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Comment by joejohnson | Hacker News Reader

Telegram’s group chats are unencrypted. Telegram’s direct messages are not E2E by defaulted, and when secure messaging is enabled, many features stop working (like desktop support). Telegram has plans to monetize metadata just like WhatsApp.

Use Signal.

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This does not need to be a war between Signal people and Telegram people. It's not an either/or scenario. For those people who desire E2EE by default, well let them use Signal in peace. For those people who desire the greater flexibility of infinite independent chat clients and a higher uptime, let them use Telegram in peace.

The Signal community took a wrong turn into if it's not E2EE we hate it. There are people who should be using E2EE but it's not everyone and to insist on this narrative is going to drive a lot more people away from Signal than it is going to recruit.

Those people desiring greater flexibility etc have no reason to move away from Whatsapp. I mean, if Telegram has the same ups and downs including security approach as Whatsapp, then what's the upside of moving to it?

It's not owned by Facebook. The client code is all open source. You can have as many independent clients open as you want. First class desktop apps.

The motivation for a lot of this discussion lately is people leaving WhatsApp for something that is more privacy respecting; for the reasons I said above (especially the monetization point), Telegram is maybe no better than sticking with WhatsApp or FB Messenger.

Telegram is a better app.

Telegram does not have and will not have a monetization model that sells user privacy. Durov has been explicit in this. [1]

And it should be made clear that Telegram was forced into this position by the SEC who torpedoed any chance Telegram had of building out a decentralized network (TON).

[1] https://t.me/durov/142

We heard a lot of promises about Whatsapp too, about how it wouldn't share data with Facebook. Promises are worth nothing.

It's commonly misquoted that WhatsApp data will be shared with Facebook, but the Signal protocol for WhatsApp personal chats remains as is. It's the WhatsApp user-business communication that will be visible on third-party interfaces, like Facebook. It's in this process the e2ee aspect of the chat is lost. [1]

Overall, WhatsApp still remains a safe platform for 1:1 communications and group chats, but there are still many other factors that could be sold by Facebook, including location data, contact info, online status, and other aspects of the platform.

Durov did announce plans to offer more features for premium customers. [2] Hopefully that will help offset their hosting/development costs, without them succumbing to data selling practices.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/this-was-whatsapps-plan-all-along-184606...

[2] https://t.me/durov/142

Which is why you should look at what Telegram has actually done and that has been to protect and preserve the privacy of its users since the beginning.

> Telegram has plans to monetize metadata just like WhatsApp.

This is a blatant lie without any evidence. Durov said they might consider advertising in channels, as is currently already done in many languages -- just not through Telegram directly.

Source on the metadata claim.

> Telegram’s group chats are unencrypted. Telegram’s direct messages are not E2E by defaulted

In case anyone is confused by this phrasing, Telegram group chats are encrypted, just not E2E. Telegram is not blasting plaintext messages over the internet.

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