Telegram has announced a partnership with Tencent | Hacker News Reader

Telegram has announced a partnership with Tencent

techcrunch.com

21 pointsdoteqiv29 comments

Why such a misleading title? It’s the TON foundation partnering, which isn’t related to Telegram. TON used to be a Telegram product but they dumped it, likely due to SEC not letting them launch it in the US.

Well, it did make you and me klick...

Misleading article. Telegram didn't partner with Tencent, TON did, and they are not related.

> they are not related

Are we sure about that? The corporate structure of Telegram is fairly opaque.

It's fine to have your suspicious, but if a media outlet is going to affirm this, I'd expect evidence that is a bit more concrete and falsifiable.

There's no doubt whatsoever that TON was, at one point, an official Telegram project. There's posts about it on their blog [1] and sections of their Terms of Service which describe it a feature "incorporated into the Telegram Messenger application" [2]. There are also a number of features being offered by TON with explicit support from Telegram itself, e.g. purchasing Telegram Premium with TON [3], "collectible" Telegram usernames [4][5], "anonymous numbers" for Telegram accounts [6][7], etc.

Even if TON isn't legally the same entity as Telegram, they're hand-in-glove with each other.

[1]: https://telegram.org/blog/ton-gram-notice

[2]: https://telegram.org/tos/wallet

[3]: https://fragment.com/premium (Fragment is a TON marketplace; it isn't available in the US for reasons)

[4]: https://telegram.org/blog/topics-in-groups-collectible-usern...

[5]: https://ton.diamonds/collection/telegram-usernames

[6]: https://telegram.org/blog/ultimate-privacy-topics-2-0

[7]: https://ton.diamonds/collection/anonymous-telegram-numbers

I know that, but Telegram pulled out of the project after their legal battle with the SEC. As I said, it's fine if you have suspicions that they are still tied, but unless there is falsifiable, this is indiscernible from a journalist not understand what they are publishing. Given the state of tech journalism nowadays, that's my bet.

> I know that, but Telegram pulled out of the project after their legal battle with the SEC.

They've tried to legally distance themselves from the project, but they haven't "pulled out". Telegram has gone well out of their way to develop and release new features which rely on TON / Fragment, like the "collectible usernames" feature I mentioned, as recently as last year. This isn't something that TON could have developed on their own; it required support not only from the Telegram apps, servers, and API, but also administrative support from Telegram to seize some usernames from users and make them available to TON/Fragment for resale.

I'm not sure what you're trying to suggest is "falsifiable" here. These are all things which are visible to end users; anyone can verify them.

Not sure why people use TG for secrecy anymore, as it's been proven to have none of the benefits sought after by privacy forward folks.

This is just another nail in the coffin.

I use with all my friends instead of whatsapp.

It’s just incredibly better as an app, under all points of view. I can also easily create bots for my own purposes, very simply.

Privacy is generally okay, my threat model is not state actor, so I’m fine.

Whatsapp claims to be end to end encrypted, but I don’t trust anything from meta.

I don't trust the encryption, but I especially don't trust the WhatsApp backups - and if I disable cloud backups for my messages, it asks me every few weeks if I don't want to turn it on, and I have to choose "never" every single time. And if the people I talk to back up, it's in their cloud anyway.

I could write my own client for telegram, can’t do the same for whatsapp.

Unless I can see (and run my own build of) the code, it’s all marketing bullshit.

Code or stfu.

I'd bet most people in the West don't. They use it because it's a very good messenger.

Its secret chats do what they promise. Not as handy as Whatsapp (only work on one device and both partners need to be online for the key exchange) but it does the job.

Telegram focuses more on big public groups anyway where this doesn't matter so much because anyone can join. This is really what I use it for too.

Actually just deleted it from my phone this morning. It's beyond garbage. I cringe every time I need to open it. But I realized I never really need to open it. So it's gone. Awful app.

Can you share what you're referring to when you say it's proven to not have privacy?

The shadiest chat app out there, costs so much to host without a clear income and doesn't have full encryption (nobody uses secret rooms).

I pay for TG premium and it offers a lot for the little it costs. The value is there IMO. The uptake isn't yet but I guess they're banking on that coming in the future like most startups.

Slack and Discord are better in this regard how?

Slack DOES have a good income source (buisness use)

Discord and telegram have premium but discord is way more used and have streaming features (really costly) and telegram premium is not that widespread and no one but power users need it

i feel like this is just a western perspective, telegram is very popular in some places and for good reason

I think he meant telegram premium, not the app. Its widespread for the wrong reasons, many people think its secure, its not, its one of the worst. It basically has no encryption at all.

Discord has 150 million MAU versus Telegram's 800 million MAU, according to Wikipedia. It's absolutely not way more used.

Telegram users are way less taxing on the infrastructure than a discord user

And the numbers seems to be more 200/700

Discord is just burning VC money.

Telegram doesnt even have that.

Its based in UAE, with a mere legal presence in Germany, their official explanation is that durov is financing it sincd its beginning in 2014, how? From his VK money.

This could've been believable, if telegram worked like WhatsApp with Minimum storage requirements, but its totally the opposite with huge hosting xosts and no clear funing source.

Costs* Funding* Typos as usual.

> Developers can use JavaScript to create infinitely flexible interfaces that can be launched right inside Telegram — and can completely replace any website.

What role does TON or blockchain play here?

// In [25]: chr(16) // Out[25]: '\x10'

What does this comment mean? You demonstrated the python function 'chr', but what does this have to do with the post?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com