Group Video Calls
telegram.orgTo me Telegram feels like the red corner district of a city. I simply don't feel like I can trust it, there's something very shady about it. I wouldn't be surprised if Telegram reads those exclusive Bitcoin whale groups and uses that insider info. Group chats are not end to end encrypted.
That being said, WhatsApp is like the authorized garage where you know that you'll get the service which is officially recognized (by the government) and will keep your car's value "at its best", but which screws you over in so many ways.
Everything else is somewhere in between these two platforms.
Care to qualify that speculation with some evidence?
It seems like whenever telegram is brought up here, there's a lot of speculation about it not being trustworthy but no concrete evidence.
The client is open source. While not end to end encrypted by default, it shares that property with most messengers. E2E limits search-ability and other features so it's a tradeoff.
I have to wonder if part of why this is mostly brought up is due to the origin of the app being a group with a Russian nationality. That's pretty sad.
The app is damn good. The best messenger app I've used - much better than signal. I'm so disappointed by this attitude.
I( completely agree with whatever you have listed here and the reason why the app is up for bashing is because of the antecedents of the owner.
How does everything which has its origins in US is touched up with fairy duust while anything that may have a remote link with Russia is garbage?
Signal is garbage. They are riding on the coattails of marketing (and that's what investment money does)
Care to elaborate why you believe Signal is garbage? Is it for technical reasons?
1) Platform sync is bad. 2) Backups drain my battery. 3) Notifications across platform are weird. 4) Video calling quality is now an issue. Previously it wasn't. 5) No usernames and no ingrained privacy controls to prevent users from calling me.
1. Having to share the phone number is the biggest issue for me. This shouldn't be the case in 2021. I can only use Signal with my close friends. OTOH, I can confidently share my Telegram handle with anyone I have known for a some months, even online (not in anonymus forums, of course).
2. Notifications in one platform is weird for me.
3. Video quality is extremely bad to the extent of unusable.
4. Completely agree with the lack of settings whether other users with my number can text/call me on Signal.
The whole point of signal is privacy, so the fact that it's tied to a number is insane to me. I have friends in china that can't use it because china blocks the verification SMS. It's otherwise great app IMO but this is nearly a fatal flaw.
Americans used to use unencrypted telephony every day because they expected the government to uphold constitutional guarantees. That day ended shortly after 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act, which I believe today is used against Patriots more than it is used on their behalf.
When it first started getting popular I was curious about whether they were trustworthy, so I chatted with the devs and they said it was 100% open source. I looked through the source and found a pre-compiled binary blob buried deep in the folder structure, and they came up with some strange excuse that I can't recall and then it disappeared after a while.
Also, the evidence that it's not end to end encrypted by default for many operations is out in the open.
> I have to wonder if part of why this is mostly brought up is due to the origin of the app being a group with a Russian nationality.
I think it has more to do with the fact that there is no known reason for the organisation behind Telegram to provide it. It doesn’t make money from users, it has large operating and development costs, it keeps access to a lot of personal data without regulation, it is not a non-profit funded by donations and being open about their operation…
So most realistic hypotheses about that organization is that it’s shady. There are very few other possible explanations.
Telegram is about as private as facebook messenger or discord is the basic assertion. FB messenger is a much nicer client than the more private chat messengers, but telegram is essentially a client you can't assume is private, much like FB messenger itself, even if it has an E2EE chat mode that nobody uses.
But people are deluded that it's as private as Signal or Matrix, which is laughable.
This is one of the API entry points with which the apps communicate: http://149.154.167.51/
Nginx is currently at 1.21.0
Why wouldn't you care about your load balancer being so outdated? That's over 15 years.
There could be an explanation for this, but I'd have to put some unnecessary trust into it before I get the valid explanation. It is http and no https is offered on that server, which probably indicates that there's no need for TLS, that the communication is secure enough for it not to rely on TLS. But anyway...
They roll their own crypto and group chats can't be end-to-end encrypted anyway. It's even worse security than WhatsApp, let alone Signal.
> Care to qualify that speculation with some evidence?
This is a weird way to respond to someone using a metaphor to describe how an app makes them feel.
> I wouldn't be surprised if Telegram reads those exclusive Bitcoin whale groups and uses that insider info.
That's not a metaphor, though.
Does Telegram even offer server side searching?
Telegram works better as a chat app for my use case which is why I prefer it.
I use an iPhone for iOS development and as a backup phone, I use Android as a daily driver - WhatsApp couldn't sync history when I broke my phone twice in a year and had to switch to iPhone. And I prefer using a desktop app over mobile one, if my phone dies I can still use telegram desktop (this was useful a few times I left my phone in the car and wife drove off with it, I could keep using telegram to message her, my only other option would be messenger at that point).
I don't mind privacy implications of my random chats being read by telegram.
I’m not sure I’d want group chats with thousands of members to be end-to-end encrypted. It doesn’t even seem that clear what the actual utility of it would be.
I agree, but where are you getting that number from? They said "group chats", not "massive group chats". I would certainly want group chats with less than 20 people to be end-to-end encrypted, if it were possible.
I think a decent compromise would be just enabling it by default for private group chats, since it'd be costly and pretty pointless for public ones.
There is no point in encrypting the content of these public groups if anyone can just join and get access.
