responses/interactivity.
|
| This page tries to fill the gap on tutorials/how-to:
| https://core.telegram.org/bots but without sample code.
|
| There are a few bots you can find on GitHub, but nothing
| official that I could find.
|
| Documentation on bot limitations in channels vs. groups is also
| really spotty.
|
| Trying to detect who joined a group/channel and greet them, for
| example, or trying to send a message on departure, is non-
| trivial.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| yeah, bots are rock solid once you figure them out but it
| took me ages just to figure out how to get a token for
| another app to use.
| ilovefood wrote:
| I can't confirm or deny since I've been only using telegram
| as a way to get notifications for some batch jobs or other
| things I want to keep an eye out for and that use case has
| been a breeze. I'm having a script constantly checking when
| the PS5 will be available on amazon and get a notification
| when that happens to (hopefully) have a chance to get one. I
| think I might help there, I'll post an article as soon as I
| can about that with the hope that it'll get people started.
| Some years ago I did use Whatsapp to write bots and there was
| absolutely no documentation at that time but it's possible.
| What's your use case exactly? Would you like to use Telegram
| Channels / Groups the way Discord channels are used?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Dunno how it could be easier than this:
|
| curl -X POST \ -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \ -d
| '{"chat_id": "123456789", "text": "This is a test from curl",
| "disable_notification": true}' \
| https://api.telegram.org/bot$TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN/sendMessage
| athorax wrote:
| I'd generally agree that the first party documentation isn't
| great. There is a list of code examples[0] that I found
| pretty useful though. I picked one of the python ones and dug
| into it to get a better idea how everything is setup
|
| [0]: https://core.telegram.org/bots/samples
| tiagod wrote:
| I disagree with you, I find the API quite uniform, powerful
| and enjoyable to use (I'm only annoyed by the recent increase
| in rate limiting). They offer a nice list of every method and
| all the parameters, and what they're for, and all the return
| objects are also documented. Everything is on that single
| page which is great for CTRL+F.
|
| There's also wrappers for many languages that will have auto-
| documentation on IDEs like IntelliJ and usage examples.
|
| What I really dislike is Telegram's avoidance of E2EE. Very
| sketchy.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| > with the amount of features it's packing and everything that
| is possible
|
| And it's FAST.
|
| Really good engineers they got over there.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Sorry, I couldn't help but read this as an ad.
| ilovefood wrote:
| It's alright, every feedback is valuable. What would you have
| written differently and besides, what alternatives would you
| suggest and why?
| leeman2016 wrote:
| It really is that good. Out of the bunch of apps on my iPhone
| Telegram is the one that is fast, effectively using cellular
| data, feature packed. The Unigram client on Windows 10 is
| also neat.
| bnj wrote:
| The feature to schedule voice chats really struck me as an
| example of something that seems so obvious in retrospect. I hope
| to see more of this innovation around phone-features trickle down
| to the native iOS phone options.
| bombcar wrote:
| Isn't this one feature completely replace Clubhouse?
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| It seems obvious now after COVID-19 has shifted our view of
| online events.
| hexo wrote:
| Unsolicited animations all over again. :(
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| I don't see the value of any of this. I guess I'm not their
| target market.
| Ashanmaril wrote:
| Glad to see the new web versions. The current version at
| web.telegram.org is pretty outdated and limited. I also didn't
| like the favicon for an unread message because you could barely
| tell the difference between it and the standard favicon. It
| bugged me to the point where I made a PR to fix it myself but it
| seems like the repo wasn't really being touched much. Lots of PRs
| with no activity from the maintainers.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Cool new stuff. The new web clients are pretty nice, while the
| old one sucked terribly. The Android app does keep getting
| smoother and the new features are cool, I guess (though I don't
| use payments at all).
|
| There's a background to the new web download, however: They've
| recently started blocking some channels with the message "This
| message can't be displayed on Telegram apps downloaded from the
| Google Play Store".
|
| It's also new (and quite cool) to me that reproducible builds are
| apparently now a thing - the FOSS version of Telegram used to lag
| _way_ behind the official one which made it pretty difficult to
| use.
| riskable wrote:
| As an outsider--who doesn't use Telegram--it looks like they want
| to become like WeChat outside of China: Where you shop and do
| basically _everything_ from within a single application
| (Telegram).
|
| They claim this is improved privacy but it doesn't look like that
| to me. Instead of my transaction being between myself and a
| merchant it's me, the merchant, _and Telegram_. Furthermore,
| Telegram can now aggregate all my purchases and info across
| multiple merchants (and whatever else I do).
|
| They say they store, "no payment information" but that's really
| only a small part of any given transaction. They may still record
| what you bought and how much it cost along with when it was
| purchased. All the, "no payment information" claim means is that
| they're not storing your credit card/account numbers.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| >it looks like they want to become like WeChat
|
| Even if they don't want it, they have to. You either become a
| superapp, or users will flee to other superapps.
|
| >Instead of my transaction being between myself and a merchant
| it's me, the merchant, and Telegram.
|
| Don't forget about payment processor. That's where data
| aggregation takes place.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| It's kinda weird how this ecosystem goes, since the
| debundling of websites is also a common theme on HN. When
| does a superapp become a debundling target?
| emteycz wrote:
| Debundling comes when bundling fundamentally limits the
| feature, or the users desire to separate it from their chat
| identity.
