[HN Gopher] Telegram celebrates 700M Users and introduces Telegr...
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Telegram celebrates 700M Users and introduces Telegram Premium
Author : bathory
Score : 108 points
Date : 2022-06-19 18:56 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (telegram.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (telegram.org)
| fartcannon wrote:
| Telegram has a very interesting development history. They were
| nomadic for the early 2010's, eventually landing in Dubai.
| Apparently this was because they feared being pressured by
| governments (the CEO and founders are Russian).
|
| Is Dubai a place with good protection against government
| pressure?
| fritigern wrote:
| > Is Dubai a place with good protection against government
| pressure?
|
| Depends on the government :)
|
| The German government has been throwing a temper tantrum and
| threatening to bad Telegram because Telegram doesn't respond to
| data requests from German police and spies.
| fartcannon wrote:
| So they don't give it to Germany, that's good. Do they give
| it to Dubai's government?
| mhoad wrote:
| I don't think UAE is particularly well known for taking a
| hands off approach. They almost certainly have an unspoken
| arrangement in exchange for an otherwise drama free
| existence there.
| fritigern wrote:
| It's hard to say no to the government that can send
| policeman to your house.
| weberer wrote:
| If they don't, people with guns show up.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Of course they do. How would you expect legal entity to
| operate without cooperating with local government.
|
| The question is: can German police compel Dubai police to
| perform the query? Can Russian police to that? Can US
| police do that?
|
| May be UAE will be 21-century Switzerland which failed
| miserably at being independent, but this specialization of
| being independent is in demand.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >The German government has been throwing a temper tantrum
|
| that 'temper tantrum' is colloquially known as the rule of
| law, and Telegram has cooperated with the government
| concerning terrorism and child abuse as they should, or
| alternatively leave if they consider those rules
| unacceptable.
|
| https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2022/06/telegram-
| has...
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I wonder if you would also claim "rule of law" when let's
| say North Korea tries banning the German news
| infrastructure world-wide, or Iran bans depiction of
| unveiled women on the internet, or China starts going
| against Wikipedia with an enforceable worldwide ban because
| Tiannamen never happened.
|
| It is the nature of an international network that you
| cannot reasonably expect your government's laws to have any
| say on a service run in another part of the world. If you
| do think your government SHOULD have a way to enforce their
| laws in another country, maybe the internet is not for your
| country.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| well I don't think that and nobody demanded that.
| Telegram merely has to comply regionally concerning in
| this case German users or content shown to them. Tech
| companies differentiating their products to comply with
| local laws is common practice.
| fritigern wrote:
| There are no purely "German users". People travel. People
| talk to people from other countries. Chatrooms have
| people from all over the world.
| f1refly wrote:
| Never stopped nsa and friends, never will.
| fritigern wrote:
| violating privacy of innocent people who have done no harm
| is not "rule of law".
| lucb1e wrote:
| Read the whole post and I have just one small question... where
| the heck do I sign up? There is no link, no steps to follow,
| there is no update available for my clients that would perhaps
| spawn a subscribe button somewhere... how much does premium even
| cost? I don't get it.
|
| I want to buy it, I've been wanting to pay for this service for
| so long (it just feels so shady this whole time, it's gigabytes
| of (unencrypted) storage for free? WCPGW), I just can't figure
| out _how to buy this_.
| antirez wrote:
| They will start the rolling out in the next days.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Oh that "This update is being rolled out gradually" refers to
| the payment becoming available? I thought it was about the
| text it belongs with, speaking of "over 100 fixes and
| optimizations" and other stuff, and that the subscription was
| available now (since "Today we're launching <star> Telegram
| Premium" in bold up top). Confusing, but thanks for the
| reply!
| bfuller wrote:
| I had a successful commercial arc completely built on
| interactions I had on telegram. I built a profitable company and
| exited all because I decided to download this app 4 years ago.
|
| Needless to say I will be paying for their premium services.
| avodonosov wrote:
| Can you tell more? How that worked?
| duskwuff wrote:
| I'm a happy Telegram user, _but_ the features Telegram are
| introducing with their premium subscription are not particularly
| compelling, and some of them really seem like anti-features:
|
| * 4 GB uploads, faster downloads: I'm struggling to imagine what
| these would be useful for, other than movie piracy. The default
| upload limit is already 2 GB, and the download speed is fine.
|
| * Doubled limits: Most of these are client-side limits. Locking
| these features down behind a paywall is just obnoxious.
|
| * Voice-to-text: I have never intentionally used Telegram's voice
| messaging features. Most mobile phones can already do speech-to-
| text; making other people use a premium feature to get the same
| results is silly.
|
| * Unique stickers, unique reactions: Oh please god no. Animated
| stickers were bad enough. I'm going to be tempted to ban anyone
| using these in the groups I moderate.
|
| * Chat management: More paywalled client-side features.
| (Including one feature that was previously available to all users
| -- auto-archive for new chats used to be offered to any user that
| was getting a lot of chat requests.)
|
| * Animated profile pictures: See "unique stickers".
|
| * Premium badges, premium app icons: Yawn.
|
| * No ads: Where do ads even show up? I've never seen one, even in
| large channels.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Given these features (and their desire to keep Telegram free),
| I view these as "donation bonuses", not features to pay for.
| Although Discord has a similar monetization strategy and people
| seem to not mind it, so maybe it's just us being out of touch.
| nixcraft wrote:
| Has telegram addressed these concerns?
| https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1474067549574688768
| bjoli wrote:
| Of course not. Telegram managed to catch all the people who
| like that they are not Google and Facebook, while also not
| caring enough about actual encryption.
|
| I had telegram installed for almost 3 years. I never had a
| secret chat that I did not start myself.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| Astounded by some of the negative comments there. (Probably
| partly Twitter pushing the rage bait to the top, but still).
| Does Telegram just have a stupid fanbase?