Right, that's what I was saying. There's just some confusion because the original poster was talking about small/medium-sized private chats, and then the replier wrote "I'm not sure I’d want group chats with thousands of members to be end-to-end encrypted" for some reason.
There's no point to encrypting public group chats. There's a ton of point to encrypting private group chats. They should support it for private chats and it should be the default. Or, better, there should be no way to disable it, even.
From a defensive perspective, I agree, but from an offensive perspective it's way easier to, say, download the contents of the 500 largest channels in the country than having to join those channels yourself.
> Group chats are not end to end encrypted.
End-to-end encrypted group chats are currently in the works.
Source - https://t.me/durovschat/518625
This doesn't say anything about encryption.
Read again, it does.
Durov mentioned they've been working on group "secret" chats. Secret is just another term for end-to-end encryption in telegram.
Ah. When I first read it, all I saw was the "self destructing". I suppose my eyes glanced over "secret"....
I laughed at this, but am curious where you place Signal and Matrix in this analogy? Both feel like good services that aren't authorized, per say.
XMPP would be the local electrician with a mustache and a calm tone that can fix anything for you pennies.
We used to have them in Hungary. I miss them. "Szaki"
XMPP would be a loosely-organised community of people who know how to fix their own car and might be willing to fix yours for beers.
Signal is recognazied by many European governments, and WhatsApp is just a street dog that was once loved and is now hated because it misbehaved.
I think maybe because your family and coworkers live in WhatsApp, while your dodgy friends and "random" groups are in Telegram? That's my case :)
Telegram is recognized by i.e. Singapore government. They have multiple official channels in Telegram, including ministry of manpower, public housing authority and ministry of foreign affairs. The official government site has their Telegram group as well.
This is news to me. I assumed that they had presence because of outreach but this could hold true for most other governments.
Indian government has official channels in Telegram, too.
None of the messengers except Signal give any confidence in being really private.
And when comparing Telegram and Whatsapp shady-wise, only one of them has obvious many reasons to track you as much as technically and legally possible.
And when it comes to app performance, UX and ease of use - Telegram beats all others with a huge margin.
Well I don't think secure and high-quality applications like Signal fit in that spectrum :p
Telegram accomodates over 200,000 users. I have my own community around Telegram; it has nothing to do with Crypto. Bots manage the rush; block words filter out conversations; spammers are blocked in their track, auto-delete or auto-removal of messages (if and when required).
Privacy controls on voice/video calling, restrictions on who can add me to groups and so on. Intelligent cache without looming storage limits on my device. Efficient application that doesn't drain battery. Cross platform client that even works in modern browser and remains in perfect sync.
I wonder why you are forgetting the virtues and only focused on the "shady aspects".
really like your garage analogy.
the missing piece seems to be the type of car.
if i put down a years income for a new car, the 'authorized garage' has it's perks because the value of holesome repairs is probably greater than the cost.
if on the other hand one has a ten year old, used car, which main purpose is a means of transport, that greasy, dusty garage, were the mechanic will let you know that there was only one screw missing and charges you a few bucks is golden.
Curious how WhatsApp makes you feel screwed over? The work they do to ensure end to end encryption is impressive.
Facebook doesn't really get a strong advantage in keeping keys to read your messages on its own servers. Intelligence services would benefit from this, so would fraudulent or corrupted employees. For Facebook, storing keys to your message is more a burden, if anything.
Facebook derives valuable data about you through WhatsApp in three channels:
- analyzing the content of your discussions before they get encrypted and sent,
- the app acts like a Trojan horse into you smartphone. It collects data such as your device model, geolocation, contacts, text messages with all activation/verification texts from third parties, the list of apps you installed, when you wake up or go to bed, when you sleep or do other things in bed (thank you gyroscopic sensors), etc.
- Through the correlation of real-time data collected from other smartphones, Facebook also acquires who you met, spend time with, where and when.
As you can see, you don't get end to end encryption for philanthropic reasons but because that's simply not where the money is and that's what gullible customers ask for.
end to end encryption is like when you get offered tap water at the restaurant: for many customers, it provides then with a feeling of self satisfaction.
But it doesn't improve the quality of the food at all...
Hope I brought some light in the topic :)
On iOS apps can’t find out what other apps you have installed.
With gdpr, you can at least download all the data they have collected about you. Have you verified your Trojan horse claim?
Many of these claims are described in [0]:
> WhatsApp still won't be able to access any of your communications or share them with Facebook. Meanwhile, WhatsApp will be able to share user account information like your phone number, logs of how long and how often you use WhatsApp, device identifiers, IP addresses, and other details about your device with Facebook. Plus, WhatsApp can share transaction and payment data, cookies, and location information with Facebook if you grant permission. All of which has been true since 2016.
More is detailed in the WhatsApp privacy policy [1] (emphasis mine):
> We collect information about your activity on our Services, like service-related, diagnostic, and performance information. This includes information about your activity (including how you use our Services, your Services settings, how you interact with others using our Services (including when you interact with a business), and the time, frequency, and duration of your activities and interactions), log files, and diagnostic, crash, website, and performance logs and reports. This also includes information about when you registered to use our Services; the features you use like our messaging, calling, Status, groups (including group name, group picture, group description), payments or business features; profile photo, "about" information; whether you are online, when you last used our Services (your "last seen"); and when you last updated your "about" information.
