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Comment by Gruselbauer | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely true for older generations, but among those under, say, forty years of age, the 'I don't have anything to hide' fallacy is alive and well just as anywhere else.

I'm German and it's been a huge ordeal to get my closest friends to migrate to Telegram at least. Signal was debated, but the lack of a good desktop client killed it. XMPP and IRC and all, not with these guys.

Germany has some vocal proponents of privacy ideals, like the Chaos Computer Club, but we also have politicians who pull the very same crap as anywhere else.

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> it's been a huge ordeal to get my closest friends to migrate to Telegram at least. Signal was debated, but the lack of a good desktop client killed it.

I realize it's difficult to get people to change messaging platforms, but if you have such a chance again after sometime, I would suggest trying out Wire [1] sometime. I have been recommending it over the last few months for people to try because it has superior UX (though not on par with Telegram). It has desktop clients, all chats are end-to-end encrypted (there are no unencrypted chats at all) and messages are synced across devices. I'm guessing the end-to-end encryption makes it a bit slow to startup to sync messages. Notifications also seem a bit unreliable or not working as expected (that's why the after sometime before).

Wire also has cool features like doodling and allows voice and video calls too. All this said, Telegram is still the fastest in delivering messages, and keeps adding new features quicker than any other messaging platform I've seen in the last few years (WhatsApp is not a platform I monitor because I left it when it was acquired by Facebook).

[1]: https://wire.com

> Notifications also seem a bit unreliable or not working as expected (that's why the after sometime before).

If you mean mobile notifications on Androids, it's worth noting that you need to whitelist the app in any battery saver modes be it vendor one or Googles Doze. Since Wire doesn't use GCM (websocket instead) for push, Doze might cause the unrealiable notifications.

I've been using it for a month now, whitelisted the app under Sony STAMINA mode and the notifications are instant on mobile & desktop. Also brought family and friends over and they're satisfied with the experience.

They claim that they are "Open source", yet they don't distribute any binaries built only with code they made public.

Just installed this. Thanks!

May I suggest Matrix/Riot? It's been posted on HN a few times and seems to be growing really nicely - I've gotten pretty into it over the past few days. Open source, federated, syncs between devices, interoperable with bridges to other protocols like IRC, web/Android/iOS clients, e2e encryption (similar algorithm to Signal) is being tested on web and is planned to arrive on mobile in a month or two. http://matrix.org/

I've heard about this on HN a few times, but usability and flexibility really trump other factors on adoption rates. Federated secure communication sounds wonderful. I'm currently using Wire, Telegram and Signal, and I don't prefer the fact that all of them are run by single entities.

telegram was sort of a bad choice: https://www.eff.org/node/82654

signal desktop (granted, stupid chrome plugin but official): signal.org/desktop

> telegram was sort of a bad choice: https://www.eff.org/node/82654

from this url: "This is version 1.0 of our scorecard; it is out of date, and is preserved here for purely historical reasons. Please visit Surveillance Self-Defense[1]"

[1] https://ssd.eff.org/

compared to signal, telegram can be used by android users without gapps (the telegram client can be installed via f-droid). as much as I would like to use signal, I can't.

compared to signal, telegram stores all your messages on a server you don't control in plaintext. It's not the answer.

I know. But that's really where I, personally, make the decision to not care. Group chat with two dozen mates equals stupid banter, exchange of memes, lately some pictures of the young ones everyone seems to suddenly have, recaps of school day mischief. I don't say anything there I wouldn't say in a crowded room and neither does anyone else.

For something as deviously criminal as 'you got pot man?', the private chat function is alright.

Obviously the 'nothing to hide' fallacy is nonsense, but so is pretending every communication warrants the highest security parameters at our disposal.

Signal is a nice app, have it installed among pretty much every other messenger. But none of my friends, colleagues and coworkers use it. I have one contact out of almost a thousand on there. The desktop client only runs in a browser, Telegram can be open on all kinds of devices and synch up (ncTelegram on a VPS where pretty much all my communication is relayed, in my case)...

I know all the criticism, from the question of why they had to cook up their own crypto and nonfree server to the Russians behind it. It's still the best app I could sell to a lot of people who're not even close to tech literate.

> Obviously the 'nothing to hide' fallacy is nonsense, but so is pretending every communication warrants the highest security parameters at our disposal.

I don't agree with this view that every communication, especially online, does not warrant the highest security parameters at our disposal. Assuming there are alternatives with better privacy and security available, I believe we (or the ones who care about such things) should adopt those and evangelize those among others we know. The default should be to treat communication between different parties as nothing but their own business, and nobody else should be snooping around for any purpose.

Other than the above are concerns of a larger magnitude - most people don't understand the true implications of not having privacy/security until it personally affects them. So I always try to push people to use something that's better (may not necessarily be perfect) privacy-wise. Also, when the lowest common denominator is filled by privacy invading platforms, all of humankind stands to lose because of the way money is made by these platforms and how "easy" or "free" those appear to be in the eyes of the users. In a larger sense, we're probably sabotaging the availability and legality of private/secure/easy-to-use communication platforms for the people it matters most to, like those in a repressed regime, journalists/investigators who go against the current powers, etc.

TL;DR: (Usability concerns aside) We have nothing to lose by treating every communication as warranting the highest privacy and security. But we do have a lot to lose by doing otherwise.

if you use e2e encryption, it doesn't.

Secret chats are only for person-to-person communication in Telegram. You cannot have group secret chats. They're also restricted to the specific device that started the conversation and do not sync across devices. For a platform that does, look at Wire [1].

[1]: https://wire.com

I'm not using any group chat, so for me personally that's fine.

so far wire is not available on f-droid either, although it's unclear (for me) whether their client now runs without the google play framework. there's discussion about it [0] but no clear answer yet (or I'm missing something).

the moment it's available through f-droid, it's a different story overall.

[0] https://github.com/wireapp/wire-android/issues/5

It's available to download on the website. I asked on Instagram and was assured that Wire doesn't require Google Play Services.

Wire messenger uses websocket and doesn't need Google Play Services.

Huh?! Telegram (secret chats) has all checkmarks.

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