Telegram vs. Signal vs. Status – The Secure Messaging App of the Future | Hacker News Reader

Telegram vs. Signal vs. Status – The Secure Messaging App of the Future

our.status.im

18 pointsjonnyz23 comments

Every time I see a decentralized app, I scan the text and sure enough it's stupid cryptocurrency again. Status appears to integrate with Ethereum.

Ethereum uses proof-of-work. Proof-of-work wastes energy intentionally as a fundamental design goal, in the middle of a climate crisis where we must use as little energy as possible. I won't say I won't use something that uses proof-of-work, e-mail often relies on proof-of-work to stop spam these days, but I will say that it makes me very skeptical and concerned about what would happen to energy expenditures if it became popular.

If you work in cryptocurrency or blockchain, please, I'm begging you, don't use proof-of-work, there has to be something better. Proof-of-stake, Filecoin's Proof-of-Replication, anything.

Most people will hear that they have to pay money to get their name and immediately close the page. Many that continue will discover they need to also use yet another cryptocurrency or will simply say "I don't know how to use bitcoin" and close the page.

I agree that Signal requiring a phone number is bad, but I have to admit they may have hit the sweet spot if what Status is proposing is the best privacy-focused alternative we can come up with. I don't care how private, how fancy your messaging app is... it's useless if you can't get the majority of your contacts on it. And frankly, I don't see anybody on my list using this.

Hell, I don't even want to bother with it. I can't imagine convincing my friends.

I've barely convinced a close circle of friends to use Signal after using it for years. The latest cash injection from the former WhatsApp founder led to plenty of updates that my friends love, like the "encrypted" (iirc?) stickers made by the community.

Are any IM systems doing better? I don't mean "is requiring a phone number bad", I mean "has anyone found a way that's a net improvement".

> At this point, the Telegram and Signal desktop clients are fairly basic

This is not true.

While I would never trust Telegram with sensitive data, their desktop client is by far the best IM desktop client I have ever tried. It's feature rich, native and beats Slack, Teams and any of the web/electron based clients.

The changelogs show an almost feature parity between the desktop https://desktop.telegram.org/changelog and the mobile https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS/blob/HEA... which lead me to think that whoever wrote this article didn't make the right amount of research.

The Telegram Desktop client is definitely better than others, but it doesn't support E2EE, which is a deal breaker for many.

I (and many others) like Telegram for non-sensitive group chats accessible on mobile, laptop or desktop. But when encryption matters, those chats stay on Signal.

Telegram vs Signal vs Status.... brought to you by Status

Status is the only one of the three I've never heard of. The other two are widely known. I have only used signal but I'm open to hearing why others prefer Telegram.

I think the main reason people use Telegram is network effect, lots of groups use Telegram. From a security standpoint it's atrocious, closed sourced and proprietary encryption. Which is ironic, considering there are lots of crypto-currency groups that use telegram.

Well, I can't say Signal vs. Telegram, because despite I do have Signal, I use it extremely rare (well, almost never, - there are not so many contacts in there), but comparing WhatsApp vs Telegram is easy - TG is infinitely more convenient and well-thought. Just like a good old shoe, that fits you perfectly. However, I'm quite concerned about its security (though I have no facts or evidences) and that why I'm looking into Signal...

This is basically me as well, except I've tried and rejected Telegram for UI, functionality and security reasons.

Signal though for me is just a tool, it's not something I work at or cultivate. It replaces my sms tool and thats about it.

Will have to investigate status though.

Telegram is snake oil.

Quite frankly I use Telegram because of the Desktop app, it's well curated, based on QT while all the others are electron based.

It’s hard to take seriously any analysis that lists Telegram in a list about “secure messaging”, honestly.

> At this point, the Telegram and Signal desktop clients are fairly basic

This simply not true, at least for Telegram, just compare the changelogs for the desktop app https://desktop.telegram.org/changelog and the mobile one https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS/blob/HEA... such a lie make me throw away the entire article, not to mention the author of the article.

is this an advertisement?

it looks like advertisement for me

Looking at the submitter's post history it's clear they only have an account to submit links about this one product.

I love that there's a "web 3.0 browser" built in Status.

Whatever this web 3.0 thing is.

Signal tying the identity to a phone number is my main gripe about the platform, and I'll likely consider Status if the platform is as well designed as Signal

what about Keybase?

Signal vs Keybase vs Status would have been a much better article, and maybe one that wasn't posted by one of the above companies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com