I suspect nokya was exaggerating somewhat, but only somewhat.
[0]: https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-privacy-policy-facebook...
None of this is about knowing apps you have installed. Cant be exaggeration if it isn’t true in any sense. That’s the only specific point brought up by your parent comment.
Agree for iOS, i didn't know the list of installed packages was only known to Apple. On Android, it seems to be a new restriction that is being deployed in A11 (search for discussions on Android developers inquiring about the new "QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES" permission that some are struggling with already.
For the exaggeration, I would happily answer but I would need to know on which access you felt I exaggerated (except the fact I did not know Apple kept this list only to itself and friends). The data categories I mentioned are quite straightforward and not specifically obtained by WhatsApp only.
> With gdpr, you can at least download all the data they have collected about you.
I don’t believe this is correct: They may only have to provide data they “control” (in the GDPR-sense of the word; see Art.15,3)
If they merely downloaded it for processing into market segments or even just generated high-value marketing segments directly on the device, they would only have to and be able to give you the list of those segments, and maybe explain broadly that they learned this from “on-line activity”.
If they do exfiltrate everything, they could hold this data for “legitimate interests” such as for lawful intercept, fraud detection, or disaster recovery. If it is not a “normal” business practice to access[1] it they may not be required to reveal that they have it.
Note I am not verifying that Facebook does these things only what my understanding of their obligations are under the GDPR. This does not constitute legal advice, I am not your lawyer, and so on.
[1]: FB’s normal business is selling ads and they don’t typically let ad sales or traffickers access this raw data directly.
Indeed. This concept is sadly too often misunderstood. Many users feel they get everything when they ask for their data, but these data sets are usually restricted in two ways:
1. You only get the data you provided to the service, not the data they derived from your use of the service. Incidentally, this second data set can be as much critical when shared to third parties.
2. You only get the data they kept about you, not the data that resulted from the various transfers to their partner companies and which was thereafter correlated with other databases.
These two sets of data are about the user, but the user never gets to see it, unless it is explicitly requested to the partner companies.
Thanks Trojan horse GDPR.
Facebook works directly with oppressive central governments to implement censorship against their citizens.[1] Some might consider that getting screwed over.
[1] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2019_Jakarta_protests_and_rio...
They hold the decryption keys. Isn't it?
I don’t know if it’s the Russian style or the slightly nsfw emoji it packs by default but the program feels sus. Plus, I feel like it’s only hot news recently because of the Trump-follower-exodus. Plus all the gushing in this thread seems a bit over the top. What’s special about it over WhatsApp or heck even WeChat?
It Just Works(TM). Easy onboarding, doesn’t complain if you don’t let it vacuum up your entire address book, simple and usable interface, syncing is flawless, native desktop client, first party library for integrations and support of third party clients.
If you’re not willing to sacrifice too much UX for privacy, it kicks the pants off of a lot alternatives while still, ostensibly, not being the worst offender privacy-wise.
I'm amazed by the pace at which Telegram ships features, and with what finesse.
While the development teams at Telegram should be applauded I can't stress enough that it helps that they don't have E2EE and centralized most of the complexity to their server.
Related regarding feature deployment: I got some negative feedback for dumping on Matrix for announcing Spaces without iOS client support. They should have waited until Element had all their major platforms covered before announcing it. It's maybe an unpopular take but when around 40% of my homeserver's users can't use a major feature, that's a shitty rollout.
It wasn’t a roll-out - it was the announcement of the first public beta. Spaces has lots left to do: not just iOS but private spaces etc too.
Please just give me folders like Telegram did, so I can organize my own chats. I get the point of Spaces and was excited to use it for my homeserver since it helps onboarding new users, but to announce it without support in one of the 3 popular reference clients is just silly.
Telegram does have E2EE in secret chats. WhatsApp does NOT have E2EE because it backs up your private keys to cloud storage by default. Even if you don't, your contacts might. Therefore WhatsApp is less secure.
This is incorrect. WhatsApp is E2EE as well. It does not backup the keys to their cloud. Rather, you seem to be referring to the fact that they offer cloud backup on Google Drive, in which case the chats are stored in plain text.
You're being unnecessarily pedantic and not actually even refuting anything they said.
Using Whatsapp is like sending a locked chest to your friend and a copy thereof + a copy of the key to unlock it to a warehouse. Government employees and warehouse workers can enter the warehouse at will, use the key to open your chest, and copy everything too.
Nice lock.
They have the most productive and high quality engineers in the game. And I say this as someone that whinces at telegram for not having e2e encryption by default.
The Telegram Apps are all great and have so many awesome features that are crucially also extremely well implemented. Everything seems so well thought through!
It's just incredibly scary not to know anything about who these developers are, where they are located and most importantly how this is all financed!
I understand Pavel Durov is a very wealthy man, but developing and hosting a popular global messenger service can't be cheap.
TBH my threat model views Russian and Middle Eastern oligarchs and governments as less of an immediate threat to my freedoms than my own government or major US tech firms.
Long run it's a problem, but until I have a app at the same risk/feature sweet spot I don't mind the downsides of telegram.
(Edited cause I am utterly unable to spell)
This was part of how I settled on Telegram.
Basically any western country can be secretly ordered to turn over all my information on the flimsiest of reasons, if it’s not already just intercepted through Five Eyes style arrangements.
