17 ms·

Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

370 points by Ours90 8y ago

ar7hur 8y ago
... or so says Durov, CEO of Telegram, without providing any way to fact-check his affirmation. I admire the PR stunt.
- patrickxb 8y ago
  Also, the article doesn't mention how many users sign up in a regular 24 hour period (say on Wednesday a week ago). 3M in 24h is a lot of sign ups regardless (if they had 200M users a year ago, that's over a 1% jump in total number of users), but it would be interesting to know how many more than usual that is.
nextstep 8y ago
Please, please, please use Signal instead. And tell your friends! Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims, but even if you trust the company, Signal has a far superior user experience. Telegram’s private messages are not enabled by default, and when you are using private messaging, numerous other features are disabled defeating the point.
- sz4kerto 8y ago
  > Signal has a far superior user experience. Why? I think Telegram is cool, not because of privacy but because of overall UX (speed, battery usage, reliability, etc.) Is Signal way superior in anything apart from privacy?
  - AiaMD13 8y ago
    Can't agree more. Have been using Telegram since I quit using Facebook, and it proved to be far more reliable then even whatsapp. The only problem is that most of people I know prefer and use whatsapp and it's been challenging fo me to maintain all the contacts in one app.
    - fvjft 8y ago
      In my experience Telegram has an outage every couple of months, while WhatsApp only drops dead once a year or so.
      - renholder 8y ago
        Since we're talking personal experience, Signal has never had an outage (that I was aware of).
        fvjft 8y ago
        We were talking about apps that have users.
        detaro 8y ago
        Group chats have been quite unreliable at times, although probably not due to outages, but bugs.
        robjan 8y ago
        In my experience, signal doesn't have reliable push notifications and sometimes takes a while to deliver group messages. Sometimes my friends send me messages on WhatsApp asking me to check Signal and the message hasn't arrived yet. I do prefer signal though because there is less chance that one of my contacts has backed up our conversation to Google Drive.
      - AiaMD13 8y ago
        I wasn't really implying that whatsapp is in any way better. I personally enjoy using Telegram. I just expressed my frustration, because I'd really like to have only one app in my phone with all the contacts in it instead of 3 or 4.
        martin_a 8y ago
        Same for me. I want end-to-end-encryption by default, bot integration and all people in one place. Would even pay monthly for that.
- purerandomness 8y ago
  Telegram is used primarily as a replacement for Facebook Groups, not for one-to-one communication. Signal doesn't offer Groups, so it's not something people will switch to. (Signal has Group Chats however, which is something completely different)
  - mourner 8y ago
    That's not true, at least not in areas where Telegram is prevalent (Eastern Europe). Here, it's quickly becoming the default 1-1 messenger.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    Using Telegram heavily for both one-to-one, groups and channels. I don't know if it is different in other markets but this seems to be common in my circles. Oh, and BTW: The security situation around Telegram continues to confuse me so I'm personally only recommending it for postcard-style messaging.
  - roel_v 8y ago
    What is the difference?
  - lavezzi 8y ago
    >Telegram is used primarily as a replacement for Facebook Groups, not for one-to-one communication. That's simply not true. People using it for group chat is a much more recent turn of events.
  - robjan 8y ago
    Telegram groups and Facebook Groups are incomparable. Facebook Groups is more like a forum with threaded discussions and Telegram groups is more like IRC channels with one realtime chat
- franky47 8y ago
  Signal on Android relies upon Google Play Services for the microphone and camera permissions, which can't be turned off. It is open-source [1] so one could install it without going through the Google Play Store (it's not on F-Droid though), but it's another case of Google's ever-expanding grasp over "interesting" (read: competing) Android apps. [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    It only depends on GPS if you actually have that installed. I don't, and Signal works fine using an official package (which you install the first time from their website, after which it self-updates).
  - _Microft 8y ago
    Wasn't the real reason that Moxie Marlinspike considered hosting with Google less questionable than allowing installing apps from third party sites?
- simias 8y ago
  I've never used Telegram but I do use Signal daily and if it really offers a "far superior experience" then Telegram must be akin to connecting to an IRC server with telnet as a client. Seriously though, Signal's UI is pretty terrible and they go out of their way to discourage third party clients. It's fine as a replacement for SMS (the way I use it) but if you're used to more fully featured web messengers it's a pretty big leap backwards.
