4 ms·

I don't know, I think you can have an open platform and keep spam low. I have yet to encounter any spam on Telegram for the past 8 or so months I've been using

by nv-vn 10y ago

I don't know, I think you can have an open platform and keep spam low. I have yet to encounter any spam on Telegram for the past 8 or so months I've been using it. I think that might partly be a result of the openness of the platform -- since they provide an official API for bots, nobody is going to go to great lengths to reimplement that functionality through an unofficial API (especially for positive reasons... most Skype spam bots likely rely on some well-intended library somebody wrote for legitimate purposes). And since they're able to apply rate-limiting to the bots and let users report them, it makes it much easier to control those bots (as they're not even "real users" and have many more limitations on what they're able to do). I think that because of that, people with a legitimate reason to use bots are the only ones who actually put effort into making bots, which caused the apparent lack of spam bots.

cstejerean 10y ago
Spam is probably low because it's not yet a platform that spammers are interested in. That may very well change. From what I can tell most of the big networks have found that the only way to cut down on spam is to be aggressive abou securing the protocol.
- q3k 10y ago
  It's not security. It's obfuscation. If you can use a client program to send messages, you can implement your own client code - if you put in enough effort.
duskwuff 10y ago
As far as I can tell, Telegram keeps spam at bay through: 1. Requiring a unique phone number for signup, and heavily restricting accounts which appear to have used a VOIP phone number for signup (including Google Voice numbers). Restricted accounts can't initiate conversations, so they can't really send spam. 2. Allowing users to report spammers that get past #1, and limiting the accounts of users that get reported. For details, see: https://telegram.org/faq_spam https://telegram.org/faq_spam
- pdkl95 10y ago
  So those of us that do not have a unique phone number shouldn't be allowed to communicate?
  - lm2s 10y ago
    Yes, you should and the choice exists, like the root comment mentioned. There are other services which allow you to communicate with people without having to associate your phone number with the service.
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      The existence of an alternative protocol doesn't help without interoperability between the protocols, which will never happen. If I have to first convince anyone I want to communicate with to first e.g. make an account on my XMPP server, communication is going to be much more difficult and sometimes impossible. Telegram isn't the only service that assumes a 1-to-1 mapping of phone numbers to people; Signal also has this problem. While you enjoy your "spam free" service, some of us will have to work with the separate but not equal alternative. In case you haven't noticed, as the common communication environment has become more and more locked-down (starting with mobile, and now spilling over into desktop), fewer people are using open alternatives. Simply observing that open protocols exist doesn't make them an actual de facto alternative.
      - unlinker 10y ago
        Get a phone number like everybody. You are like 0.0000001% of the market. Nobody is going to twist their product to cater to you.
        pdkl95 10y ago
        > Get a phone number like everybody. Are you paying for it? I can be reached by telephone. What I don't have is a unique telephone number. This works perfectly fine for actual voice communication. If you think I can simply afford an extra monthly expense, you're wrong. > You are like 0.0000001% of the market. Made up statistics reveal your presuppositions. There are a lot of people that don't have a unique phone number. It's a minority position, but that's kind of my point: chat services do not inherently depend on traditional phone numbers, and requiring one is going to exclude more people than you probably realize.

by nv-vn 10y ago

cstejerean 10y ago

Spam is probably low because it's not yet a platform that spammers are interested in. That may very well change. From what I can tell most of the big networks have found that the only way to cut down on spam is to be aggressive abou securing the protocol.

q3k 10y ago
It's not security. It's obfuscation. If you can use a client program to send messages, you can implement your own client code - if you put in enough effort.

duskwuff 10y ago

As far as I can tell, Telegram keeps spam at bay through: 1. Requiring a unique phone number for signup, and heavily restricting accounts which appear to have used a VOIP phone number for signup (including Google Voice numbers). Restricted accounts can't initiate conversations, so they can't really send spam. 2. Allowing users to report spammers that get past #1, and limiting the accounts of users that get reported. For details, see: https://telegram.org/faq_spam https://telegram.org/faq_spam

pdkl95 10y ago
So those of us that do not have a unique phone number shouldn't be allowed to communicate?
- lm2s 10y ago
  Yes, you should and the choice exists, like the root comment mentioned. There are other services which allow you to communicate with people without having to associate your phone number with the service.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    The existence of an alternative protocol doesn't help without interoperability between the protocols, which will never happen. If I have to first convince anyone I want to communicate with to first e.g. make an account on my XMPP server, communication is going to be much more difficult and sometimes impossible. Telegram isn't the only service that assumes a 1-to-1 mapping of phone numbers to people; Signal also has this problem. While you enjoy your "spam free" service, some of us will have to work with the separate but not equal alternative. In case you haven't noticed, as the common communication environment has become more and more locked-down (starting with mobile, and now spilling over into desktop), fewer people are using open alternatives. Simply observing that open protocols exist doesn't make them an actual de facto alternative.
    - unlinker 10y ago
      Get a phone number like everybody. You are like 0.0000001% of the market. Nobody is going to twist their product to cater to you.
      - pdkl95 10y ago
        > Get a phone number like everybody. Are you paying for it? I can be reached by telephone. What I don't have is a unique telephone number. This works perfectly fine for actual voice communication. If you think I can simply afford an extra monthly expense, you're wrong. > You are like 0.0000001% of the market. Made up statistics reveal your presuppositions. There are a lot of people that don't have a unique phone number. It's a minority position, but that's kind of my point: chat services do not inherently depend on traditional phone numbers, and requiring one is going to exclude more people than you probably realize.