The chances of Russia volunteering to share my chat history with anyone that could actually impact my day to day life is pretty much nil, and I’m certainly not interesting to anyone in their sphere.
Bingo!
Likewise. I'd like FSB to know what I did in the last one hour. I wonder if they really find it interesting to pursue me.
This is also the reason I prefer using VPN based in countries that are NOT based in USA/EU and that are not friendly to USA/EU -> Russia, China, Myanmar, Iran etc.
Secret 1:1 & group chat by default like signal, well labeled non-secret large chat rooms, open source clients and using standardized encryption and they'd do pretty well amongst the privacy crowd too.
sounds like you’re describing Matrix. It’s a shame that the only user friendly mobile client is called “fluffy chat” and seems to be targeted at furries or children.
Is there anything secretive about their developers? I see a lot on LinkedIn for what it's worth.
Same. This has been my frustration with Signal lately. They've had a large growth in a userbase but feels like they aren't growing their team fast enough to become real contenders with Telegram and WA. You don't have to move fast and break things, but you do have to move.
The only feature I can think of since that growth annoys the shit out of me.
They've started syncing notification settings, so I can either have both my laptop and my phone beeping or none. Combine that with working within a small team that primarily uses Signal and it's absolutely terrible.
Leave them off and you'll miss something important. Leave them on and my phone beeps after work hours. And since there's nothing in between pausing them for 8h or 1 day, I forget to turn them on in the morning.
Went from never needing to touch those settings to having to change them at least 5x every fucking work day.
Yeah the syncing issue has been hitting me more. Not as bad as Slack though, but still enough that where I've answered something on my desktop it'll still ring my phone. It's better than Slack because this is at least <5 minutes apart (Slack will message my phone >10 minutes after I responded on desktop). I'll admit that I'm willing to give Signal more leeway than Slack because they're small. But these things hinder growth.
But the features I've seen since growth are: 1) group call (which happened during early growth), 2) screen share on desktop, 3) color hinting in chats removed (which now results me in messaging several people I didn't intend to because I've been trained for years to rely on colors for hinting and it takes longer to untrain users. Thank god delete exists...) 4) mobile coin.
I'm still waiting on 1) usernames 2) channels 3) easy access to community based stickers (or just an official repository!). Things that I don't care about but the community does: 1) backup of messages 2) transferring messages between phones. Honestly after these two things a lot of other stuff is "cool." But these make it more usable. A 20 minute interaction with Signal users outside the community forums will illustrate how important these things are to people (the community forums have a real group think that's a big disconnect from what most users want). I'm all for more UX devs and making the app prettier, but it's no longer "early 2021" and we still don't have them (and have been waiting for years). It feels like there's a larger disconnect between devs and us users than there was in the past. People wouldn't throw a fit about MOB if the rest of the platform was moving along steadily and would probably be treated as "cool, but I'm not going to use it and have reservations." I'd welcome cool stuff like that, or noise canceling (featured in this update), or any other stuff if the rest of the platform was moving along.
I'm losing faith in Signal. I fought so hard to get my friends on board (years!) and now that we have critical mass it feels things have slowed instead of accelerated. It isn't just us "hackers" and privacy conscious people anymore. To the devs reading this: I love you and appreciate the work you do, but help us out here. We don't understand why these weird decisions are being made and they feel like step backwards instead of forward.
I’m with you... so much for “the ecosystem is moving”. Matrix is moving faster than them.
I don't think Matrix is there yet. But it's clear that they are catching up. We'll see if they have the same growing problems. I was really hoping Signal would use the centralization to advance faster and then when it was fully featured open up to allowing other servers. But you know... they got to grow first.
"Leave them off and you'll miss something important. Leave them on and my phone beeps after work hours. And since there's nothing in between pausing them for 8h or 1 day, I forget to turn them on in the morning."
My android phone has a global "do not disturb" feature for notifications, so I'm not disturbed during sleeping hours. Can you use that?
> after work hours
> during sleeping hours
There's an important difference there. I think the GP wants their phone to keep working when they're off work -- including giving them notifications in other apps, for personal conversations.
> whinces at telegram for not having e2e encryption by default
On desktop* there is no e2ee even among the options.
* where "desktop" includes GNU/Linux phones.
As far that I'm aware, it is key management/distribution problem and how to expose it to the user. So in order to not manage them, only the device with the phone number that the account is registered with can do it.
Desktop apps are not the ones where you create Telegram account; you only authorize them.
For another example, Threema, which is E2EE by default, doesn't allow more than one device with the account (to use multiple devices, you must create several accounts, one for each device and link them, and then basically any chat is a group chat. For desktop use, the web client uses webrtc to talk to your device to use it as a proxy).
I believe this is wrong based on the following:
1. I was able to use telegram without using the smartphone app at first, I just needed a phone number to register on desktop
2. The MacOS desktop app supports E2EE
3. Some third party desktop apps support E2EE
4. Signal has synced E2EE that works on both desktop and smartphone (And so does Matrix)
1. Does not really matter to the argument; you cannot do E2EE on the desktop with such an account. But you could on the mobile device, once you install the app there. They call it "device of origin".
2. Which one? There are several and the one I'm running (the official one; brew cask telegram-desktop) does not.
3. They are third party and if it doesn't work nicely or has missing functionality ("why are not my chats from other devices there?"), Telegram devs can still point fingers that's not the official client and should be discussed with the third party developers. Ultimately, they will find out why the original Telegram doesn't do it.