  - kochthesecond 8y ago
    Feature wise I feel Signal has all the stuff I want in a messenger now. I use it on many different platforms and still experience a few too many bugs. I report them, but it breaks in subtle ways that are hard to reproduce. I think Telegram still has a better user experience.
  - emerongi 8y ago
    Which features are missing? I text and call through Signal and I've not felt like there is anything missing. For a while they didn't have support for front-facing cameras, but that was added some time in the last year. Only other problem I've had is that on some Android phones the "voicemail" feature (or w/e it's called) wasn't working well, but not sure if it's still a thing.
    - simias 8y ago
      The desktop app is electron junk that lacks basic features like changing spellchecking language and there's no pure web client like Whatsapp for instance. I also think it lacks some features of the mobile client like creating new groups and adding new contacts (or at least I haven't figured out how to do it). When I install the client on a new computer I can't access the history of the messages from the phone for a reason that eludes me. Frankly 90% of my frustrations with Signal come from this client, the experience on mobile is better, although still far from perfect. I'm not a fan of pure web clients but web.whatsapp.com is lightyears ahead of Signal's electron bloated and under-featured mess. The Android client crops the image when I take a picture through the app. No other application does that so I don't really know why it does it. I suspect it's a bug or maybe a bad setting I flipped by mistake but I can't figure out what's going on. As far as I can tell when you get a new phone the only way to synchronize message history is to create a local backup on one phone, write down the ~24 digit passphrase, transfer the backup by yourself on the new phone then load it from there. If there's a simpler way I haven't found it. Also I don't think you can move your "secret key" to the new phone, so you have to re-validate your safety number with them. Maybe there's a way to do all that but if I as a technical user wasn't able to figure it out while actively looking for it I have little hope for the average Facebooker. There's also no support for WhatsApp-style stickers, URL preview, Youtube embedding and all these bells and whistles that I personally don't care for but I'm sure would be missed by many WhatsApp/messenger users.
- lucideer 8y ago
  > Signal has a far superior user experience No. It doesn't. If you're going to advocate for an open alternative, at least be intellectually honest about it's pros/cons. You might have gotten used to Signal, and be unfamiliar with Telegram (and sure, much of usability has an element of subjectivity to it), but... the above statement simply isn't true in the general sense. Personally, I tend to try and advocate for Riot.im over Signal when trying to push friends to an alternative platform—it's preferable from an openness perspective for a lot of reasons. I am however well aware that Signal (along with most things) has a better user experience than Riot.im does currently. Telegram and WhatsApp are quite close in usability (they've each copied quite a few UI features back and forth, so there's a lot of familiarity in switching). And unfortunately not many alternatives really come close to either of them.
  - roel_v 8y ago
    Having just installed Signal yesterday, in what respect is it worse than Whatsapp (from a UI pov)? The only thing I found so far is the bad integration with contacts.
    - cosarara 8y ago
      Bad integration with contacts sounds pretty serious.
      - roel_v 8y ago
        Well yeah but it's not the mess the gp alludes to.
        kekebo 8y ago
        plus Signal doesn't store all your contacts on their server as Telegram and WhatsApp do
        roel_v 8y ago
        Do you mean that as a positive or a negative thing? Also, apart from what I mentioned above, I've also found out that with Signal it's very hard to transfer your chat history to another phone. (involves manually copying over a backup, entering 30 char key). I can't in good conscience recommend an app like that as a replacement to anyone, so I guess my Signal experiment will be short-lived.
- dpq 8y ago
  > Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims My love for the word "dubious" cannot be overstated. While there's been a lot of solidly-seeming (I am not a security researcher) criticism of TG security infrastructure, I don't recall a single instance of chats or metadata being actually compromised so far. > Signal has a far superior user experience. Not in this Universe, unfortunately. Signal is borderline unusable, and if I have the choice of pushing Signal vs pushing Telegram, I'll choose the latter - simply because it provides a much much better experience and will be able to retain the audience to a better degree, while people who install Signal will probably go back to Whatsapp/Messenger. > When you are using private messaging, numerous other features are disabled defeating the point Such as? The only feature that comes to mind is the absence of sync to other devices (which is kinda expected). Basically all one-on-one chat features are retained in Telegram's secret chats, and keep in mind that Signal doesn't offer these features to begin with.
