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WhatsApp is blocking Telegram links
- venning 11y agoPlaying devil's advocate: WhatsApp is a $22B investment. It makes sense to try to prevent it from being canabalized from the inside. We've seen something like this before, when AIM allowed MSN Messenger to interoperate. I know this is a little different, but that was still how AIM lost. Here is a fantastic war story from one of the MSN engineers on the battle to subvert AIM [1]. [1] https://nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/ https://nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/
- amyjess 11y ago> We've seen something like this before, when AIM allowed MSN Messenger to interoperate. I know this is a little different, but that was still how AIM lost. Lost? AIM was the dominant IM platform in the US until the late 00s/early 10s when mobile and cloud-based services took over. First SMS/MMS and then platforms like Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, and Skype. The only place MSN was dominant was third-world countries like Brazil.
- Laaw 11y agoSMS/MMS lost? Tell that to my friends/family/telcos.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- amyjess 11y agoNo, I said that AIM was first overtaken by SMS/MMS and then by Facebook/Google/Skype. I didn't say that SMS/MMS died out, just that it was joined by the others.
- MAGZine 11y agoMSN was way more popular than AIM in parts of Canada (maybe all, I can't speak nationally). Probably, AIM usage correlated with AOL's marketing strategy, meaning it prevailed in the US, though I'm not even sure about europe. Anyhow, your assertion that MSN was only dominant in 3rd world countries is unfounded.
- realusername 11y agoDon't know about other countries, on my case in France, it was MSN-only, I've never seen anyone with a AIM account ever. I had no idea it used to be popular in the US, I've actually learned that now.
- scottmcf 11y agoI'd say MSN had the edge over AIM in Scotland too, although the populations overlapped heavily (i.e. most people I talked with had both).
- venning 11y agoFair point. I got a little word-happy.
- roymurdock 11y agoFrom my experience, AIM lost because it was the cool thing to do in high school before everyone had cell phones. Once texting/BBM was a thing, AIM became completely obsolete. I don't think I know anyone who ever used MSN Messenger.
- fluxquanta 11y ago>I don't think I know anyone who ever used MSN Messenger I did because it had the best quality video chat at the time, before Skype became a thing, but that was probably 15 years ago. My current company used to use it for in-office communication as recently as five years ago when I was first hired. It was an abysmal mess of sending out group chats as individual windows every time someone had a question. For a software company it was really disgraceful.
- ParadoxOryx 11y agoMy company used Yahoo! Messenger for the longest time. Thank goodness for HipChat/Slack.
- giancarlostoro 11y agoBut MSN had group conversations (as far as I remember), why not simply use those?
- fluxquanta 11y agoOur office was about 20 people at the time. Any time anyone had a question, but didn't know who to direct it to, a new group conversation was initiated with everyone in the office. That was the problem.
- joepie91_ 11y agoIn the Netherlands, there was almost nobody who didn't use MSN Messenger.
- izacus 11y agoMSN Messenger was one of those "regional" services simillar to WhatsApp - it was very popular in Europe, pretty much everyone used it around here, while as far as I heard it was very rare in US.
- HappyTypist 11y agoPreventing interoperatibility is one thing. Rewriting user messages without their consent is another.
- an4rchy 11y agoWow, didn't expect this from WhatsApp. I wonder if we can hear it from their side to see if they have a specific reason. Also, are they blocking any other messenger links i.e WeChat, Line etc or just Telegram.
- corv 11y agoIt's not particularly surprising considering they are owned by Facebook.
- thecatspaw 11y agobut they had to know that people would go dig through the sourcecode and find out that it was not just some random glitch, but a deliberate action on their part
- embik 11y agoI think you confused WhatsApp and Telegram now. WhatsApp does not have open source code, Telegram has. WhatsApp is blocking the links though.
- thecatspaw 11y agoI was talking about this: http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/12/01/whatsapp-is-blocking-telegram-links-in-the-android-app/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/12/01/whatsapp-is-blocking...
- pistoriusp 11y agoDid you read the article?
- jcl 11y agoAssuming the source code posted in the article is the only code doing the blocking, it's only blocking links where a domain or subdomain is "telegram", although the regex could easily be altered to block other links, too.