|
| - people claiming MTProto (Telegram's custom protocol which is
| basically a worse TLS) makes it in any way more secure than
| pretty much any other system
|
| - people saying moxie is just pushing MobileCoin. Maybe, I
| don't know, but what does that have to do with Signal? And even
| if Signal is a total scam, how does that make Telegram not
| terrible?
|
| - people saying Signal is backdoored by <3letteragency>. We
| don't know if that's even possible. If it is, then probably so
| are almost all other e2e encrypted chat apps. And it's about
| 100x more plausible that Telegram is backdoored - it certainly
| could be.
|
| The _only_ slightly valid criticism I saw there is that you
| have to use your actual phone number with Signal. But that
| doesn 't make Telegram any good.
|
| I'd take Telegram over SMS, but I'd almost take SMS+rot13 over
| Telegram.
| dymk wrote:
| There's nothing to address. Telegram chats are encrypted to and
| from the server, they're not E2E encrypted, they do not claim
| to be by default. They do offer E2E chats you can opt into, and
| there has not been a single example of an E2E message being
| cracked.
| bjoli wrote:
| The telegram web page claims on the first page:
|
| > Telegram messages are heavily encrypted and can self-
| destruct.
|
| How is Joe Average supposed to understand that?
|
| Adding to that, the secret chat encryption has always been
| Weird (capital W) and in one of the previous generations the
| server could actually MITM it. Trivially.
| tryauuum wrote:
| > How is Joe Average supposed to understand that?
|
| That's an interesting question. I don't know. Maybe he
| would understand it as "messages that are hard to read for
| NSA".
|
| To be honest, I don't understand your criticism. Surely
| people can put a video on their website about E2E, about
| privacy, integrity and authenticity. Maybe put an honest
| comparison with other messengers. But I'd only expect this
| kind of openness from a nonprofit organization.
| milansuk wrote:
| All HTTPS connections(most of web browsing last decade) are
| encrypted to and from the server.
|
| Signal showed us that is possible to have E2E encrypted
| messaging, why don't they provide it, but with better UI/UX?
|
| If Telegram doesn't read messages and doesn't provide access
| for 3rd parties(governments, etc.), It should provide E2E
| everywhere by default.
| afiori wrote:
| > If Telegram doesn't read messages
|
| Telegram offers server side text search
| fritigern wrote:
| Can you get E2EE and also have multiple devices all sync'd?
| This is awful in Signal, it barely works to have multiple
| devices.
| kriops wrote:
| Yes, see Matrix. And imo generally better UX than
| Telegram on account of having a large selection of
| clients.
| lucb1e wrote:
| You're the first that I hear saying something has better
| UX than Telegram, and a Matrix client at that. Power to
| you, but from my experience with everything from Telegram
| to Threema and a lot in between, it sounds odd to me.
| tucnak wrote:
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Better a GRU-managed honey pot than a CIA-managed honey pot. My
| country is a vassal to the US, not the Russians, and GRU power
| over me is considerably less threatening.
| dmix wrote:
| I feel the same way about TikTok. I'd rather have a Hong Kong
| based company with a threat of Chinese interception because I
| don't give a shit if the Chinese have my data (at least I
| dont yet).
|
| I do care about using US/Canada/UK/German/etc apps where you
| know at least 75% of your data is ending up in some database
| of a country you live in or your country is has a free-
| wheeling data sharing policy (with some rubber stamp
| exceptions which foreign partner interception easily
| bypasses).
| fritigern wrote:
| Not to mention the Durov brothers are exiled from Russia
| after Russia took VKontakte from them.
| allarm wrote:
| Yesterday I chatted in Telegram with my friends about a gadget I
| was considering to purchase - I've got an ad of this gadget in
| Instagram almost immediately. I couldn't reproduce it by
| mentioning some other trendy stuff, but it triggered me anyway.
| Has anyone experienced the same?
| indymike wrote:
| So you have instagram on the device too?
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| Not on Telegram, but I've had some eeirie ads shown on Facebook
| after conversations I've had.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Facebook stalks your friends and knows your social graph
| thanks to enough people leaking their contacts list (you're
| still exposed even if you don't share your own list).
|
| It could very well be that one of your friends looked up the
| product being discussed and FB (correctly) guessed based on
| other data they had that you're the one most likely to be
| interested in it (or alternatively just shown this ad to
| everyone in your friends group, but only you picked up on
| it).
| fritigern wrote:
| I'm happy that Telegram is shaking up the Facebook-dominated
| messaging and social network space.
|
| Also their client apps are open source and have very good Linux
| support.
| zamadatix wrote:
| After Hangouts died (yeah it's still Google Chat now but it's not
| the multi-function tool it used to be before they chopped it up
| to announce a piece is migrating to Chat) I switched to Signal.
| If I were to do that transition all over again I would do
| Telegram instead.
|
| Signal sounds nice but it's a bit overbearing - backups are
| somewhere between difficult to impossible depending on the
| device, there is no web client, it's only open source in that you
| can audit source or run your own independent chat network (3rd
| party clients on the official server are treated as hostile), and
| despite all of this being defended for contrived hyper-secure
| hyper-private reasons you can't send a chat without giving out
| your phone number and it's ridiculously easy to cause your
| verification number to change making people numb to all the
| protection in the first place.
|
| I did grab a Telegram account recently but only since Beeper
| supported it and I figured "why not" so I'm missing out on these
| features but I almost wonder if I would have been so excited
| about things like Beeper had I went Telegram.
|
| Interestingly of all the chat apps WhatsApp and Telegram usage
| seemed to align heavily. Not sure if that was just a quirk of my
| friend group or a more general thing.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| It might be a US thing, but the only thing I know about Telegram
| is 99% of the things I've seen having to do with it are
| impersonation scams (eg the frequent "you won something, message
| me on Telegram" on any popular YouTube channel). It amazes me
| YouTube hasn't stopped that type of spam.
