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Comment by snissn | Hacker News Reader

Isn't telegram just a really bad version of signal?

As far as I'm concerned, Signal is superior in every way. Telegram simply has gained a lot of publicity and increased its user base (which is critical for IM) thanks to E. Snowden.

A friend and I downloaded Signal to try it out, and just couldn't get anything to work. I'm on iOS 8, the app would just crash anytime I hit any button to make an action (send a message, even delete my account). On his end (he was on iOS 9), it said it connected to me, but his messages just got lost in the ether in between us.

I mean, I'm a technical guy. I don't understand what either of us was doing wrong. Have you seen anything like this in your experience?

> Telegram simply has gained a lot of publicity and increased its user base (which is critical for IM) thanks to E. Snowden

Why do you say that? Snowden keeps recommending Signal every time he's asked.

Telegram has better cloud sync. Signal doesn't have a desktop app AFAIK, only a Chrome plugin which is still in development.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/3/9662724/signal-encrypted-c...

Seems like he changed his mind.

https://whispersystems.org/

Only if literally the only thing you're looking for is security.

A big deal breaker for me is being able to use it without a phone number, and from desktop/sim-free devices, as well as from multiple devices simultaniously

People seem to use it as a normal IM client. They have a web UI and don't really claim to be all that secure (eg not trying to compete with Signal). I don't understand the benefit over the numerous other IM apps, everyone who uses it just says "oh i like Telegram better" or "my friends are on it".

Or a better version of iMessage / WhatsApp. Depends on how you look at it.

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