- fabian2k 11y agoMy suspicion woud be that they triggered some automated anti-spam system. Intentionally blocking your competitor in this situation doesn't seem like a good idea, it mostly generates publicity for them.
- tshtf 11y agoThe Android APKs have been decompiled which confirmed this was completely intentional: http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/12/01/whatsapp-is-blocking-telegram-links-in-the-android-app/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/12/01/whatsapp-is-blocking... > The smoking gun is a pattern match performed on any URL string that begins with the word 'telegram.' In the most recent version of the app, these strings are classified as a "bad host," so that no hyperlink is generated and it becomes impossible to copy or forward any message with that URL. No other strings trigger the match, so this block is purposefully targeted at Telegram.
- fabian2k 11y agoThanks, that looks like really solid evidence for intentionally blocking them. I see no way to explain this than anything but an attempt to block their competitor. I still think this will result in more publicity for Telegram than all the messages that are blocked.
- JosephRedfern 11y agoMaybe times have changed and these things are now included in the dex file, but that doesn't seem to be a verbatim decompiler output to me. Local variable names aren't normally stored in an APK, they're just refereed to by register numbers. For instance, I wouldn't expect to see "for(Pattern badHost : BAD_HOSTS)" (specifically the badHost) - last time I checked, this information would be lost during compilation. I'm not suggesting that the code is falsified - the person that decompiled it probably just guessed at some variable names and re-factored to make it more readable. It just stood out to me, so I thought it was worth mentioning.
- bathory 11y ago
- ilurk 11y agoWhatsapp (facebook) is not the only the only company keen on censoring. Airbnb chat also censors messages. Typically when you try to give your number or whatsapp or some link.
- striking 11y agoI would think that's so communication is kept and recorded by Airbnb, for legal reasons.
- danmendes 11y agoYou would think that is the reason, and not the fact that their matching service can only appropriate value into the company if the two peers being matched can not effectively coordinate themselves?
- striking 11y agoThat's plausible, except when you do it that way there's a really great chance you'll be screwed over. Airbnb can protect its users to some degree, it's up to you whether you want to use it or not.
- mlrtime 11y agoYou still get screwed over with airbnb, they are not there to help you.
- Canada 11y agoNot in my experience. AirBnB holds all the money and they can choose to refund or not depending on the circumstances. Just try renting in another city with Craigslist. It's full of scams. But yeah, they censor emails, phone numbers and such in order to prevent deals from being made off site. They don't do it to protect anyone.
- plusquamperfekt 11y ago
- halviti 11y agoI use both whatsapp and telegram.. with whatsapp being the majority of my messaging, I'd been a little apprehensive since the facebook takeover, but haven't changed my usage habits. This was exactly what it took for me to start pushing my friends to telegram.
- NameNickHN 11y ago> pushing my friends to telegram Do you have any suggestions on how to do that? The People I know either think Whatsapp is gods gift to mankind and won't switch or they can't use anything else because the people they interact with think it's gods gift to mankind and won't switch. I find it pretty hard to break that cycle.
- brainburn 11y agoUhm, decent support on all your devices? (there's even a commandline client). Versus that ridiculous hack where you can whatsapp in the browser, provided you scan a qr code and have the phone on the same network.
- NameNickHN 11y ago> there's even a commandline client This totally speaks to me but I imagine saying to my buddies at the club: "You should use Telegram. It's free, you don't need an account, and best of all there is even a command line client.". That'll convince them right away. ;-)
- izacus 11y agoDid you missunderstand "... there is even ..." phrase? For most people Telegram offers pretty good desktop clients (as opposed to the rather horrible WhatsApp web experience).
- kccqzy 11y agoI don't think WhatsApp Web is a ridiculous hack. Instead I think it's quite an ingenious hack to allow you to use a computer to send and receive messages without 1) dealing with the pesky message synchronisation issues that plague iMessage, and 2) having the server store all messages. And your phone only needs to be connected to the Internet, not necessarily on the same network. Regarding the use of QR code, I think it's a clever way to authenticate too; no password to memorise, just a long random auth token.