|
| (Lots of downvotes pretty quick, sheesh. I was just stating my
| experience; it's hard to keep up with the "text chat" space since
| there's a new chat app every quarter these days.)
| danpalmer wrote:
| This is also my experience in the UK.
|
| Messengers are _extremely_ network-based services. Everything
| depends on your network, and experiences will differ
| dramatically between countries.
|
| For me, WhatsApp is everything legit and personal, Telegram is
| for extremist groups, Messenger is for parents, Instagram is
| for millennials, Twitter is for politics nerds, Discord is for
| gamers, iMessage is... for adverts from takeaways and SMS 2FA.
|
| But this will be completely different in other countries,
| social groups, industries, etc.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| See my reaction at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31803118 and explain how
| Telegram can be so popular if it only is used by
| _extremists_.
| blitzar wrote:
| I have started getting WhatsApp spam ...
| danpalmer wrote:
| No!! The only spam I've gotten so far is recruiters who do
| actually have my number but who I really don't want
| messages from on WhatsApp.
| filoleg wrote:
| > For me, WhatsApp is everything legit and personal
|
| That's how it is supposed to be for me as well, but
| unfortunately that's not how it is. I only use it because my
| father and grandparents overseas use it. I literally only
| have 3 contacts in my whatsapp list, I don't use it ever
| outside of that.
|
| I still get spam accounts adding me on whatsapp about once
| every couple of weeks, pretending to have accidentally added
| a wrong phone number, and then trying to bait the receiver
| into something (usually using phone numbers with SEA country-
| codes and profile pics of women that were obviously models
| and are easily reverse image-searchable). Out of boredom, I
| once decided to entertain that conversation and pretend to be
| clueless and play along, just to see how the scam unfolds.
| Inevitably, I got asked about crypto and got shilled some
| crypto-related scam that person was running.
|
| Tl;dr: I literally don't use whatsapp for anything, have no
| picture or full name on my profile, and only use it to
| communicate with 3 of my relatives, and I still get plenty of
| scammers messaging me from different SEA countries' numbers
| about once every few weeks. For context: I live in the US and
| haven't even visited SEA once (yet).
| ce4 wrote:
| I guess the downvotes happened because the message just gives
| an outsider's view - the reason for that spam is easy, just
| like with Email spam: it's cheap and works - Telegram is
| easyier to integrate than their competitors. Thats the downside
| of its developers friendliness (APIs and open source Clients),
| feature richness and finally their sizable userbase. It's
| actually a cat & mouse game between spam creators and the
| Telegram developers implementing countermeasures (on the
| proprietary backend) - you could see the evolution in spambot
| behaviour over time just like what happened with email: from
| simple text + links to misspellings, then screenshotted text
| ads and now to "plz dm me" comments outside of Telegram or join
| group xyz (i.e. joins/chats initiated by victims to circumvent
| reporting cold call chat invites)
|
| Edit: better wording, typos fixed. Also: Telegram is not
| exactly new with an age of 8 or 9 years.
| giansegato wrote:
| in Europe it's quite popular and widespread for legit purposes
| as well
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Interesting. I live in the US and nearly all of my fiends and I
| exclusively use Telegram to communicate.
| neals wrote:
| So who here is using Telegram and for what? I'm consider myself
| pretty well connected, but I don't have the app. Tell me what I'm
| missing.
| weberer wrote:
| I use it because all my friends are on it. Sometimes I have
| someone asking me to add them on Whatsapp, but I offer Telegram
| instead and they end up liking it a lot more. There are also a
| few public channels I follow that are essentially RSS feeds.
| Linuxgram and PINE64 News for example.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I use it for notification from many servers... just a quick
| curl in a script, and I get an alert on my phone in a matter of
| milliseconds.
| neals wrote:
| That's actually awesome, does Telegram have an API of some
| sort?
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Telegram actually has full-featured APIs, allowing you to
| implement both bots and custom clients! You can start here:
| https://core.telegram.org/ . Unfortunately, I don't have
| the direct link to the single-curl-request.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep :)
|
| You first create a bot, then join a chat with that bot,
| then control the bot via the http api
|
| api: https://core.telegram.org/bots/api
|
| quickstart (just to send messages, not mine): https://gist.
| github.com/dideler/85de4d64f66c1966788c1b2304b9...
| dopa42365 wrote:
| One-way media sharing. It's the only chat app that realized how
| fucking great galleries are, being able to post a ton of pics
| (or videos) in one message, with smooth full size opening of
| the media. Not re-encoded into mush, no endless scrolling down
| or left ( _cough_ instagram _cough_ ).
|
| Not much in terms of restrictions to message size, or file
| size, or storage, or bandwidth.
|
| You're not spoon-fed by some algorithm, no recommendations, you
| only see the channels that you manually
| joined/followed/subscribed to. Feels very old-school in that
| regard, but in the best possible way.
|
| It has great desktop app support (I'm not much of a mobile
| user).
|
| No ads, ever, anywhere.
|
| If you just want to follow some content creators without much
| interaction, it's perfect (that being said, of course there's
| regular group chats too, I just don't use any of those).
| einpoklum wrote:
| Some of my family chat on Telegram.
|
| LibreOffice user groups (e.g. Right-to-Left)
|
| Some activism.
|
| My ex-girlfriend.
| OmahaBoy69 wrote:
| Outside of being great for cross-platform messaging, it's
| awesome for transferring files. Quick, no restrictions on file
| extensions, and I've yet to hit a size limit. Great for
| building an APK and shooting it off to my friends + other
| devices.
|
| It's also great for piracy. There's a channel I'm in with links
| to updated Nintendo Switch modpacks as well as one for premium
| STL files.
| ce4 wrote:
| And there's a veteran (as in age) SciHub bot. Works great and
| is more hassle free than constantly dealing with DNS blocks/
| new domain names.