4. Signal doesn't do cloud messages as Telegram does. You might have noticed that functionality like that makes Telegram much more popular among normal users.
How is e2ee important for desktop? Why?
why does it need to be plaintext?
In the same way it is important elsewhere?
Indeed. 7.8 is one of the most polished releases.
This is one of the best feature sets, and I waited for over two years; ever since WhatsApp had got it. I find that stance of the community strange here - no "e2ee". Privacy is important, but your chat history hardly reflects that. There are other ways to get your history or track your digital trails.
200,000 users for group chat. Unlimited users for voice chat (like clubhouse). 30 users for group video calling. That limit will be increased later. Flawless sync across platforms. Secret chats - the e2ee chats self-destruct between users and stay on the device where it has been initiated. Robust third party clients-that add more functionality to the official app. (I use Utyagram; Plus is another popular mod, but is closed source). Unlimited users for channels - that work as broadcast lists. The lists goes on and on.
> Secret chats - the e2ee chats self-destruct between users and stay on the device where it has been initiated.
Is this supposed to be a feature? Telegram themselves claim that this inability to backup chats is at least part of why they don't enable E2EE before mentioning that it allows users choice over data storage, which seems silly in the face of apps that allow for encrypted backups of E2EE messages. [1]
Signal backups are obviously E2EE and can be moved between devices by copying an encrypted blob or directly transferring over Wi-Fi, depending on your platform.
Meanwhile, on Telegram if I reinstall the app all of these chats are gone. If I change phones and posess both devices concurrently, there's still no official way to move chat histories. E2EE feels like a crippled afterthought on Telegram considering so many of the interesting Telegram chat features (or just backups/transfers) don't seem to work with it.
[1] https://telegram.org/faq#q-why-not-just-make-all-chats-39sec...
I use Telegram as a daily driver and I don't find any reason to be constrained about whatever you mention. I use Telegram on iPad, Windows, Android and they sync perfectly- that's why it's cloud messenger. Data migration isn't an issue at all. No one's asking you to use a non-e2ee client. But find reason and merit in those who do- try it for the convenience and then uninstall it if it doesn't serve your purpose.
Right, I genuinely do understand why people use it, and don't have a problem with that decision. My point was just that the E2EE chats not being able to be backed up or transferred to a new device/install isn't a feature, and it's strange that Telegram (and possibly your comment, although perhaps I misread it) mentions that it is a potential benefit for data security when encrypted local backups exist in other apps.
If my understanding is correct. VC users at a time in a room in clubhouse is limited.
Yes thats right.
Telegram has absolutely amazing UX on all platforms I've used it on, I hope they can roll out encryption for group chats soon and show somehow that we can trust that encryption.
Really? Every Telegram group I tried to chat started spamming me with notifications every few seconds and I uninstalled the damn thing.
The UI also looks like it was made by a intern who just learned how to use Android Studio, not like something new and cool. The actual text "Telegram" and a magnifying glass button instead of a search bar, hamburger menu instead of your own profile pic, no big fat QR scan icon, ...
1) it's incredibly trivial and intuitive to mute a channel. i see no issue with receiving notifications by default to a channel you just subscribed to
2) hamburger menu is right here. the avatar-as-menu implies account details. the menu presented instead makes sense and has the stuff you'd expect.
3) magnifying bar makes sense since the real estate saved is used for useful information
4) there is a big fat qr scan icon. it's just not "first page material", which is the correct decision here. if abd when you need it, telegram tells you where to find it.
In any case, you are entitled to your assessment. I just completely disagree with it.
That's pretty much how any group chat works on any platform, it's just a simple click to mute it except for direct mentions.
Why do you need your profile instead of a menu? Why a QR icon? Why a search bar?
Those are very minor things on an app that functions extremely well.
Save some, I turn the notification off from all groups and channels. I just check them when I want. This has worked for me well.
Telegram is getting so many cool features that I really wonder how long can it sustain being ad-free and user-centric.
It has already been announced that they will add ads to Telegram but only to public groups/channels over a certain amount of users. Everything else will stay ad free. See: https://t.me/durov/142
They have 1 billion dollar[1], and working on ads[2]
Exactly. It recently got a feature that totally obliterates Clubhouse out of the Pacific ocean.
At this point Telegram is unrivalled and already has almost everything that WhatApp has, except for E2EE turned on by default.
Exactly. WhatsApp has everything that Telegram has and they look up to them for "inspiration".
Except for the huge red flag that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook.
WhatsApp is hooked up to the surveillance machine of Facebook. No matter how they try to spin the nonsense that they are not siamese twins are perhaps two different versions of the business, its not going to change the fact that Zuckerberg was spouting for charity. How they ferret the data out of WhatsApp is a mystery to me.
It's just not a red flag. It's a minefield.
I feel like Clubhouse looks a lot more polished as an app though. Telegram feels like a CS 101 "hello world" messenger app demo. Yeah I know it has more features than that, but it looks like it has no features.
When you go into Clubhouse you know you're in Clubhouse. They don't need to write "Clubhouse" at the top of the app. There are no generic buttons such as hamburger buttons. It's obvious which account you're logged into just by looking at the icon at the top right. Almost every use has a profile pic. There is attention to negative space and typography.