  - DownGoat 8y ago
    > The only feature that comes to mind is the absence of sync to other devices (which is kinda expected). Why is that expected? Just because things are encrypted does not mean that they shouldn't be syncable. Signal offers this.
    - dpq 8y ago
      I stand corrected then: which was expected by me. It's awesome that Signal provides this feature, but I'm afraid it alone won't be sufficient to entice users to switch to Signal en masse. Still, this doesn't invalidate my question as of which other features are missing from TG secret chats; being an active Telegram user I can't put my finger on any.
  - Arnt 8y ago
    Signal is borderline unusable? I've never used Telegram but if that's your assessment of Signal, Telegram must be great. Can you tell me about it?
    - dpq 8y ago
- ymolodtsov 8y ago
  Even cloud synced messages alone will be a better user experience for the majority of users.
- teekert 8y ago
  The user experience of Telegram is by far the best of all apps with the sleekest ui's and the native (electron) apps for all platforms. Moreover because of the lack of e2e encryption (on standard chat) all your messages are just there when you log in and are easily searchable. Telegram also has very nice channels and some excellent bots and a very nice feature to send yourself stuff you want accessible anywhere... But imo Signal is superior and has my preference due to its privacy focus. It also has a desktop app by the way and it works ok. Of course Signal's server implementation is still closed but something like Matrix/Riot is too much to ask from "normal people" (like my mother and father who I got onto Singal with ease...).
  - j16sdiz 8y ago
    It is Qt-based, not electron
    - runn1ng 8y ago
      At least on Mac, Telegram has mysteriously two apps in Mac App Store, one is Electron and one is native. I never know which is which One is named "Telegram" and one is "Telegram for Desktop" and they have exactly the same icon, but different sets of features. edit: I was wrong, neither of the two is Electron, see below
      - fnord123 8y ago
        Telegram for Desktop is https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop (Qt, open source stuff) Telegram is https://github.com/overtake/TelegramSwift https://github.com/overtake/TelegramSwift (Swift, Core* libraries) Both are native.
        runn1ng 8y ago
        Oh. In that case, I was wrong. I still don't understand the need for two official apps though
- lloeki 8y ago
  Seriously, you have to realise this is about migrating from Messenger. Messenger, from Facebook. Any doubts about the "dubious claims" of Telegram are completely overshadowed by the definitive certainty that Messenger is extremely privacy invasive. Also, the Telegram experience is simply stellar throughout, performing brilliantly even under harsh network conditions. Signal just offers an insanely bad user experience.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    > Signal just offers an insanely bad user experience. I don't agree with the claim that Signal has superior UX over Telegram, but it's definitely not insanely bad either. It has some rough edges, and it's desktop client is not that fully featured and doesn't look that great, but otherwise it's a perfectly fine app that my mother can use without problems and without specific instructions. That's leagues above, say, Riot, or IRC, and I feel that "insanely bad UX" really paints the wrong picture.
- tadzik_ 8y ago
  Please, please don't. Open Whisper Systems is a company that uses "open-source" as a marketing term while bullying the people who choose to take advantage of it. You can build your own client, but if you start to distribute it, they'll ban you from using their servers[1], with an explanation plain ridiculous for a company that took thousands of dollars from various open source foundations. The server is open source, but again, you have no guarantee that the official (and only) signal server is anything close to the software they published as open source. Telegram at least publishes libraries that you can actually use with their official service [2]. You still have to „trust the company” to a certain degree: you'll never get proper security without something like Matrix or XMPP where you can be in control over both ends of the communication. Still, a company like OWS or Telegram can do more or less to put users more in control over their end: and I'd argue that OWS is doing way less for that than Telegram does. [1] https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... [2] https://github.com/tdlib/td https://github.com/tdlib/td EDIT: removed "dishonest" – I wish I had strikethrough to use :)
  - detaro 8y ago
    That's not dishonest. You might not like their policy (I'm not a fan of it either), but it's clearly stated, based on consistent logic and not at odds with the software being open-source.