| afiori wrote:
| File size limit is about 2GB
| ufmace wrote:
| I use it for something like 90% of all my social interactions
| with real-life friends. IMO, Telegram has by far the best UI/UX
| of any internet chat app. In terms of stuff like group
| management, working perfectly on any type of device with any
| OS, including maintaining accounts on multiple devices and
| keeping everything synced between them, organizing large
| numbers of chats in the UI, managing notifications, etc. Video
| and voice messages that just work on all platforms.
|
| It has a lot of good security features too, including support
| of account passwords, requiring verification of new logins on
| another device, letting you see all of your login sessions on
| any device and log out any of them, private groups with
| detailed controls for join links, etc. A lot of crypto people
| get mad that it doesn't have E2E encryption outside of opt-in
| "secret chats", but I don't think that's all that important.
|
| It's also completely free of most of the dark patterns that
| plague most social media sites. No reshuffling of message
| order, optimizing for outrage and engagement, or pushing new
| content to keep you scrolling. No randomly banning or locking
| accounts for no apparent reason.
|
| I view this paid account thing as an excellent sign that their
| future plans for the app are for optimizing user satisfaction
| instead of trying to appeal more to advertisers. I plan to sign
| up as soon as I can, and hope it goes well and helps us move
| towards a future where our social platforms see the users as
| customers to be served, not products to optimize the sale of to
| advertisers who become their actual customers.
| [deleted]
| fritigern wrote:
| Telegram is my main messenger to speak to friends and family. I
| also use it to connect to the chatrooms of the various open
| source projects I participate in.
| Angostura wrote:
| It's WhatsApp for people who don't trust Meta/Facebook.
| aksgoel wrote:
| Interestingly, Telegram by default is not even end to end
| encrypted.
| fritigern wrote:
| Neither is WhatsApp. It's a closed source app, no one
| outside of Meta knows if it is actually encrypted properly.
| afiori wrote:
| I always wondered how feasible it is to analyze whatsapp
| network traffic to test their claims.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| It's not a large corp who's monetization strategy is
| selling or exploiting user data. In fact, it's founded by
| someone who was screwed over by government overreach.
|
| It's not perfect, obviously, but if I had the choice
| between Durov and Zuckerberg, I'd take the former every
| time.
| kome wrote:
| It's the only messenger I use; I guess it depends from your
| social circle and/or geographical location.
|
| I am very happy with it btw; much better than whatsapp.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| I'm using it to communicate with family members and to follow
| some development-related channels. Why Telegram?
|
| - Telegram vs. Whatsapp is clear, Whatsapp is off-limits due to
| it being owned by Zuckerberg & Co.
|
| - Telegram vs. Signal is a bit less clear but the user
| experience offered by Telegram is superior to that of Signal
| which made it easy to get some of my more computer-averse
| family members to accept it. The fact that Telegram is easy to
| use across devices - native apps on mobile and PC, web, CLI,
| you name it - is a big plus here.
|
| - Telegram vs. XMPP is a battle which has yet to be fought, I
| have an XMPP server standing by for the moment when Telegram
| crosses some line which makes me want to switch. With
| Conversations on Android the user experience is quite good so I
| consider this to be a serious contender.
|
| - Telegram vs. XXX - see Telegram vs. Signal.
| f1refly wrote:
| I'd love to like xmpp, but every xmpp experience apart from
| dino (which isn't available on windows) is pure garbage from
| a ux perspective. For some reason conversations chose to not
| adhere to any design standards in use on the android platform
| and instead do it's own thing, which subjectively looks
| really bad (and cannot be customized). It's also missing
| stuff like the photo editor, daniel said he's not planning to
| implement it because android will have a system image editor
| from android 10 onward. The fact that the editor is
| borderline unusable and the workflow appears to be: open
| camera app -> take image -> open image in gallery -> open
| image with editor -> edit the image (somewhat flaky) -> open
| conversations -> search for your edited image -> send the
| image is a major deal braker for me, I never even tried to
| show anyone conversations as an alternative to telegram
| because of how horrible it is.
| f311a wrote:
| It's very popular is some (usually heavy censored) countries.
| It's also popular in the IT field.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Use it exclusively to talk to crypto exchanges. Use Signal for
| personal use
| sva_ wrote:
| Many university group chats are in it, for some reason.
| jjcon wrote:
| My entire family and my D&D group use it, easily the slickest
| UX/UI of any chat app I have used. It is feature rich without
| feeling cluttered.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Everyone with a passing interest in the current war must use
| Telegram.
|
| Many Ukrainian and Russian primary sources are on Telegram
| only. Including government officials etc.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I realise this differs country-to-country, but as far as I can
| tell in the UK it's primarily used by extremist groups to
| organise - anti-lockdown protestors, anti-vax groups, anti-
| semitic, far-right, and so on. I know of a journalist who
| started mapping out a lot of the UK Telegram network and found
| all of these and more, all interconnected.
|
| When people say that Telegram is popular with those who would
| be censored, I think it's also true that it's popular with
| those who erroneously think they are being censored.
| weberer wrote:
| Does the journalist in question happen to be far-left?
| danpalmer wrote:
| No. We thankfully don't have much of a far-left presence in
| the UK.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Censorsip is censorship whether we like the censored or not.
| Anti lockdown, and anti vax were (mostly illegally) censored,
| cancelled, stigmatised by governments and other public
| institutions, is that not good to have tech available that
| guarantees privacy? Whether those who wish anonymity and
| privacy are truely actively censored is irrelevant.
| danpalmer wrote:
| We absolutely need tech that enables true privacy. I use
| Signal and strongly believe it should exist.