I've never used Clubhouse, but on iOS and macOS Telegram looks and feels very native.. but better. Snappier, faster, more responsive, yet still looks correct, and works as I expect native apps to work.
The thing is though, apps that look native often look like they were made by beginners. The native look on both iOS and Android is also starting to look dated in terms of graphic design.
Most popular apps don't use native design but rather artistically always a step ahead of native. Think of e.g. the Airbnb, Uber, Slack, Discord, Instagram apps.
If Instagram or Airbnb used native iOS/Android design they'd lose users pretty quickly IMO.
Of all those, I have tried Discord and Slack, and I had a really, really horrible time. Neither are things I intend to use of my own volition, and am inclined to argue against using if I have a say.
Drag and drop, text inputs, selections, UI elements, keyboard shortcuts, state preservation – none of those worked as they should. I would accept a divergence for a legitimate improvement, but it's just system-wide basic functionality missing.
All of that works correctly in Telegram. There is great value in adhering to the system conventions, design, and using native elements – it's fairly clear what is supposed to be what, a good chunk of the time, and there is minimal context switching as I use other native apps.
> If Instagram or Airbnb used native iOS/Android design they'd lose users pretty quickly IMO.
Those are services.. where would people go to replace Instagram? Twitter? Airbnb, what other big service has brand mindshare that people know about for fly-by-night unregulated sleeping accomodations?
I don't think iOS/Android design would cause them to lose or gain users.
What I care about most is speed/latency.
Uber and Slack look nice but they're rather slow. After a week, the "looks nice" part ceases to matter and all that's left is the annoyance of waiting 200ms-1000ms between every action.
I agree with that, but also 99% sure the latency in those apps have nothing to do with their graphic design and more to do with these apps waiting for an API roundtrip response before updating the UI, and possibly lots of analytics bloat.
As long as the Russian government is able to keep funding it? :)
I believe the owner/founder was kicked out of Russia. It was also banned in Russia for a while, at least they tried banning it.
Can you please at least read the first paragraph of wikipedia before making allegations? Russian government hates telegram with a passion
Telegram is free. Who pays for it and why?
Any strong evidence of this? I mean actual links or investigations proving that?
Or are you deliberately spreading unsubstantiated claims?
Strong evidence? Good luck with that. However, if a service costs millions per month to even exist and yet it is free to use, something does not add up. Or do you honestly believe that there is such thing as “free lunch”?
Be nice if Americans could make something this good again. Have you seen WhatsApp lately? It's a pure travesty.
They already have and it is called Quill. [0]
Works on web, macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android and already looks promising to be the diamond standard of chat software and compete against the alternatives.
Impressive piece of extremely high quality software so rare in this software industry.
Holy s*t this looks amazing. Our (multi-disciplinary) team has been struggling with Zulip, which adopts the threaded messaging paradigm we need, but has a face only an engineer could love. This looks like it could be a drop-in replacement without the UX quirks.
Thanks for the rec.
Is it? Granted, I've only been using it for three years but... its hasn't really changed that whole time? It's fine?
I like whatsapp a lot, personally. The stickers aren't as good as Telegram, though.
I’m back to WhatsApp after many months of full time Signal usage. People started leaving Signal one by one. Some of them really tried. Not many had joined anyway. For most remaining contacts Signal was and for more it remained installed just for me.
A medical emergency in the family and I was back on WhatsApp in a second.
Signal kept crashing, remained full of UI bugs (the kind I just couldn’t believe is there has been there for months and years; yeah the simple and silly ones), functionality bugs, slightly better than barely useable calling, delayed messages, broken notifications, extremely frustrating and broken encryption key update even when there was no such actual update — while the foundation kept giving us new emojis/stickers and worked on crypto. Nice gesture I reckon. And yeah, still a closed garden.
No opinion really. It’s just how it is. I use Apple’s phone and computer which is proprietary and closed garden by design, effort, and lobbying. Who am I kidding.
So no, I’m not going to say Telegram is shady. Maybe it is but so are others. Maybe not Signal (or is it?). It’s just that Telegram is far from being the personal messaging/communication app, at least around me. It’s an extension of other online communities like subreddits. Discord is eating into that share anyway. It’s used for apartment groups. COVID update channels (especially in India where very high up offices still have public Gmail IDs) and all that. Oh, they do have literally the best mobile and desktop apps among its peers. By many miles.
Telegram does not have group voice nor video calls. It has voice (and now video) chats.
// Unless I am not aware of any recent change, I tested this last month and don't see any related update ever since.
Which is not the same, and actually, for me is not useful at all. The main difference is that a "chat" does not ring the other participants' phones, which is a must for me to "call" my family either voice or video. You must first tell them through chat that you will create a voice or video room/chat. For 1-on-1 it does have calls, as it rings. For groups, it does not.
That actually sounds the right way to do it - do you really want your phone to ring everytime someone in a group initiates a voice or video call?
I did not tested group (video or audio) calls, but 1 on 1 it works exactly as you (and me) expect. You could just call someone and it will ring on other side.
Is any of this end-to-end encrypted?
Likely not, else they'd have confirmed it in their announcement and/or updated their E2E 1-to-1 video call documentation. The Verge asked and never got a response: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/28/22407752/telegram-group-v...