    - tadzik_ 8y ago
      Fair point; I guess too often I expect "free software" when I see "open-source". I don't think I'm the only one though, at least to a degree. When the only thing you allow your users is to read the source code, you are technically open-source, but it's the kind of openness that doesn't guarantee anything. More and more often companies use the term "Open source software" because they know that people will walk around the internet and say "it's safe and secure: after all, it's open source!" OWS is aware of this, which is especially valuable when you brag about privacy as a communications network, but they deliberately chose to limit what you can do with said "open source" – to a degree that's quite ridiculous for a company that calls themselves "Open (...) Systems" :)
- h91wka 8y ago
  Both Signal and Telegram use SMS for authN tokens, enough said. Being secure and censorship proof while relying on mobile networks just doesn't compute. Correction: or at least they used to? Now I realize that I am not completely sure.
  - kome 8y ago
    Signal is way worse because it requires you to have the cellphone always on. With Telegram you need a phone number to sign-in and then you can forget about it, and use it just on desktop/laptop. You can set a password as a 2 factor authentication (1st: sms or code to another telegram client 2nd: password).
    - oda 8y ago
      > Signal is way worse because it requires you to have the cellphone always on. Bullcrap. Signal works fine on data alone. I have Tasker automatically turn on airplane mode when I'm on WiFi and it's never caused me to miss a Signal message.
    - detaro 8y ago
      No it doesn't. you only need the phone for the initial link.
      - kome 8y ago
        so, yeah, every time you open your desktop you need a cellphone
        detaro 8y ago
        No. To set up Signal Desktop on a computer, you need a cellphone once.
        newscracker 8y ago
        Maybe you're thinking of WhatsApp, which requires the phone to be around. Signal Desktop doesn't need the phone to be around once you've finished linking the desktop to your account (which is one time). From the second time onwards, you could as well leave your phone turned off and/or in a different country and Signal Desktop would still work fine.
- reacharavindh 8y ago
  I mean, say Telegram is bad, but don't hype up Signal as the pariah to this peril. It is open source in the sense that you can read the source of the project, but can't really build it and use it for yourselves or verify the build you get via the App Store is the same as open source project. Practically open source as a marketing strategy. Secondly, it needs a phone number all the time to use, which ties in with personal identity. Why? A better alternative would be a project that allows someone to choose a username and be done with it! Like HN! The true danger of security is the false sense of it. It makes you feel okay to share personal and sensitive information. ️ I'd love for the Mattix project and riot.im to take off. Hopefully the government of France can throw its weight behind it for good causes.
  - kruczek 8y ago
    > Secondly, it needs a phone number all the time to use, which ties in with personal identity. Why? A better alternative would be a project that allows someone to choose a username and be done with it! Like HN! Thousand times this! And it is actually a problem both with Signal and Telegram. In the latter case, I managed to avoid installing Telegram app on the phone, by using Android emulator and registering from that, but why forcing users to use such workarounds, instead of simply allowing to register without any ties to the telephone. I'd be willing to pay for a messenger which provides privacy and is not tied to the phone.
  - meruru 8y ago
    >A better alternative would be a project that allows someone to choose a username and be done with it! Like HN! Like Riot!
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ubercow13 8y ago
    It's on fdroid
- kome 8y ago
  Just saying: with Telegram you need a cellphone to open an account, but you don't need a cellphone to use Telegram. With Signal you have to use a cellphone. And that's so unsafe and against any reasonable definition of privacy. Cellphones are tightly closed, data hungry, tracking devices. A IM that force the user to use a cellphone is a BAD at privacy.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- krageon 8y ago
  You say Signal has a superior user experience, but you then start talking about privacy features. Privacy features are important, but they have nothing to do with the user experience. That is leaving aside completely how much of a lunatic the main dev of Signal is (see his extreme reluctance to release on f-droid, for example. It took ages to get an apk that you could sideload and it comes with a lot of warnings about how much of a bad boy you are for using it), which is a compelling argument to never use it in my opinion.
- aclsid 8y ago
  Let's see, Signal is based in the US. Wechat is a Chinese system with a great UX that is based in China. Telegram used to be based in Russia. Whatsapp is owned by Facebook. I think it is pretty self-explanatory that in all these countries, governments haven't been exactly subtle when it comes to their efforts to intercept communications. In my mind, Telegram is the only software that resisted such interference in an almost heroic way and ended up having to move out of the country.