|
| I'm not saying that censorship hasn't happened, and I'm not
| saying I think it should. What I'm saying is that there are
| a bunch of related groups who are very misinformed about
| free speech and censorship, and they seem to have flocked
| to Telegram.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| https://backlinko.com/telegram-users#telegram-popularity-
| in-...
|
| If this stat is to be trusted Telegram is the 2nd most
| popular messaging app in the UK. There must be an awful lot
| of _anti-lockdown protestors, anti-vax groups, anti-semitic,
| far-right, and so on_ in that country to make is so popular.
|
| By the way, where do the _far-left_ extremists go for their
| messaging needs? Are they on Whatsapp? Signal? Telegram
| maybe? I may have missed something but for some reason you
| only seem to list groups which in the media are labelled
| 'right' or (as you stated) 'far-right'.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Firstly, I think there are a lot of people on the fringe of
| the extremist groups. Maybe they are only in a "concerned
| parents" group who talk about vaccines, but it's an on-
| ramp.
|
| Secondly, I think there are methodological issues with that
| analysis. Measuring by App Store categories is hard to do
| accurately, only presents a snapshot in time, its numbers
| that fluctuate a lot, and it only represents new user
| acquisition, not active user growth. I wouldn't trust this
| number at all without more information. Anecdotally, I
| don't know anyone who uses Telegram, although I do know
| many people who downloaded it once.
|
| > where do the far-left extremists go
|
| This isn't really something we have a problem with in the
| UK. I'm sure there are some, but the bulk of our issues are
| growing far-right, nationalist, and/or authoritarian
| groups. I don't think a debate over terms is going to be
| productive, and as this is your third account you might
| want to be careful with it!
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > This isn't really something we have a problem with in
| the UK. I'm sure there are some, but the bulk of our
| issues are growing far-right, nationalist, and/or
| authoritarian groups
|
| Are we talking about the same United Kingdom as the one
| where Yougov has been doing polls on the subject of
| extremism [1]? If so I wonder what gives you the
| impression that _the bulk of [y]our issues are growing
| far-right, nationalist, and /or authoritarian groups_
| given that those who answered those polls come up with
| the following ranking:
|
| #1 islamic extremism (58%)
|
| #2 right-wing extremism (31%)
|
| #2 left-wing extremism (23%)
|
| Unsurprisingly the results differ widely based upon the
| political affiliation of the interviewee with left-wing
| voters placing larger emphasis on right-wing extremism
| while right-wing voters do the opposite. Nevertheless,
| left-wing extremism seems to be almost as 'popular' as
| the right-wing version while both are far less 'popular'
| than islamic extremism.
|
| [1] https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-
| reports/2021/0...
| danpalmer wrote:
| This is a survey on public perceptions. Not actual
| threats.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| I started using it because the UI is flawless and because I
| never installed WhatsApp and I never will. I don't have false
| hope about the "security" and "privacy" of Telegram that said:
| but it's a great messaging app which, by now, a huge number of
| people are using.
|
| At my kid's previous school and at my kid's current school
| there are parents using Telegram. Sure WhatsApp is still the
| most common one but Telegram is not unheard off.
|
| 700 millions users is quite something.
|
| Hardly a week goes by without Telegram telling me: _" xxx
| joined Telegram"_. Last week I re-connected with a friend I
| hadn't talked to in a long time because I saw he just joined
| Telegram. Said hi to him, sent him a few pictures. I don't know
| who brought him to Telegram but he ended up using it and he's
| definitely not a techie.
|
| At this rate in two years they'll have 1 billion users. Maybe
| it'll even snowball at some point.
|
| This _is_ competition to WhatsApp. 700 million users and
| growing is not nothing.
| gostsamo wrote:
| I'm using it to avoid the Meta apps on my phone. It was the
| easier to convince my mom to use so that we can talk online,
| the other being Signal.
|
| On the other side, people who I know use it for finding all
| kinds of uncensored stuff in the groups there. It is not
| totally dark net style there, but the moderation is lax
| compared to the more visible social media.
| fritigern wrote:
| The Syrian War was broadcast on Twitter. The Ukrainian War is
| broadcast on Telegram.
| rg111 wrote:
| Many people are asking what are in Telegram that aren't anywhere
| else?
|
| I can provide some answers. Telegram is my primary chat app.
|
| - It offers you to simply share an alphanumeric handle and you
| can connect with anyone in the world. I can do a voice chat or
| normal chat really quickly and easily. It is the only famous
| truly _Instant_ Messenger there is. And I can do it without
| sharing my name (unlike FB), email address, or phone number
| (unlike WApp).
|
| - It is the only app where I add any woman to any group outside
| of family or other close-knit groups. When creepy dudes get
| women's cell numbers, it sometimes becomes very difficult for the
| women to handle. In Telegram, you can be part of large or large-
| ish groups without the women having to share phone numbers or
| real names. Blocking is really easy and tension-free.
|
| - The video quality in chats is really high. In Android, only
| Google Duo came close.
|
| - ONLY chat app in market with an excellent desktop app for
| Linux. Also Windows.
|
| - I love their non-SJW-everything approach to allowed stickers.
| Emojis can only be PG-13 and "wholesome" (like banning gun emoji
| and replacing it with water gun- where I live no one owns guns -
| and guns are irrelevant to my politics and everyone else's).
| Telegram's stickers are really fun and creative.
|
| - UI/UX is excellent. Really love chat themes and how I can edit
| them. Many components are customizable. Chat bubble colors, radii
| of rounded corners, etc.
|
| - I like the fine-grained control over notifications from
| different chats (groups and persons).
|
| - I like the lack of E2EE. I just like logging in and having
| access to all my chats. I don't have to be with the same device
| to be on the same chat.
|
| - The simple yet effective image editor is nice. So is the text
| formatting with no fuss.
|
| - I often use the auto image resize feature to downscale images.
|
| - It is so seamless. It has replaced email when I want to
| transfer small files to my own devices.