- maxwellito 11y agoFunny thing: when I send 'https://telegram.org' https://telegram.org' the receiver got it as a hyperlink. But on my phone it remain in plain text. (I just tried with my colleague)
- stanmancan 11y agoThe fact that is is a hyperlink is a client sided feature. Regardless of what messaging system you use, it's just a plain text URL that gets transmitted, but the client identifies it's a URL and hyperlinks it for convenience.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Khao 11y agoI saw this pop up on /r/android yesterday and it made me and a couple friends sign up for Telegram, so I guess good job whatsapp on pushing more people towards Telegram. Streisand effect in action!
- 3333z777 11y agoA reason not to use Telegram: https://oflisback.github.io/telegram-stalking/ https://oflisback.github.io/telegram-stalking/
- plusquamperfekt 11y agoGiven the credibility attributed to Signal - f.x. by Bruce Schneier and Edward Snowden - I don't understand why it's not more popular than Telegram.
- Khao 11y agoI want something to replace Hangouts, WhatsApp and Messenger and Telegram fits the bill while it looks to me like Signal doesn't. My Telegram account can be synced on multiple PCs and devices, while Signal seems to be phone only.
- plusquamperfekt 11y agoMaybe for a synching feature it would be necessary to compromise on security of the data. The data is asymmetrically encrypted - so you'd have to synch it yourself by sending the data encrypted with you second phones key or you'd have to copy the private key itself. But I guess it would be possible. Though I don't miss this feature anyway.
- superuser2 11y agoiMessage already does this without leaking private keys by associating users with many public keys (per-device) instead of just one.
- snissn 11y agoIsn't telegram just a really bad version of signal?
- finnn 11y agoPeople seem to use it as a normal IM client. They have a web UI and don't really claim to be all that secure (eg not trying to compete with Signal). I don't understand the benefit over the numerous other IM apps, everyone who uses it just says "oh i like Telegram better" or "my friends are on it".
- kbart 11y agoAs far as I'm concerned, Signal is superior in every way. Telegram simply has gained a lot of publicity and increased its user base (which is critical for IM) thanks to E. Snowden.
- StavrosK 11y ago> Telegram simply has gained a lot of publicity and increased its user base (which is critical for IM) thanks to E. Snowden Why do you say that? Snowden keeps recommending Signal every time he's asked.
- fredleblanc 11y agoA friend and I downloaded Signal to try it out, and just couldn't get anything to work. I'm on iOS 8, the app would just crash anytime I hit any button to make an action (send a message, even delete my account). On his end (he was on iOS 9), it said it connected to me, but his messages just got lost in the ether in between us. I mean, I'm a technical guy. I don't understand what either of us was doing wrong. Have you seen anything like this in your experience?
- plusquamperfekt 11y agohttp://www.theverge.com/2015/11/3/9662724/signal-encrypted-chat-app-android-edward-snowden http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/3/9662724/signal-encrypted-c... Seems like he changed his mind. https://whispersystems.org/ https://whispersystems.org/
- jasonlotito 11y agoWhat's more likely happening is that Telegram links are being used in a lot more spam. As a result, it's much better for WhatsApp users as a whole to just block Telegram links. It's brute force, but it's better than a poor user experience.
- gkfasdfasdf 11y agoAccording to the Telegram FAQ [1] the Telegram Facebook page [2] has been taken down as well. [1] https://telegram.org/faq#facebook https://telegram.org/faq#facebook [2] https://www.facebook.com/tlgrm https://www.facebook.com/tlgrm
- Tinyyy 11y agoOh wow, that’s ridiculous! Facebook attacking Telegram to such an extent leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.
- issaria 11y agoSwitch to Telegram today, just to piss off Facebook. Doesn't matter how much many they donate to charity.
- izacus 11y agoThis is IMO one of the greatest dangers of leaving those huge corporations like Facebook, Google, Amazon etc. unchecked - they're starting to attack competition by leveraging their primary products (Amazon blocking Chromecasts, Facebook censoring links and pages about their lawsuits are two latest cases) and are working deliberately against interests of greater public (and capitalism itself if we can stretch that :) ) I think it's slowly high time the anti-monopolistic regulation looks into their business practices and starts considering cutting them up into discrete companies per market.