  - amedvednikov 8y ago
    Telegram is still banned in Russia.
  - AtHeartEngineer 8y ago
    Signal is in no way tied to the US government though, just because the developers are here doesn't mean anything. And if you are talking about the servers being here, everything is end to end encrypted, even if the government was to try to get useful data off signal servers, there is nothing to get.
  - fernandotakai 8y ago
    >Telegram used to be based in Russia. no, it's not. it was created by a russian (pavel durov) but it's developed by a company registered in london with servers all over the world[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Servers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Servers
- codedokode 8y ago
  Signal requires a phone number which discloses your identity and location and doesn't allow any alternative options. If you could use it anonymously there would be more privacy.
- gsich 8y ago
  >Signal has a far superior user experience Signal has no bots. [0] is terrible to use, since you need a new phone number for every new bot you make. (Of course you could all cram it into a single number) 0 https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli
- Fice 8y ago
  Neither Signal nor Telegram are acceptable communication systems. Both are isolated and fully controlled by a single company, both require mobile phone numbers and unduly trust mobile carriers for user authentication (at least by default), see https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-hack/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-h....
- Kye 8y ago
  Signal lacks a key feature that drives everyone I talk to regularly to use it: custom stickers. Maybe other chat platforms let people upload stickers, but Telegram already has them from hundreds of artists.
- Krasnol 8y ago
  Its funny how much drama you can stir up with that. It seems it's more important to kids today to have stickers and all kind of fancy useless crap. So yeah, it is "borderline unusable" for them. I get this and I don't care. I guess we have a way to filter out a certain audience with Signal ;)
secfirstmd 8y ago
Really wish Signal would get the bounce that occurs when this stuff happens instead.
- xrisk 8y ago
  I used Signal and my main qualm with it is that messages don’t sync between platforms and also the phone app is nowhere as good as Telegram’s.
  - rplnt 8y ago
    Well, if it would sync, it's not private. Unless the app allows you to sync the keys offline. Telegram doesn't sync either if you enable e2e encryption. But I agree that Telegram apps are great. Both Android ones, and the desktop ones as well. Small, fast, reliable, great UX.
    - ymolodtsov 8y ago
      iMessage is one of the few both E2E and cloud-synced messengers, but it's iOS only.
    - snaky 8y ago
      > Unless the app allows you to sync the keys offline And why wouldn't the app allow it?
    - ytjohn 8y ago
      Wire does E2E and sync. Each device has its own key though. https://wire.com/en/blog/key-verification-secure-conversations/ https://wire.com/en/blog/key-verification-secure-conversatio...
- alphadelphi 8y ago
  I came here to write the very same sentence. Signal is so underrated.
  - xrisk 8y ago
mourner 8y ago
It's a fantastic service from an engineering perspective. Fast, lightweight, reliable, simple, with low battery drain and data usage, and open source clients. A real joy to use.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Telegram's clients are nominally open source.
  - ubercow13 8y ago
    What more could you want?
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      Clients that are actually open source, updated on time, and have source code that actually builds?
- codedokode 8y ago
  Also it works under Windows XP unlike most of the competitors with poor quality Electron apps.
- fernandotakai 8y ago
  and the clients are not electron (QT on linux and works super well!). is it as safe as end-to-end? no. but the convenience is just too great.
mgw 8y ago
I understand Telegram's appeal because of its high quality apps and big feature list, but articles such as this one really should be more nuanced when pushing Telegram's marketing message of "We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone.". Their default mode is not end-to-end encrypted [1] and as such the product is less private than WhatsApp. Even tech-savvy users in my social circles are not aware of this and blindly recommend Telegram as the more private option. When talking about privacy these articles should at least mention Signal. I hope they will use their recent funding [2] to polish their apps and increase the speed of innovation. [1] https://telegram.org/faq#q-so-how-do-you-encrypt-data https://telegram.org/faq#q-so-how-do-you-encrypt-data [2] https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/
- s_dev 8y ago
  >Secret chats are meant for people who want more secrecy than the average fella. All messages in secret chats use end-to-end encryption. Seems fair to me -- some people do want some archive of their conversations but the option to limit the storage duration of those conversations. Secret chat is a heavily promoted feature -- it's not some hidden mode just because it's not the deafult.