Documentation I mentioned: https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end/video-calls
And ephemeral, when desired by the user.
This is kind of loaded. I do think Telegram does an excellent job at ephemerality from a practical standpoint. Without being able to audit their server though, we have no clue if 'disappeared' chats and messages are actually scrubbed from their server.
I was once banned from the service for playing around with very old clients and had a back and forth with them over email for a week or so (it was re-enabled and they apologized for the inconvenience). They are prickly and refuse to give any details over how data is managed.
Interested to read a blog post about that story if you decide to write about it. Woz tought us never to trust a computer. Trusting software seems equally risky. Approaching comms from this perspective leads one to assume the best place to hide, so to speak, is in the open—in plain sight.
>Telegram does an excellent job at ephemerality from a practical standpoint. Without being able to audit their server though, we have no clue if 'disappeared' chats and messages are actually scrubbed from their server.
Aren't disappearing messages a feature of secret chats? If my understanding is correct here, these messages are not backed up to the cloud. Rather they are stored within your device. That's precisely why e2ee synced chats are not available.
I wasn't referencing E2EE, I was specifically talking about their regular 'cloud' chats. I am speaking of features like deleting old messages from prior chats or even going as far as removing your account. These are not possible to do on many other more secure chat systems, I cannot tell you how many new Matrix users are frustrated that this is not possible there but it's simply not in a federated system, cannot force other servers to scrub your server's messages. It is practical to have this ability to tear down comms and scrub a shareh/synched history but it is nor perfect.
You are correct about their secret chats. The secret chats limitations (inability to sync) actually encourage destroying and recreating sessions when needed vs Signal that is intended for longer synched sessions. Not having to worry about those sessions syncing to a system you may not be in front of is also a benefit.
> Without being able to audit their server though, we have no clue if 'disappeared' chats and messages are actually scrubbed from their server.
Automatically disappearing messages are only available in "secret" chats and those are end-to-end encrypted.
There is possibility to set self-destruct timer for photos you send.
You are right. I forgot that. I guess that is not end-to-end encrypted in regular chats.
_And_ ephemeral? Does that mean this is end-to-end encrypted?
The ephemeral functionality is different from end-to-end encrypted functionality. The former is part of the end-to-end encrypted chats, and can be modified as needed. It's basically a timer that controls when your messages disappear.
So, it's _not_ end-to-end encrypted?
The secret chat- one-to-one has ephemeral option. You can set up auto delete in groups now.
"Secret" groups are in the works, I believe
Telegrams devs are next level
Telegram is not E2EE. Avoid.
E2EE is genuinely hard to implement in the context of a chat service with server-side chat history, large (10k+ user) group chats, and multiple clients (including web applications).
I'd flip that around and say that server-side chat history, large group chats and multiple clients are hard to implement in the context of an E2EE chat service. What I mean by that is: E2EE is a necessity, not some nice-to-have feature.
Building a chat service with server-side chat history but without E2EE is like building a car with very nice headlights that doesn't actually move.
Signal has server-side chat history, no? And the protocol is open. So that part of the argument is moot.
Signal chat history is client-side. You have to explicitly "back up" and "restore" messages to move to a new device, and if you lose your phone, your chat history is gone forever.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...
And again, Telegram __does__ have e2e 1-to-1 secret chats. It's just that the group chats do not. This doesn't stop you from starting a secret chat with each and every person you'd like to chat with e2e.
Your info is outdated.
As far as I know, one-on-one chats are not E2EE by default (there's a "secret chat" opt-in) and group chats cannot be encrypted at all. Has that changed?
Not supporting E2EE (cite: Telegram is not E2EE) and E2EE being not on by default are two very different things.
Not being on by default has an impact on other things, that the users value more. If they were on by default, they would lose it and Telegram would lose part of its appeal. This way, users themselves can choose the trade-off they are happy with.
Not having it enabled by default means most people will never enable it at all. That's just plain reckless.
Privacy is a human right; it shouldn't be part of any "trade-off", just like you can't sell yourself into slavery, even if you really wanted to.
> Not having it enabled by default means most people will never enable it at all. That's just plain reckless.
Yet, there we are. People value that other functionality more. You may not like it, but that's how they are.
> Privacy is a human right; it shouldn't be part of any "trade-off", just like you can't sell yourself into slavery, even if you really wanted to.
You are now off the rails. The problem with the trade-offs is not social.
> People value that other functionality more. You may not like it, but that's how they are.
I've once listened to a presentation given by someone from the company behind AdBlock Plus. They were explaining their (back then) new "Acceptable Ads" program and how an overwhelming amount of users chose to let the program enabled.
They even had a pie chart showing over 90% participation in the acceptable ads program and interpreted it as user choice. ("That's how they are")
After the presentation I asked whether they've tested how many users actively enable Acceptable Ads participation in the settings if it's off by default. To noones surprise they did not run such a test.
Not changing the defaults should not be interpreted as user choice if the same settings end-state is not reproducible with other defaults.
Usually any default, no matter how hostile, stays set. The reality is that users can be nudged easily and rarely ever change any settings at all.
This is not about default being certain function off.
This is about that one functionality being mutually exclusive with other functionality. If you enable E2EE, you disable cloud sync/history, multi-device use, message forwarding, etc. In normal use, users want the latter and if they need the secret chat, it is available.