|
| - I am a selectively social person. It's good that even with 700
| mn people, not many people are in it. The people with whom I
| don't want to interact more aren't yet in Telegram. That's an
| appeal to me.
|
| - Developing bots is a bliss. So easy and effective.
|
| - SO helped a bunch of HS kids with their Bio study before a big
| test, the quiz feature was great. SO is not a technical person,
| and it was easy for her to set up a group, no phone numbers,
| create quizzes and so on. She loved it.
| dmix wrote:
| > Emojis can only be PG-13 and "wholesome" (like banning gun
| emoji and replacing it with water gun- where I live no one owns
| guns - and guns are irrelevant to my politics and everyone
| else's). Telegram's stickers are really fun and creative.
|
| I appreciate stuff like this too. I hate being treated like a
| child.
|
| Sometimes I want to express "just shot me" with an emoticon,
| which a watergun ruins.
| mrtksn wrote:
| WhatsApp Mac app is not native on Mac, it quickly inflates into
| multi GB RAM consumption and the UI starts lagging even on M1.
| Very few things bring down this machine to its knees and one of
| them can be WhatsApp.
|
| Telegram is not like that, channels with tons of videos and
| pictures continue to work smoothly.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Discord does all this too? + the server rooms.
| izacus wrote:
| Discord UI is also all kinds of awful for personal messaging
| and full of gamery features. :/
| rejectfinite wrote:
| DMs work just fine. I use both Discord and Telegram btw :)
|
| "Gamery" features like voice calls, video calls,
| videostreaming an application or videostreaming your
| desktop?? :D
|
| Servers where you can talk/do/post whatever? And just drop
| in?
|
| Now I use both but Telegram feels more like Whatsapp to me
| with 1 to 1 convos and Discord is more of the
| Teamspeak/Mumble philosophy where its a voice room/server.
| MikusR wrote:
| Discord is electron
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Yes, indeed.
|
| I do like both the Telegram and Discord clients. I use both
| myself.
| f1refly wrote:
| Discord drowns me in notification I neither need nor care
| about, is not customizable and doen't have native clients.
| Their "haha see we are a gamer community" is very alienating.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Notifications depends on the servers you join and can be
| adjusted per server.
|
| True that it is not very customizable. And yes it is
| electron.
|
| They rebranded recently - https://discord.com/ Not very
| gamery
| annadane wrote:
| Stop. Stop it. This is such an unproductive reply
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Another messaging platform is unrelated?
| gomoboo wrote:
| It would be more helpful to give them the reasons for which
| their reply is unproductive. Right now it's unclear what it
| is you have a problem with.
| fritigern wrote:
| Discord's client apps are not open-source.
| fritigern wrote:
| +1 to everything you said, especially the Linux part.
| Telegram's Linux Desktop client is great. It's open source and
| on Flatpak.
| dom96 wrote:
| > I like the lack of E2EE. I just like logging in and having
| access to all my chats. I don't have to be with the same device
| to be on the same chat.
|
| Same. I've seen enough people get burned by losing messages
| because of the E2EE of WhatsApp to prefer to use Messenger
| and/or Telegram.
|
| > - Developing bots is a bliss. So easy and effective.
|
| Reason I am using Telegram more these days. I'm house hunting
| and needed a way for my scraping script to notify me and my
| partner about houses that the script finds: Telegram works
| perfectly for this. Just create a private chat group and send a
| HTTP request to Telegram.
| Macha wrote:
| > - It offers you to simply share an alphanumeric handle and
| you can connect with anyone in the world. I can do a voice chat
| or normal chat really quickly and easily. It is the only famous
| truly Instant Messenger there is. And I can do it without
| sharing my name (unlike FB), email address, or phone number
| (unlike WApp).
|
| Has this changed? Last time I looked, you needed a phone number
| to sign up.
| rg111 wrote:
| You still need a phone number to sign up, but you can lose
| the number (I don't recommend it, but I did do it).
|
| Telegram have your phone number. But you _need not share it
| with anyone else_ to connect.
| izacus wrote:
| While you MAY need a number to sign up, you don't need to
| GIVE your number to other people so you can communicate with
| them over the service.
| okamiueru wrote:
| I don't understand. I've been using telegram for some
| years. Could you explain how you would go about using
| telegram without "signing up"? And by "a number" I
| understand it to be an option of "not your phone number"?
| How does the verification go then?
| skyyler wrote:
| I believe they are saying that Telegram doesn't expose
| your phone number to other users on the app unless you
| explicitly allow it to.
|
| I only use Telegram, no WhatsApp / Messenger so I had no
| idea that this was normal for other chat apps.
| Terrifying.
| Macha wrote:
| Whatsapp shows the phone number as it is your user
| identifier (and I believe this is also true for Signal).
|
| This is not true for Messenger, where it's your facebook
| account as your identifier.
| Macha wrote:
| I think from the reply that they're talking about "Your
| contacts do not need your phone number, they can message
| you with just your telegram screen name", but this is
| different from "Telegram needs your phone number" and
| "People with your phone number can find your Telegram
| account from their contacts".
| scrollaway wrote:
| Telegram blows my mind.
|
| Say what you want about their security; they have the absolute
| best UX of any (primarily 1-on-1) messaging app, bar none.
|
| Discord is a close second. But the quality and polish of telegram
| blows me away to this day.
|
| And it's lots of small features and details such as built in
| translation for messages in a foreign language, all the smooth
| animations, quick look and summaries of channels with aggregated
| links media etc, a super fast and responsive UI etc. And their
| stickers are actually ridiculously fun to play with (I used to
| not be into that, telegram converted me).
|
| Just yesterday I accidentally found out that it's possible to
| replace a picture you have sent, with a new or different one - I
| sent a photo, realised it would have been better cropped, and
| just edited the message as I normally would have.
|
| And with all that it's the only popular messenger that is
| actually easy to programmatically interact with. (And cheap!