  - dnate 8y ago
    There is literally no downside to end-to-end encrypting text messages. So it should be default. It is just harder to implement technically.
    - newscracker 8y ago
      That's not a very good use of "literally", because searching through encrypted messages will certainly be slower, and on mobile devices, this will have a bigger impact on responsiveness and battery life. That is a big downside on mobile (not desktop). Create similar chats that are long (like tens of thousands of messages) on different apps and compare Telegram's search speed with others'.
      - 8y ago
yes_man 8y ago
Telegram's end goal is to create value for shareholders. Eventually they will profit from user privacy violations. Not to parrot other comments, but we should all use Signal. Its' existence isn't based on investment dollars that expect returns in more dollars.
- dpq 8y ago
  > Eventually they will profit from user privacy violations. Where do you get this from? IIRC their plan is to launch a Internet platform TON and a cryptocurrency Gram, and make money off transactions. As far as monetization plans go, this one is a very long shot, risky and brilliant IMO.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- newscracker 8y ago
  > Not to parrot other comments, but we should all use Signal. Its' existence isn't based on investment dollars that expect returns in more dollars. Your argument doesn't make much sense on the Signal side either. How long will the $50 million that the Signal Foundation has really last for? And what happens after that runs out?
  - yes_man 8y ago
    What happens to Wikipedia every time the end of their runway is approaching? At least we can hope for a similar solution to appear for messaging.
    - newscracker 8y ago
      Why can’t that happen for Telegram and happen only for Signal? Who can predict if Telegram would do under some “foundation” and get funded that way soon? My point is that singling out Telegram doesn’t make sense in this context.
botto 8y ago
Telegram is scary and questionable. Inventing your own encryption is never the answer and reeks of horrible understanding of security, at this stage there is no reason they should not adopt a standard of communication like Signal protocol. Signal app itself is ok, it's a little....annoying as it requires a phone number and the UX needs some love. Keybase is great, It has ways of verifying you across multiple services and has end-to-end encryption using PGP. Also offers file storage.
- ymolodtsov 8y ago
  We still haven't seen any examples of Telegram being compromised.
  - botto 8y ago
    That's the same as saying that a car model is safe because there have not been any crashes yet with this make and model. No cars are safe because there are industry standards that a manufacturer is tested to ensure they are following. Closed source (both in code and implementation) has no place in the security world and anything security related should always be open for anyone to scrutinize.
    - GranPC 8y ago
      Feel free to scrutinize Telegram's crypto and E2E implementation for secret chats. It's open source and you can find it here: https://github.com/tdlib/td https://github.com/tdlib/td
      - rvnx 8y ago
        Yep, did it, not going to use Telegram now. Love the unsecure TLRPC objects deserialization that actually makes the native client crash and to not verify what other clients have sent: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DrKLO/Telegram/e397bd9afdfd9315bf099f78a903f8754d297d7a/TMessagesProj/src/main/java/org/telegram/tgnet/TLRPC.java https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DrKLO/Telegram/e397bd9afdf... and the tons of magic and undocumented numbers in the code: https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/jni/tgnet/Handshake.cpp#L278 https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/...
franky47 8y ago
Telegram got some bad press in France after it was revealed that some terrorist groups used it to coordinate their attacks [1]. Now most non-tech people I talk to about alternative messaging platforms know it as "The terrorist messaging app". [1] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/nouveau-monde/telegram-l-appli-des-terroristes_1790333.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/nouveau-monde/teleg... (French)
- diego_moita 8y ago
  And WhatsApp was used to promote and coordinate the genocide or the Rohinga people in Burma, spread fake news that helped elect the retarded proto-fascist Bolsonaro in Brazil, spread hate against gays in Eastern Africa,... I'm sure you also know how the Putin's friends used Facebook to help elect the Pussy-Graber in Chief in the US or give an hand to Brexit supporters. Maybe the problem is not the tool but how people use it?
