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I was so happy at seeing telegram, but it requires admin rights to the channel. There is so much content (a lot of it non-english) hidden away in telegram chann

I was so happy at seeing telegram, but it requires admin rights to the channel. There is so much content (a lot of it non-english) hidden away in telegram channels that I want to be part of the open web. If someone wants to take it up, it is definitely doable with a telegram user account, but the APIs are not readily usable: https://github.com/captn3m0/ideas#telegram-to-rss https://github.com/captn3m0/ideas#telegram-to-rss Also, if someone is looking to follow lots of GitHub projects using their release feeds, I wrote a OPML generator that uses your Starred repos to generate a OPML file for you: https://github.com/captn3m0/opml-gen https://github.com/captn3m0/opml-gen

solarkraft 8y ago
I believe that it might be against Telegram's ToS to scrape channels (Update: It doesn't seem to be). That said: I too really like the idea. I had been thinking about writing a tool to scrape Telegram channels for another project, but found tg-cli with its Lua, Python bindings and weird command line interface to be quite messy (so I gave up for then). Since this seems to be in decent demand, surely somebody has already written a tool for this?
- captn3m0 8y ago
  I tried tg-cli and a few mtproto compatible libraries, but it was all a huge pain to get working properly before I gave up: https://github.com/captn3m0/opengram https://github.com/captn3m0/opengram The good APIs are the bot ones which won't work here.
disiplus 8y ago
telegram has this shitty feature where if anybody knows your public username they can add you to any group they want. this is the source of the shitty spam on telegram right now. i was active in the crypto space and my username leaked. im now added to ton of spam and pump groups daily and i cannot block it. also you dont need admin rights to the channel, but you have to work with https://core.telegram.org/mtproto https://core.telegram.org/mtproto to scrape channels. i did some side project with this https://github.com/zerobias/telegram-mtproto https://github.com/zerobias/telegram-mtproto
- gsich 8y ago
  How is this different to other messages where your phone number is the username? Last I checked this was possible with Whatsapp too.
  - disiplus 8y ago
    your phone number is not your username on telegram. the username on telegram is like a handle on twitter, with the difference that on telegram you dont have to have a username. you can message anybody in your contacts without username. but if you chose to have a username on telegram that username is public, and searchable. and the worst part is that anybody can add your username to any channel. so tltr: username on telegram is something you chose and not your phone number.
    - gsich 8y ago
      >your phone number is not your username on telegram yes I know, haven't written that. >and the worst part is that anybody can add your username to any channel my point was that other messengers have public usernames too, mostly their phone number and suffer from that same problem.
      - disiplus 8y ago
        > my point was that other messengers have public usernames too, mostly their phone number and suffer from that same problem. the difference is important. the thing that is happening with telegram is the expected behavior, you are supposed to be able to add random online users with their username to groups and contact them, that is also the point for a username so you don't have to share you phone number. with whatsapp your phone number is not supposed to be shared with random strangers, and sure if somebody has your private mobile phone number he can spam you but that is not supposed to happen, and i imagine that whatsapp blocks that behavior if you try to do in for multiple users. with telegram i saw groups with 50k members added this way because there is a api for this, but there is no api for whatsapp and i think they block you after x tries or reports. the problem is much bigger with telegram.
zouhair 8y ago
Nice. Most of you would know but some won't, some GitHub pages come with RSS feeds.[0] [0]: https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub/releases.atom https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub/releases.atom

solarkraft 8y ago

I believe that it might be against Telegram's ToS to scrape channels (Update: It doesn't seem to be). That said: I too really like the idea. I had been thinking about writing a tool to scrape Telegram channels for another project, but found tg-cli with its Lua, Python bindings and weird command line interface to be quite messy (so I gave up for then). Since this seems to be in decent demand, surely somebody has already written a tool for this?

captn3m0 8y ago
I tried tg-cli and a few mtproto compatible libraries, but it was all a huge pain to get working properly before I gave up: https://github.com/captn3m0/opengram https://github.com/captn3m0/opengram The good APIs are the bot ones which won't work here.

disiplus 8y ago

telegram has this shitty feature where if anybody knows your public username they can add you to any group they want. this is the source of the shitty spam on telegram right now. i was active in the crypto space and my username leaked. im now added to ton of spam and pump groups daily and i cannot block it. also you dont need admin rights to the channel, but you have to work with https://core.telegram.org/mtproto https://core.telegram.org/mtproto to scrape channels. i did some side project with this https://github.com/zerobias/telegram-mtproto https://github.com/zerobias/telegram-mtproto

gsich 8y ago
How is this different to other messages where your phone number is the username? Last I checked this was possible with Whatsapp too.
- disiplus 8y ago
  your phone number is not your username on telegram. the username on telegram is like a handle on twitter, with the difference that on telegram you dont have to have a username. you can message anybody in your contacts without username. but if you chose to have a username on telegram that username is public, and searchable. and the worst part is that anybody can add your username to any channel. so tltr: username on telegram is something you chose and not your phone number.
  - gsich 8y ago
    >your phone number is not your username on telegram yes I know, haven't written that. >and the worst part is that anybody can add your username to any channel my point was that other messengers have public usernames too, mostly their phone number and suffer from that same problem.
    - disiplus 8y ago
      > my point was that other messengers have public usernames too, mostly their phone number and suffer from that same problem. the difference is important. the thing that is happening with telegram is the expected behavior, you are supposed to be able to add random online users with their username to groups and contact them, that is also the point for a username so you don't have to share you phone number. with whatsapp your phone number is not supposed to be shared with random strangers, and sure if somebody has your private mobile phone number he can spam you but that is not supposed to happen, and i imagine that whatsapp blocks that behavior if you try to do in for multiple users. with telegram i saw groups with 50k members added this way because there is a api for this, but there is no api for whatsapp and i think they block you after x tries or reports. the problem is much bigger with telegram.

zouhair 8y ago

Nice. Most of you would know but some won't, some GitHub pages come with RSS feeds.[0] [0]: https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub/releases.atom https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub/releases.atom