| WhatsApp has a business offering and it's ridiculously expensive)
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| What's more is that the quality of UX manages to be mostly
| consistent across clients with entirely disparate codebases
| written in different languages with different UI toolkits.
|
| That's _awesome_. You have your pick of a massive variety of
| clients... one of them bound to fit your device setup like a
| glove. No lowest-common-denominator one-size-fits-all
| compromises like is so common with cross platform software
| these days.
| fritigern wrote:
| Telegram's Linux client is simply Amazing.
| superasn wrote:
| Yes their API is one of the best. A simple curl request is
| enough to send a message and it has been so useful (sentry,
| uptime, door bell notifications(1), etc).
|
| (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrkAWSemDC8
| izacus wrote:
| They also publish a fully functional C library that makes
| building fully (!) featured 3rd party clients easy. They
| support everything - from Linux, Windows all the way to
| Tizen. You compile it into your app and it "just works" with
| all the features of the main client.
|
| As a result, you have a large set of very good clients for
| pretty much all platforms.
|
| Imagine if the FLOSS darlings like Signal would make
| something as amazing as this - a library any plaform (from
| RPi, watches, etc.) to implement the best possible secure
| client that fits the user.
| asddubs wrote:
| Signal's stance on third party clients is so disappointing.
| Telegram really has them beat there, although it has to be
| pointed out that Signal actually publishes server source,
| while Telegram doesn't.
| rsync wrote:
| "A simple curl request is enough to send a message and it has
| been so useful (sentry, uptime, door bell notifications(1),
| etc)"
|
| hmmm ... could I participate fully on Telegram _without ever
| installing the app anywhere_ ?
|
| That would be compelling ...
| allarm wrote:
| You can use their web client, so technically no need to
| install anything except a browser.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Yup, install any third party client or even just use the
| web client (web.telegram.org).
|
| I'm not sure the signup is available without the app,
| that's the only thing.
| rvz wrote:
| Of course. Telegram seems to be the clear winner here at
| convincing the masses to move off of WhatsApp and have them
| stick around in Telegram. 700M tells us that it is a viable
| alternative for many users.
|
| Signal on the other hand seems to have failed to stick with the
| rest of the users and instead of trying to attract users from
| WhatsApp, not only they can't get backing up messages working
| properly, they instead were focused on introducing a scam
| cryptocurrency and wallet only usable on their app that no-one
| wants, and probably scared everyone off.
|
| Perhaps Signal is only good for getting users to keep using
| WhatsApp or Telegram, since there are too many missing basic
| features that the end users keep complaining about when trying
| it out.
| fritigern wrote:
| The main thing keeping me from using Signal is that their
| Linux client is really really bad. In contrast Telegram has a
| great Linux client.
| fartcannon wrote:
| "it's the only popular messenger that is actually easy to
| programmatically interact with."
|
| Let me introduce you to Matrix SDKs https://matrix.org/sdks/
| scrollaway wrote:
| Keyword is popular.
|
| I'm a proponent of matrix, but it's absolutely not popular.
| fartcannon wrote:
| It's very popular with people who value not having their
| data stored in plaintext.
| AnonymousPlanet wrote:
| So is PGP...
| fartcannon wrote:
| PGP is rad.
| pizza234 wrote:
| I use Discord for public communications and I don't mind
| plaintext storage at all - on the contrary, on public
| chats, I personally value public history.
|
| The last time I've used Matrix actually, usability was a
| disaster; took me a while to figure out even just how to
| login, and that wasn't the only problem.
| fartcannon wrote:
| The login screen was too complicated for you, eh?
| pizza234 wrote:
| I was asked to login concurrently from two different
| browsers, every time I wanted to login. It was a very
| puzzling experience, and took me a while to figure it
| out, because it was something I've never experienced
| before in chat systems, and it wasn't spelled clearly,
| like "you must login from two browsers", in order to
| compensate for the unusualness.
|
| The UX of communicating with other users was problematic
| as well. I've tried to establish communications with a
| certain user, and I have no idea if I succeeded or not
| (likely not); two separate communications "channels" (I
| don't know the terminology) were opened with the same
| user, which is perplexing, since again, this is something
| I've never experienced before.
|
| I think those two weren't even the only problems I've
| had.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Do you know how much comments like that help Matrix gain
| a foothold in the closed source messaging space?
|
| Not all all, that's how much.
|
| Seriously. Again, huge proponent and financial supporter
| of matrix efforts here; I think they do an a amazing job.
| But comments like yours are detrimental to what they do.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Nah, they do help the folks who don't know about it.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| People don't value that, they value a good UX and the
| fact that all of their contacts have the app. Matrix has
| neither of these.
| fartcannon wrote:
| People do value that, and they also value a great UX,
| which Matrix also has. Additionally, matrix, doesn't
| forcefully associate your plaintext account with your
| phone number! People with a clue value that.
| scrollaway wrote:
| 700,000,000 users disagree with your statements. You
| can't make something true by just saying it's true.
|
| Also your attitude is super toxic. You're calling people
| who don't value the same things you do, "clueless".
|
| You don't really get to bullshit people on HN -- you can
| be super smart and skilled in your field, you'll far too
| often come across people with vastly more experience than
| you. I invite you to think about that.
|
| Again, matrix is great, and I see it as the future of
| messaging. But it's absolutely not the "present" of
| messaging; it's years behind telegram, and the UX of most
| clients including the more popular ones is garbage.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > Say what you want about their security; they have the
| absolute best UX of any (primarily 1-on-1) messaging app, bar
| none.
|
| That is precisely because they don't give a shit about
| security. While others like Whatsapp bother with e2ee and
| resulting device sync problems and inability to do server-side
| search, Telegram just stores everything on a server without
| (meaningful) encryption and boldly claims that 'it is the most
| secure messenger'. And, imagine that, users just believe that
| it is the most secure! (I did talk to MANY people who repeated
| this word for word, 'Telegram is the most secure and encrypted
| messenger app!', and yes, nobody of them used Secret chats, -
| it doesn't nicely sync, and nobody needs disappearing messages
| anyway.
| izacus wrote:
| Pretty much none of the features mentioned here have anything
| to do with E2EE security. How did you even try to get to such
| conclusion (besides really really trying to use it as a
| segway into your encryption rant)?!