In your example with Adblock Plus, there was no trade-off (to the user; there obviously was for the company). With Telegram, there is.
> This is about that one functionality being mutually exclusive with other functionality.
That is a design decision made by Telegram. My e2ee Signal and Matrix groups sync just fine across devices, preserve message history, allow message forwarding, etc.
Not enabeling those features is a nudge against using the e2ee-feature. Facebook Messenger does the same by crippling their encrypted chat experience.
The reason most people on WhatsApp enable unencrypted cloud backups is not because they really desire their message history to be leaked to Google/Apple but because they get occasionally nudged by a popup to enable it.
Those nudges work. It does not matter whether it's a good or a bad action they nudge to make one central assumption about them: settings should not be interpreted as user choice if the results aren't tested against complementary nudges.
Signal does not sync across devices; they have per-device queue and the message is encrypted with each device keys. If your device doesn't pick the message from the queue on time (either before queue getting full, or expiring after ~60 days), you won't have that message on that specific device, ever. You also won't have older messages (before you enrolled the device) on it (that also means you won't have the old messages on your new phone, without transferring them or restoring from backup).
Signal does it relatively right; but the nuances are difficult to explain. Even here, on HN, it is difficult to explain the Telegram's tradeoffs, how would you explain that to common users?
That's interesting! I didn't know that.
> it is difficult to explain the Telegram's tradeoffs, how would you explain that to common users?
I think that serves as an additional indicator for the trade-off decision not being a conscious user choice.
I'm not sure many people would opt for unencrypted chat even if they fully understood those particular multi-device limitations you described.
It's bothersome that you don't admit that your false statement was false and continue to double down with irrelevant discussion. Telegram has E2EE therefore you are wrong.
"Telegram is not E2EE" is factually incorrect.
WhatsApp has E2EE however it ships your private keys to cloud storage by default. So it's even less secure than Telegram.
If you install Telegram and message someone, your message is not E2EE. That falls under "not E2EE" in my book.
You should probably adjust your book because not having e2ee and not having e2ee by default are two different things.
I like the psychedelic inspired animated backgrounds
Lots of oppressive governments and controlling entities are not happy about it.
Kudos to Telegram team!
How is telegram funded? App is near perfection so I wonder how this can be an ad free app.
Pavel Durov is a billionaire and this is his (and his brother's) pet project. He made his money starting VK (Russia's Facebook)
They raised a billion in bond sales in March. It likely became difficult to keep self funding Telegram.
Title is a bit misleading: many channels already have ads, Telegram just wants a cut now.
They raised a billion a few months ago.
If it's not encrypted end-to-end, why exactly would it be alarming to an oppressive government?
It's still encrypted over the wire. And Pavel Durov isn't exactly a bootlicker (see his history with Russia).
That said, who knows who has access to Telegram servers.
So, it's encrypted exactly the same way ChatRoulette is?
I have long predicted that Telegram is the next facebook, but far better. Telegram is yet another centralized social network that is rolling out payments, video, etc.
It's not open source backend or customizable. But it's probably the most libertarian/freest one from the closed source solutions, that won't kick you off, and the software is very good.
We could consider integrating with them (for example, instead of connecting your mobile via sms, you could connect your telegram and then receive notifications there from some FTL bot).
PROBLEM
Still, of course, keep in mind it's a closed source and proprietary backend:
https://yalantis.com/blog/whats-wrong-telegram-open-api/
If you want an open source network to power "Web 2.0" communities, there aren't many good solutions. Diaspora, Matrix, Mastodon, Inrupt, etc. are just not on the same level as Telegram for regular users.
For Web 1.0 we have Wordpress, which powers 40% of all websites in the world now. But somehow for Web 2.0 there are no good alternatives, so all our public discourse is taking place on privately owned platforms, and now the US government has put out bills seeking to break up big tech. How about trying a more libertarian solution first: open source.
SOLUTION
We've been building something for the last 10 years, and giving it away as open source: https://github.com/Qbix
Here is a demo that we did for Yang's campaign two years ago, and kept it around as a demo, it has payments, video, etc. also but it uses open Web standards like WebRTC and WebPayments to do so, and it's completely open source: https://yang2020.app
PS
Web 3.0 is value transfer and programmable smart contracts, e.g. Ethereum web3 l9brary, etc. That happens to be radically open source (just like Web 1.0) because (for now) these blockhains and the code they run are all public, and you are encouraged to verify your smart contracts on EtherScan, etc.
What nobody talks about is how beautiful and unique their illustrations are in every release notes and blog posts.
It's refreshing to see original thoughts in illustration.
Am I missing something here? This just looks like Zoom or Teams or any of the other video calling apps that have been running the world for the past year. What's so special about it?
Telegram desktop client is written in C, takes 20MB or ram and can download 1,000 messages in 3 seconds.
Teams takes 500MB of ram and pegs a quad-core cpu to 70% to updates some smileys
Even mobile Telegram is so small and efficient despite being feature-packed. Just compare 67Mb of the Telegram installed Android app with 156Mb of Discord, 623Mb of WeChat, etc.
thou for ppl that grew up with operating systems on floppy disks, 67MB is quite a load for a chat software ;)
This does a bunch of great things. Its focus isn’t video chat. Teams and Zoom are awful for most situations or actions. Zoom excels at [group] video chat/meetings/webinars only.