- rms_returns 11y agoIt is not the anti-monopolistic authorities (who are part of the system, anyway), but WE_THE_PEOPLE who need to do something, so that competition is assured. WE need to keep switching services and not let one service rule everything. Be it messengers, social networking apps, eCommerce stores, ERP software, anything - If we choose one organization to rule them all, it won't be very long before they start showing the traits of that one Saruman's ring that rules them all.
- Justsignedup 11y agoAny lawyers here? Would this be considered monopolistic behavior? Or a constitutional violation?
- DannyBee 11y agoyes and no and no
- thegayngler 11y agoIs it safe to say this is a kin to AT&T blocking calls from T-Mobile? I can't see how this isn't going elevate the profile of Telegram.
- plusquamperfekt 11y agoI'm opportunistically supporting more secure messengers by "digital osmosis". Next to WhatsApp I also have installed: 1. Signal 2. Threema 3. Telegram And I will use those (in described order) if possible. Threema seems to be comparatively popular in Germany, while Telegram is at least not among my peers and Signal (the one recommended by Schneier and Snowden) is only used by my gf (b/c I installed it for her).
- plusquamperfekt 11y agoI love the idea of encrypting by default - since yesterday my public key is available on the usual key servers. https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en/ https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en/
- mitm2mitm 11y agoFB released a product called Signal http://media.fb.com/2015/09/17/introducing-signal/ http://media.fb.com/2015/09/17/introducing-signal/ If you do a Google search that's the first result. Would be funny if they were afraid enough to do a SEO 'attack'. Yeah, tinfoil.
- plusquamperfekt 11y agoIf I search for "Signal" on google.com in a private Chrome window then the first five results are all about the "good" Signal app.
- tpinto 11y agoInteresting that WhatsApp didn't bother to update anything that much lately but they took their time to censor Telegram. Cool stuff.
- eljimmy 11y agoI hadn't taken notice of Telegram until now. I've just told all my friends who are very heavy Facebook chat users about it. A migration has begun.
- plusquamperfekt 11y agoBut it is also possible to parasitically communicate encryptedly through FB - isn't it? At least in a browser it should be possible.
- vamur 11y agoThis is a sign that Facebook is in trouble. More and more people are fed up with its slow UI and are moving elsewhere, and increasingly to Telegram.
- downandout 11y agoThis is an extraordinarily bad precedent. Facebook has traditionally bought companies that it felt were competitive threats (Instagram, Whatsapp, etc) even though a significant percentage of their growth came from shares on Facebook products. It now appears that they will deal with competitors by crushing their ability to grow. Of course, they are going to say that this is because of Telegram's links to terrorism. But any secure messenger can be used by bad actors, so that same excuse could be used for the wholesale blocking of all competing messengers. This is clearly anticompetitive behavior.
- degenerate 11y agoDon't assume FB never offered to purchase. Maybe they did, and Telegram turned them down. Then FB starts the dirty sabotage. We can only speculate if this is a retaliatory move by FB or not, but either way it's NOT ethical - and I'm very glad to hear many people are moving from WatsApp to Telegram against the foul play. Let's hope this is action #1 of FB driving their $19B purchase into the ground. They need to learn a lesson from this.
- cJ0th 11y agoA friend once mourned that she got too many spam mails. I recommended her a throwaway e-mail service via a private Facebook message. FB blocked my message telling me that I can not send it as it includes a dangerous link. I made a screenshot of this response and wanted to share that instead. The funny thing is that in the screenshot, FBs red comment re: the dangerous link was so blurry that you could not read it. I guess this was probably due to a compression algorithm they apply on pictures but it is funny that the rest of the message was easily readable in the screenshot.
- eveningcoffee 11y agoIt could be that it was also result of the character recognition. Could you repeat the test and provide the name of the service so others can try to replicate it?
