The more I learn about telegram, the sketchier it seems.
- Cat stickers
- Did I mention it has the best native clients out of all the messaging apps? It boggles the mind why other companies can’t get this done.
I don't understand what there is to accelerate.
Signal is not as bad, but can still take a minute or two to update everything on my computer. The phone app is better.
I live in Germany and use both. None do that and as I'm "the IT guy" for many people at work an din private, I'd have heard about it. Hell, the whole continent would have heard about it as whatsapp is widely used.
My Signal also doesn't do that.
There once was this thread on a blog for a windows XP pirated edition. Someone commented that something small didn't work. They replied in less than a minute, that's terrible! 10 minutes later the version was incremented and a new reply said: Try the new version! After 30 minutes the bug fix was confirmed.
They weren't trying to be funny but it still makes me laugh how it compares to Microsoft, the 3 trillion software company.
If someone tells me that a program crashes in 50% of the time on launch but it's only him reporting it, it is almost certainly his problem and not a problem of the program. Especially if you're supporting millions of people.
This is not some prejudice story people make up. It is happening. Every day to thousands of poor IT Warriors on the front.
But they don't have to.
On the other side, suggesting that it is a general issue with those programs is wrong. Which is what I have been actually pointing out. This gives you the chance to check your devices and seek help if necessary.
This doesn't make my comment "bad support". I am not the tech support guy for HN.
I get responses like. 1) It works for me, 2) you should have looked at this and that, 3) no one wants that/it works fine the way it is.
The worse part is that they wasted their time reading and responding.
I've had wonderful feedback on things I've made. The funniest were people who didn't understand standard ui convention. It had me wonder if I can expose mission critical parts some other way in case the user doesn't know how a hamburger menu works.
Imagine my shock when I learn a young user conditioned by modern flat buttons thought [shall we say] windows 95 industrial buttons are decorations. You can click on that???
If I pretend it is their problem I haven't actually solved anything.
In this case here, OP is obviously overdramatising the situation. Adding to this is the lack of details. This happens really often and the cause is many times not in the hands of the people who are confronted with the problem.
So you can assume that if someone took their time to read your complains, they would have taken the time to consider it. Therefore chances are quite good that the answer you've gotten really means that you're the problem.
I don't say there is no lazy support. It happens but just because you get the "your problem"-answer, doesn't mean it's always lazy support.
I don't even remember how the previous cliënt did it but my spelling suggestions are in English (as is the OS) but my chats are all in Dutch. Most words have a red underline.
It recently gave up downloading images. Turned out it was no longer allowed to write to its own folder. Not sure if this should be blamed on MS but from the (many) user perspective it just stopped working.
It keeps limited chat history which makes it inferior to IRC.
It badly wants you to use ai.
It has a spam channel where it promotes it self.
The phone app is decent tho
I use whatsapp web every day at work. The page. In my Firefox browser. It's almost constantly open. Never had any issues with that. The phone app just does what it's supposed to do and even on my Pixel6, it's just fast. I mean there is always faster but it's not even a second.
I use Whatsapp only because I have to. Privately, I prefer Signal. Works also great. Same with the windows app. Been using both since day 1. On a Pixel7Pro....
Both WhatsUp & Telegram are completely free to use.
Telegram has premium features, but they are tangential to chatting & average use.
Also, what does "fast" mean? Fast on start?
There is nothing. It's not just me who doesn't know ANYBODY with those issues.
So the logical conclusion is: you're either lying or you have a problem on your own device other people don't have.
Their desktop apps are just Qt and not WebView inside a Qt. Mobile apps are native and not React.
Whatsapp and Signal have stickers too. Kids use them sometimes. They are like in a list. You open the list. Chose one and then it appears. Don't know what there is to accelerate.
...and yeah, whatever language they are. I don't really care because, as said: there is no problem...
You don't know that it takes time to load graphical assets? And you can't comprehend that I'm using it as an example of how much more stuff Telegram clients manage to do/load in the time it takes WhatsApp to load one screen?
- Telegram uses usernames instead of phone numbers by default, which is good if you're using it as an IRC replacement instead of an SMS replacement.
- You can have the client open on essentially unlimited devices simultaneously, including a web app if you need it.
- Messages can be edited at any point after sending with no expiry.
- You can schedule messages to send later, or send a message silently so it doesn't wake people up.
- Different group types - announcement channels, Discord-style groups with sub-channels, flexible moderator roles, etc. (I believe WhatsApp has some of this.)
- Support for bots, which is also very helpful for managing large communities.
- Community-created, sharable stickers. Seriously, people underestimate how nice these are.
The downside is that a lot of this requires state to be stored on the Telegram servers, so most chat's aren't E2E encrypted. (They do have an option for E2E encrypted private 1:1 chats, but you lose most of the polish by using that.)
Also, the official apps are open source, so you can modify them if needed.
- insanely fast search, chat history browsing and in app navigation - unlimited unencrypted cloud storage, your chats and docs always stays available - ability to send very large files - ability to host large video and voice chats - chat automation - auto translation and transcription - mini apps - open source client, with lots of customization - phone number less sign up (you can purchase a burner number from them and sign up with that, I guess it costs their crypto (ton) tho) - sending gifts
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What? When you register, I'm pretty sure it requires putting in a phone number that preferably isn't a VoIP line and not a username. It's been that way any time I've tried to use the service on mobile.