paulie_a 8y ago
The only reason I saw fb messenger as popular was because fb was. the chat heads are dumb ( Google is trying to copy that for some reason), it tried to replace basic features of a phone, it randomly dialed people ( in HD!). In 2019, is it really that difficult to design an app, list of contacts, list conversation, timed delete etc in a normal looking ux. The state of messenging apps is terrible. On sure Google will release a new one soon though
vog 8y ago
I find it quite telling that a short outage does more damage to Facebook than any data breaches and mishandling of user data.
supernes 8y ago
I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy. People who care enough about the subject should know when and whether to use it for their communications. For everyone else, it's an outstanding alternative to Messenger/WhatsApp and Viber. Edit: I'd also like to add that maybe we need to make a distinction between the notions of privacy and secrecy. Privacy as understood by the majority of people is a broader concept than what more technically inclined people associate with the matter. I believe that then Telegram's decisions and use case can become clearer.
- kuhhk 8y ago
  > I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy. I recall the anger is not about any trade off. It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto. There’s no convenience factor or trade off here, they just literally did the thing the textbooks tell you not to do, and have ignored the industry’s calls to use strong crypto.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - p2detar 8y ago
    > It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto. I come across this a lot about Telegram and while I do agree, I think there have been no reports so far about hacks in Telegram's service, and it's online since 2013 or so.
    - kuhhk 8y ago
      6 years is a short time in cryptography. That isn't battle-tested. "Even worse, security doesn't provide immediate feedback. A dead patient on the operating table tells the doctor that maybe he doesn't understand brain surgery just because he read a book, but an insecure cryptosystem works just fine. It's not until someone takes the time to break it that the engineer might realize that he didn't do as good a job as he thought. Remember: Anyone can design a security system that he himself cannot break. Even the experts regularly get it wrong." -- Bruce Schneier Source: https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2009/0915.html https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2009/0915.html
chewz 8y ago
I am recommending Wire. https://wire.com/en/ https://wire.com/en/ https://wire.com/en/about/ https://wire.com/en/about/ https://wire.com/en/security/ https://wire.com/en/security/
- iagooar 8y ago
  If I could choose, it would be Wire for me, too. Unfortunately, it hasn't got real traction yet.
- Sendotsh 8y ago
  Wire is definitely my favourite of the secure IMs as far as UI/UX. It's also the one I've had most luck with when referring non-tech family and friends. They didn't like Signal or Riot (for a variety of reasons) but are happy to use Wire.
  - tome 8y ago
    It looks like you have to pay for Wire. Is that right?
    - chewz 8y ago
      Free for personal account, paid for commercial use. Discounts for edu and NGO.
    - nitrohorse 8y ago
      Not for Wire “Personal” (https://wire.com/en/products/personal-secure-messenger https://wire.com/en/products/personal-secure-messenger).
- Dolores12 8y ago
  i am an early user of wire. Logged in few weeks ago just to find out they took my username. Support say non-sense and now they just ignore my messages.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  Also somewhat off-topic, their backend is written in Haskell and on GitHub. Not terribly relevant for the end user, but I found it an interesting choice.
rvanmil 8y ago
When will HN learn that convenience beats security every single time? All posts that mention Telegram get the same tiring comments about security and they're all utterly pointless and preaching to the choir. Yes, we know there are more secure messenger apps out there, thanks. But unless they offer at least the same convenience as Telegram does, no one will use them except you and some of your tech friends. If you want security and privacy to become mainstream, simply make it a boring, invisible implementation detail of your messenging platform which is superior in convenience.
- botto 8y ago
  Keybase is very convenient, same features and is based on known standards and has arguably as good a UX as telegram. Why isn't that used more?
  - HHalvi 8y ago
    I hate the hassle of setting up Keybase on Mobile andDesktop so i have never bothered about it till now.
    - vonseel 8y ago
      Hassle? It’s incredibly straightforward. Maybe 2 steps to login to an account on iOS that already exists on desktop (preferences add devise, scan QR code).
  - pnutjam 8y ago
    I use keybase too, but I don't know anyone else; even though I've invited them...