- cJ0th 11y ago> It could be that it was also result of the character recognition. That's what I initially thought. But then again, it seemed a bit too paranoid. The name of the service is discardmail.com
- merlincorey 11y agoYes, even if you send a high quality PNG image to facebook, they will convert it to a low quality JPG. This is especially bad for things with text. See: http://lbrandy.com/blog/2008/10/my-first-and-last-webcomic/ http://lbrandy.com/blog/2008/10/my-first-and-last-webcomic/
- mikek 11y agoWhatsApp is not linkifying Telegram URLs, but Telegram is not even sending messages that are shared from WhatsApp. Telegram is open source, so you can see for yourself here. https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/74def22213846b1f90a26c86670035079dea032c/TMessagesProj/src/main/java/org/telegram/ui/LaunchActivity.java#L666 https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/74def22213846b1f90a26... On line 666: if (sendingText.contains("WhatsApp")) { //who needs this sent from ...? sendingText = null; }
- bwindels 11y agoI don't know what's worse, this, or the fact that it is in a 488 LOC method. I can't trigger this behaviour in telegram though on mac or windows phone. Maybe just for Android?
- amyjess 11y agoThat's because this is the Android source code. I don't have time right now to dig through the source myself, but the desktop source code is here if you want to see if this logic is in it: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop
- ex3ndr 11y agoMain Android app is built by iOS developer. It is have very low quality.
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoHoly shit, this is real: https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/src/main/java/org/telegram/ui/LaunchActivity.java https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/... And people raise an eyebrow when I say don't use Russian made software or hardware. This app is from the guys who started VK. There's significant levels of corruption in Russian business culture which goes unchallenged and it peters down to software. I imagine Facebook got sick of this treatment and retaliated. When is the media that is breathlessly hyping this issue going to even mention this?
- 11y ago
- myth_buster 11y agoCould someone with the time and resource at hand independently decompile and verify the veracity of the code? It looks a bit fishy as it reads like an actual code as opposed to one outputted from a decompiler.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Animats 11y agoAnother reason for using Mozilla Thunderbird for your communications needs. Soon we'll have wall charts of who can and can't talk to what.
- paul_milovanov 11y agoTo be the best, you need to learn from the best. Tencent's immensely popular WeChat (Weixin) has been blocking links to Baidu properties for a while now. Coming soon to a server near you!
- bad_user 11y agoSignal from Open Whisper Systems is open source, easy to use, provides rock solid encryption for both text and audio calls and is available on both iOS and Android: https://whispersystems.org/ https://whispersystems.org/
- Aoyagi 11y agoAnd it has neither Windows nor WP client. Oh, and you can't send all kinds of files over it.
- dijit 11y agoSeems to be working again here, but this sort of thing is enough to worry me though. Same problem as I have with facebook, there is too much critical mass to switch :(
- HappyTypist 11y agoI think this is a good opportunity to plug Signal. Telegram uses a non-standard DIY crypto protocol that already had attacks, its chats are not end to end encrypted by default, and Telegram stores all your messages in the cloud by default while deceptively advertising as a 'private' alternative. Signal / TextSecure on the other hand is encrypted by default, implements more thoroughly audited cryptography, and is recommended by Edward Snowden and Bruce Schneier.
- notspanishflu 11y agoNot an option for me. Signal / TextSecure is not available for Ubuntu Phones yet and coding efforts like janimo is doing (1) are only half-cooked by now. (1) https://github.com/janimo/textsecure-qml https://github.com/janimo/textsecure-qml
- spost 11y agoSignal's great. I don't use it because it doesn't sync chats between devices or have a desktop client. Full-on e2e is great, and I'd use Signal if it supported my use case, but it doesn't. So I use Telegram instead, as a fast, easy-to-use, grandparent-compatible chat client with sane picture and file-transfer support. The oddball encryption and the fact that it's not end-to-end by default is a downside, but it's better than plaintext and it's actually useful to me, so… Don't get me wrong, Signal is absolutely the right choice for people who don't need or care about multi-device syncing and only need a mobile client, or people who want the best security they can get. I fully support the widespread adoption of top-tier cryptography, including by people who don't need to protect their communications from global powers. But right now Signal is not (yet?) a one-size-fits-all solution.
- escobar 11y agoThere is an unfinished Browser plugin (Chrome) for Signal that has seen quite a bit of activity recently. I am excited at the prospect of being able to use Signal from a desktop, and am hoping that it gets an actual release date in the next year or so. https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop
- oznathan 11y ago"making the world more open and connected"