Any Telegram users here?
I've only ever heard it used when talking about batshit American cults.
Not exactly a target audience i want to reach.
I've only ever heard it used when talking about batshit American cults.
Not exactly a target audience i want to reach.
I am in over 100 chat rooms of varying sizes. Ranging from groups with 100+ members, in which I usually just ignore, and check from time to time to see what is going on. Groups of 20-100 members in which more close friends keep together, and is more similar to IRC chatrooms with tech talk and the ilk, and then a then a lot of groups with 5-20 members, in which friends organize parties, going out for dinner, etc... (I organize my chat rooms into folders for ease of access)
Telegram has been my favorite form of communication because of great performance, very good sync between PC/mobile, great search (I can find messages from 5 years ago with no effort!), and ease of use. My experience with Telegram pales in comparison with any other chat program I have used for how I like to stay in touch with friends.
But yes, recently nutcases have taken to the platform since there is no big tech corp behind it to moderate the platform. They do delete illegal groups and spam, but if it’s legal and not causing disruption to other users, it’s almost certainly not getting deleted.
* is fast
* has native apps
* has amazing stickers
* lets you share almost unlimited media
* has a decent bot API
* is secure enough for my personal use (though I don’t pretend to use it as a secure messenger nor do I advocate for it if this is important for someon. Please do not start an argument about this again, search up telegram on hn.algolia for plenty of comments about security)
* calls and video is not as high quality as FaceTime but way better than WhatsApp
The clients are all opensource, and the APIs usable by anyone.
It has tons of little nice features as well. E.g., organizational directories, great search, fine grained notification settings, … .
There is also voice chat support, which is pretty nice.
Facebook is the biggest platform for far-right content, child pornography, terrorism, whatnot.
The only time i come across it is when a youtube news show what's to laugh at some Q people.
Signal and Threema went kinda popular too the more media talked about WhatsApp. But Telegram was THE IM app with simply the most fun functionality.
On the other hand I also know people refusing to use Telegram so nobody would think they are in weird channels now.
Adding to that I may also have a privacy focused circle, I am sure you'll find a group of people here too who life the exact opposite
If you have experienced IRC, it's basically that. You have smaller rooms (groups) and bigger ones. Every room has their active 1%, their own rules and customs and after a while, their own inside jokes etc.
Otherwise, it's a bit like reddit because you join groups that are usually about a certain topic / niche (general programming, JavaScript, Counter Strike, cooking, what have you) and it's also a bit like twitter because there's often a "hot topic" for a day or two with small things happening in between. Also because no one in their right mind treats those chats like actual group chats, as in, you don't read all the messages you missed. After a weekend i have at least 10k "missed messages".
This comparison is also cool because it reminds you to treat telegram just like reddit and twitter: it's public basically. Anyone can join groups you're in and log every message (there's plenty bots that do that) and they can see the contents of a public group even without joining. It's not encrypted by default and frankly, barely anyone uses secret chats, if only because ppl are on their desktop half the time anyway
No numbers needed means it's a no-brainer using Telegram for group communication where you may not want everyone in the group to know your number. Some university modules have large Telegram groups for everyone reading the course.
> Any Telegram users here?
So those who target the vulnerable are definitely focusing on Whatsapp right now. The self-selection is working very well in Telegram's favour, though that probably is just a happy side effect.
And yet they don't mind the lack of encryption?
Note that I live in a nation in which I support and trust my state. Yet I do not trust advertisers and other entities who seek to influence my opinion. I'm sure that for those who live in states where the government is viewed as adversarial then Signal would be a better choice.
> Note that I live in a nation in which I support and trust my state.
Given the above: Do you trust any state's government?
> They are jurisdiction hopping to evade that responsibility.
> Given the above: Do you trust any state's government?
I don't think we should. In the context of messaging at least, encryption should mean E2E encryption.
Bragging about client-to-server encryption is pointless nowadays, when 99% of the internet is already encrypted this way.
Not as misleading and potentially harmful as saying "Telegram is encrypted" as a blanket statement, because: 1. as I said, the client-to-server encryption is not noteworthy (almost everything has that) and it shouldn't be enough for privacy-conscious people. 2. even though Telegram does offer some e2e encryption too, its availability is quite limited and not representative of the typical Telegram usage.
Sure, I was being too dismissive there. But I don't like how Telegram gets brought up as a "private messenger", in the same context as fully e2e-encrypted messengers like Signal or even Whatsapp.
For all intents and purposes, Telegram is more similar to apps like Discord or Slack, seeing how most of the comms can be read by anyone who has access to the server. And Telegram can only be used with a phone number, so in terms of anonymity it's even worse than those.
This is absolutely true and a nice comparison at that, thanks! I will try to use that in the future.
Most of my non-technical friends using Telegram are convinced that it's more secure than WhatsApp. Even many non-technical news outlets are propagating these claims. It makes me incredibly sad.
They are promising a usable Signal, but instead are providing a Discord with mandatory phone number registration.
Why resort to such dishonesty? Just let the product speak for itself.
No, because defaults matter. Users have a habit of never changing them.
I wish there was a simple and catchy word for describing a "vulnerable to the government" encryption
As a term, e2e encryption is quite short, and is also easy to search for, if someone does not know what it is.
The latter is a very good indicator of misplaced faith in shoddy news outlets propagating these claims uneditorialized.
> "because it's encrypted and more secure than WhatsApp".
As a result, governments aren't getting access to Telegram, advertisers are.
Yes, Telegram has the superior UI compared to both. But for me, if I had to name an alternative to WhatsApp, Signal is the first coming to mind. The biggest (only?) reason being the lack of e2e encryption per default for 1:1 chats and complete lack thereof for group messaging in Telegram.
And even if e2ee in groups wasn't important for me, the lack of e2ee support in the desktop client breaks the usability argument completely for me. It's such a pity, because I'd love to recommend Telegram if they'd just use some variant of the Sinal Protocol for everything, just like Matrix, XMPP and WhatsApp are doing it.