Scheduled messages have been a thing for a long time on Signal, but they seem to be only on mobile, which is wild to me.
I would posit that Signal is more for individual to individual. I'm seeing in these comments that telegram is clearly a lot more community centric, ala Discord lite than I realized.
And I agree, I think yours is an accurate assessment. Telegram is indeed much more community centric.
It lets you keep your number private from everyone else you're chatting with.
- Telegram had usernames in 2014 before Signal added them a decade later, allowing people to chat without sharing their phone number
- Telegram has unencrypted chats which allow for giant chat rooms of 200,000+ and channels with millions of subscribers. Signal warns about performance issues when you have more than 150 people in a group. Telegram isn't just a messenger - it's often used as a social publishing platform like Instagram.
I don't use Telegram and use Signal a lot, but I also understand why other people use Telegram: the same reason they use Instagram.
Not to mention you create ANY kind of bot without any trouble.
I guess we just live in two different worlds. Like with China where WeChat is the default. (except we now have fucking Max instead).
Large groups usually don't need e2ee anyway as the adversary can just join the group - anyone can - that's how they get large.
But indeed their native clients are great, especially on iOS. It legitimately feels more native and intuitive than Apple's own Messages app. Animations run at a smooth, stable framerate. Never hitches jumping between conversations. One of the greatest apps ever made.
Those nice things are what you get when you're fine having all your data (messages, images, files) forever in plaintext on servers owned by some Russian rich guy.
Pray there will never be a telegram.zip torrent.
I've used and promoted Signal for years and I've recently become suspicious of them and their funding as well after looking into starting my own encrypted communications app.
It's not cheap sending dozens or hundreds of megabytes of video files or whatever ... whenever the user feels like it, mind you ... with a monetization strategy that's literally simply hoping that donations will cover it?
That's insane.
Meanwhile Telegram has bot support and added features specifically for interacting w/agents. It's incredibly easy to write clients and work with it. No one should use it, and I never would, but you can see why it's winning.
Signal's lack of features (like an official Signal CLI) and bots (even attached to existing phone numbers and limited to the owner) is making people less secure than they could be. And unfortunately there are no great alternatives.
I guess "we can definitely spy on your messages" is a lot more honest than "we are very unlikely to spy on your messages", if it turns out spying takes place.
Signal does not have an official Signal CLI (or method of creating integrations) so users are compromising their use of Signal by using heavily patched and out-of-date code written by unknown third parties.
Telegram has support for integrations and clients but isn't a service anyone should trust.
Both are called Trojan Horses and are considered malware.
Some people can get the Telegram app and never get to find any of these communities to never understand what Telegram is really about. Usually though, channel owners repost from other channels and promote channels they like. If you follow one channel then it should not be hard to find other channels in the way. You can also see what other people are subscribed to, depending on their privacy settings.
Importantly, there is no algorithm on a home page, urging you to sign up for promoted content.
As for 'where does the money come from', there are ways to subscribe to get a few more bells and whistles, with many that cultivate a community choosing to do so, in order to manage their channel(s). Few normal users pay up, and the app isn't paywalled or 'pay to post'.
There is a whole parallel universe of drug dealers and women that sell their bodies, all of which is a search away. I doubt these people are paying for premium accounts either.
IMHO only a modest amount of money is needed, sure, bandwidth has to be paid for, however, the app is already written and it is very good. I have no idea why the likes of Meta need tens of thousands of 'engineers' for optimising doom scrolling 'with AI'.
With Telegram, you could have 1% of 1M users paying $10 a year, meaning revenue of $100k a year. That would be okay if it was Pavel and his bro in his mum's basement with one server to pay for.
Scale this up to a billion and now you are talking. Since the app scales, are more staff needed? A few devs, but not that many managers since the founders are technical and therefore don't need the useless hordes of non-technical managers. Yet the money is now 1% of a billion. Multiply that by $10 a year, every year, and Pavel ends up asking finding his Bugatti on the moon.
This sounds manageable to me, no need to run in debt, have shareholders or be beholden to vested interests.
At Meta et al., there is a need to feed the greed of the stock market, pay billions in debt, do billions in share buybacks, do the AI nonsense, keep the advertisers happy, keep America's Greatest Ally happy, sign a secret deal with Five Eyes and the list goes on.
I have never met Pavel or the Meta guy, whatever his name is, but I suspect the former is getting more out of life than the latter.
Or 'alternative views' within the empire, like antivax, flat earth, anti immigration, and so on.
I bet these two things are related to each other.
To be fair, Telegram is funded by billionaire Pavel Durov, co-founder of VK, the most popular social network in Russia and one of the most visited websites in the world.
Would be good if we can compare technologies rather than feelings. I hate what US tech has turned into, but presence of E2EE on whatsapp makes it incredibly way better than telegram to that matter. Even though undoubtedly Meta farms metadata on WA.
On the other hand, it wouldn’t shock me if they had no site redundancy. It’s a free service, it’s not like there’s SLA agreements you paid for on signup.