Hacker News Reader

Comment by xurukefi | Hacker News Reader

1. The client is up-to-date on GitHub, which is a much better situation than with WhatsApp or Telegram. An outdated server code just gives you reason to distrust their metadata handling.

2. Trust is a bit more complicated than that. FB sells your data and Telegram is very shady in many more regards. The situation with Signal is completely different.

3. Even if the server code on GitHub was updated, what exactly would give you reason to believe that they run that version in production? Ultimately, you cannot trust the server. This can only be solved with decentralization.

View on HN

This does not deal with the very real fact that Signal's server code is out of date by 9 months. Period. Telegram's closed-source server was used as a weapon against the Telegram community by Signal people for ages. But now that the shoe's on the other foot, let's be apologists.

2. Sources. Because all I see is Telegram protecting protestors in Belarus, Hong Kong, and Russia.

Signal is rightfully critiziced by people for their outdated server code. I'm just arguing that a) this does not make them as bad as WhatsApp or Telegram and b) updating the server code does not add as much trust as people tend to think. In fact, it's more of a symbolic act, because it does not give any strong technical guarantees.

All of Telegram's chat clients are open-source and they provide libraries and encourage people to develop new clients if they'd like.

Elaborate on Telegram being "very shady", please? With links, if possible.

telegrams client code is also upto date on GitHub

Is it? A lot of people report problems compiling the iOS client without replies.

It also has no licence in the repo or on the github page.

How is not having a license in the repo an argument against trusting Telegram though?

I mean, the code is right there. Not like it's encrypted.

can you elaborate on "telegram is very shady in many more regards"? im a telegram and signal user but if i knew telegram was shady id probably leave

Reply on news.ycombinator.com