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I'm actually very opposing this e2ee everywhere crowd,
| because we're developing an XMPP app and we're annoyed to
| death by people who demanding us (ordering even!) to
| deliver them encryption above anything else and always
| asking this as a first question.
|
| The comment was more related to a puzzling observation that
| a _really_ _serious_ _promise_ of security makes people
| more happy than actual security. Why bother with providing
| safety to people if all they need is to feel safe?
| [deleted]
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > The comment was more related to a puzzling observation
| that a really serious promise of security makes people
| more happy than actual security. Why bother with
| providing safety to people if all they need is to feel
| safe?
|
| It's called security theater. The TSA is my favorite
| example of this phenomenon.
| scrollaway wrote:
| There's probably a lesson to be learned here.
|
| People care about these features. Tell you what: I care about
| these features! And I also care about e2ee but I care more
| about all the things I can't do with e2ee enabled.
|
| When it matters, I enable secret chats. In the early weeks of
| the war I used secret chats a ton to organise things (and I
| echo your observation that most people don't know about
| them).
|
| But it doesn't matter all the time.
|
| Messenger also has e2ee secret chats; they're awful and don't
| have 1/10th the features telegram's chats have. Hell even
| telegram's secret chats are more featureful than WhatsApp
| chats (which are all e2ee)
| upofadown wrote:
| >...and yes, nobody of them used Secret chats...
|
| Pretty much no one does any sort of identity verification
| anyway on any E2EE messaging system. So that means that the
| people running the servers can MITM if they feel like it to
| get the content. So in practice Telegram might be the best of
| something or another for all it matters. It's sort of a con.
| Yes our E2EE encryption app is perfectly secure assuming you
| do this thing that we know you won't bother with and will not
| be able to figure out anyway.
|
| Study based on Signal, but applicable to pretty much all of
| them:
|
| * https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/03/09...
| lxgr wrote:
| > Pretty much no one does any sort of identity verification
| anyway on any E2EE messaging system. So that means that the
| people running the servers can MITM if they feel like it to
| get the content.
|
| The fact that anybody can verify keys raises the stakes of
| attempting a MITM attack significantly and thus protects
| the majority that doesn't verify keys themselves.
| [deleted]
| nazka wrote:
| Honest question: How is Telegram better than Signal? Is Signal
| not the best in term of security and privacy?
| bathory wrote:
| Looking at the in-app purchase on iOS in Europe, the price seems
| to be about EUR 5.50 which I find to be quite steep, for these
| kinds of features. I've been wanting to support TG's development
| for a while now, but I would have hoped that this would be more
| in the vicinity of 1-3 Euros per month.
| BoumTAC wrote:
| I think that's the main issue with those small subscriptions.
| We don't have an American salary here. I would happily pay for
| Telegram premium for 2-3EUR/month and have only a third of the
| features they propose. But 5-10EUR for every service like this
| becomes expensive at the end of the month.
|
| I have the same issue with hey.com email provider, but they are
| too expensive too. I would love to have an email service
| provider for 2-3EUR/month, I'm not an hardcore email user so
| 8EUR as they ask is too much for me. For 3EUR and less "pro"
| features I would pay for the email service.
|
| Same for Spotify, I don't listen much, I would prefer to pay
| only 4EUR a month and have only 2 hours a month of listening
| without ads. But 10EUR for listening for less than 2 hours is a
| lot. And I don't think I'm the only one like this.
|
| The only company I know who is doing an affordable paid service
| is nextdns. For 2EUR a month, I'm happy to pay for the service
| for having a DNS that filters trackers on all my devices.
| perch56 wrote:
| I've been a happy mailbox.org user for 4-5 years now and
| they're cheap. Take a look at they're features, primarily
| being that they're hosted in Germany.
| scns wrote:
| https://posteo.de offers email for 1EUR a month
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Some services have a yearly plan where you end up paying the
| equivalent to about 4EUR a month - protonmail is an example
| that comes to mind.
| martin_a wrote:
| I'm starting to feel spammy because I say that everytime it
| comes up, but have a look at hetzner.de or sth. alike.
|
| Their smallest webhosting package is 1,90 EUR/month and comes
| with your own domain. Configuration is done through their
| web-based interface, so no CLI fiddling and nothing.
|
| I think that's a good deal, you could even run your own
| NextCloud on that package, if you want to. That way you get a
| CalDav server, so you can ditch Google Calendar and Contacts,
| if you want to.
| joe-collins wrote:
| Of those features, I have one objection: speech to text should be
| available to everyone as an accessibility feature, not locked
| behind a paywall.
| benreesman wrote:
| Convenient and secure/private sometimes pull in opposite
| directions. That's why it's great that we have _both_ Telegram
| and Signal. I keep mine right next to each other.
|
| They're both great, I plan to support both, they're just for
| different things.
| dmix wrote:
| 4GB uploads eh... so good for movie filesharing maybe?
| marcooliv wrote:
| Really liked the price and benefits. I will purchase. EUR 5.50 is
| less than a coffee.
| cheeze wrote:
| Where in the heck are you buying coffee? I live in a VHCOL city
| and I pay $3.50 max
| tauchunfall wrote:
| The average price of a cappuccino in Hamburg is 3.50 EUR
| already.
| granddemolisher wrote:
| Starbucks
| fritigern wrote:
| The black liquid Starbucks sells is not coffee...
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