|
| In case of chat apps, payments are IMHO one of the most
| natural chat app features and won't get debundled - the
| main point is to be able to send money as a chat message.
|
| There are unbundled payment solutions using phone numbers
| as user handles like Revolut (that's what I used up until
| now), but there's still friction in using it to pay back to
| my girlfriend or send lunch money to the colleague who
| paid.
| alexvoda wrote:
| I really don't see the friction in using an unbundled
| service like Revolut for the tasks you mentioned. Care to
| explain?
| mason55 wrote:
| There are only two ways to make money in software: bundling
| and unbundling
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Not just money. It's a natural cycle. Modern web stack
| evolved in the same way. It was just hypertext in the
| beginning, then it expanded to fill the available volume
| and now we have Electron.
| seppin wrote:
| > Even if they don't want it, they have to. You either become
| a superapp, or users will flee to other superapps.
|
| Really? From my perspective, people in the west don't want
| one company doing all things. Facebook clones of Tiktok and
| Snapchat did poorly because people don't want one company
| owning everything they do.
|
| You could even argue that's why a lot of people used Whatsapp
| before they were acquired.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I.e., Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment: "Every program
| attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs
| which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
| SPascareli13 wrote:
| Whats App is doing the same, already in testing phase in
| Brazil.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| ...and have rolled out to 100% users in India.
| gaudat wrote:
| WeChat actively traps you within its walled garden ecosystem
| with dark patterns and support from the government. A lot of
| shops or even government services only have an online presence
| in WeChat and Alipay. They are called "Mini-Apps" which I
| believe is unique to China and these 2 apps. It is practically
| impossible to find vendors or developers for these services as
| someone outside mainland China.
|
| It is completely possible to replicate this function of
| Telegram ourselves with ordinary web technologies and service
| providers.
|
| Not to mention Telegram is transparent in letting your data out
| of its ecosystem (at least for now).
|
| Provide that we still have the freedom to host any online
| service as website or an app on App Store / Play Store, I
| nelieve we will never decay into the dystopian state that is
| WeChat.
|
| TLDR: WeChat is way more evil than Telegram, even Facebook.
| em-bee wrote:
| unlike facebook, wechat does not algorithmically decide which
| content i should see. i get all posts from all my connections
| in linear order. they are not pushed on me either (i can
| easily ignore them)
|
| unlike whatsapp, wechat also does not require me to share my
| phone number. (at least, for the brief time that i tried
| whatsapp, i could not find a way to hide my number)
|
| wechat also doesn't announce to everyone who happens to have
| my phonenumber, that i am now on wechat.
|
| wechat lets me control how people can contact me. the default
| is that people need to ask for my permission before they can
| add me as contacts and talk to me.
|
| miniapps are just fancy websites designed to display inside
| wechat, with easy access to my wechat id. but they actually
| have to ask permissions if they want to use that id for
| anything.
|
| a vender being only on wechat is no different than a vendor
| being only on facebook. or on telegram. it's simply a result
| of market dominance. not good, but not evil either.
|
| there is only one dark pattern that i noticed, that is it is
| no easy way to export all the content stored inside wechat.
| wrinkl3 wrote:
| > unlike whatsapp, wechat also does not require me to share
| my phone number.
|
| Doesn't WeChat in China require users to sign up with their
| national ID?
| r00fus wrote:
| Can we all just agree that there are different variations
| on the theme of dark patterns and market domination and
| that one corporation isn't the "end all/be all" of evil?
| They're both bad. At least you can reasonably avoid FB but
| if you're in China, how do you avoid WeChat?
| em-bee wrote:
| i am not trying to argue that wechat is better than
| facebook. yes, they are both bad. i am just trying to
| offer some counterpoints to show that wechat isn't really
| worse either.
|
| the only reason i need to be on wechat is to keep in
| touch with friends. the same would be true elsewhere
| where some people are only on facebook/whatsapp. (there
| are some facebook only groups that i would like to join
| too)
|
| wechat payment is convenient, but there are alternatives.
| and cash still works (online shopping also works directly
| with a bank account). i managed to avoid wechat for the
| greater part of a decade here, until i was no longer able
| to avoid it because i was locked out of to many contacts
| who were only on wechat.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| > Not to mention Telegram is transparent in letting your data
| out of its ecosystem (at least for now).
|
| Unless you try to export a secret chat from an non-rooted
| Android phone or a non-jailbroken iPhone. The app not only
| lack a feature for that but also prevents it from being
| backup-up -- which is a shame as an offline, adb-based,
| backup is the safest way of getting data out of aff on
| Android, IMHO.
| em-bee wrote:
| any payment that is not cash will have some sort of middleman.
| whether it is apple pay, visa, or your bank, or some other
| payment service.
|
| the key issue with digital payments is to verify the payer and
| the payee. the nice thing about having that built into wechat
| or telegram is that most payers or payees are already verified
| because i am already in contact with them
| Jiocus wrote:
| What they mean is that with Payments 2.0, Telegram can
| facilitate a transaction without sharing credit card details
| with your merchant.
|
| An underlying premise is that a user may have an established
| trust in Telegram and their services, perhaps more trust than
| the merchant.
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(page generated 2021-04-26 23:01 UTC)