- ta2223332221 8y ago
  If you want security and privacy to become mainstream, simply make it a boring, invisible implementation detail of your messenging platform which is superior in convenience I believe that is precisely Signal's philosophy. Which is why for example it uses/requires a phone number instead of a username - which then people also complain about on HN and elsewhere. That it's less convenient than other messengers (which I don't dispute) is not for the lack of trying. So I suspect the answer is the loudest users/commenters will "never" learn this.
rygxqpbsngav 8y ago
I think Signal is a good alternate to Whatsapp. I like the voice quality of Signal and it's privacy features. I used Telegram too and I think its a good alternate to FB. Always stable and Has some great public and private channels. And doesn't drain battery like FB messenger does.
fouc 8y ago
Telegram is a great alternative to iMessage because it has great mobile & desktop clients.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Personally, I find iMessage's clients to be far superior to Telegram's offerings. They're more reliable, lightweight, and just work better and look nicer overall.
  - kitsunesoba 8y ago
    I prefer iMessage for folks with Apple stuff, but for those who don’t I fall back on Telegram. It’ll never happen but I’d be ecstatic if Apple released iMessage for other platforms.
  - fouc 8y ago
    iMessage is great, but sometimes it breaks for some people, hence the fallback back to Telegram
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bfuller 8y ago
Telegram has become my social media mainstay. So much better than anything else, but maybe I just got lucky with the groups I am in.
- MildlySerious 8y ago
  I am in the same boat. I started using it around 4 years ago when the constant degration of Skype hit a point where I could no longer treat it as my main messenger. Since then, everyone I have regular contact with has become available there, and I haven't looked back. At all. In the last two years it has also become the main hub for a lot of crypto communities, which was very fortunate for me I guess. I don't use it for privacy, as much as I would like that to be a more prominent feature. It is my Facebook, and I hope to move to a more private platform eventually, but until then the features, usability, unobtrusiveness and solid clients on all my devices are the reason I'm staying.
diego_moita 8y ago
Telegram user here. For me, by far the best use case for it are the bots. I live in Brazil and can't stand my relatives barfing bullshit about that idiotic Bolsonaro on WhatsApp. A simple bot on Telegram is the perfect antidote against political stupidity. Bye, bye WhatsApp... Give me bots on Signal/WhatsApp and I'll begin paying attention. Before that, no thanks.
- nicpottier 8y ago
  Telegram has done an amazing job of this compared to basically everybody else. Anybody can create a bot in a few minutes and they are full featured. You have to initiate a chat with a bot for a bot to be able to interact with you and you can block them at any time. (I'm sure they have some internal metrics that also intervenes for bots that are getting blocked a ton) Compare this to anybody else and it is head and shoulders better. WhatsApp is launching bots, but they will be paid, they can reach out to you without you interacting with them and they will be heavily policed. (IE, you will need to get approval from WhatsApp to launch your bot) They have also made hosting be a problem of aggregators like Nexmo, Twilio and Clicaktell. So you need to pay them as well. Clickatell is advertising over $1,000 a month to host a WhatsApp number. Bananas and a total shame. This is the kind of walled garden bullshit that makes me sad for the internet.
- newscracker 8y ago
  Any generic (not region specific) bots that you use regularly? I've tried some bots (for polls and certain other things), but privacy with the bots is a concern for me.
- Krasnol 8y ago
  > A simple bot on Telegram is the perfect antidote against political stupidity. It's a perfect vehicle for political stupidity too. Here in Germany Telegram has a history of being the preferred nest for all kinds of fascist hate groups that have been banned on Facebook. Actually this is the only times I've heard/read about Telegram in the media here.
  - karlmcguire 8y ago
newscracker 8y ago
Telegram is a fantastic app and platform in the IM/chat space. The feature set, speed and pace of development are far ahead of any others I've seen. The fact that its default chats are not end-to-end encrypted and are stored in plaintext on its servers is a concern. Everyone who talks about this as a huge deficiency should also consider that this applies to email too, unless one always uses encryption (like GPG/PGP or S/MIME). Sharing personal photos and such may have shifted from emails and websites to chat platforms, but email is still a place where the most sensitive of information tends to be exchanged. That said, the UX of end-to-end email encryption in a federated and widespread way is not yet a solved problem (without kludges, like for example, hosting the encrypted email on a site and sending the link across if the email is sent to a user on another provider), whereas key end-to-end encryption on chat apps is a (mostly/completely?) solved problem.
- vog 8y ago
  > The fact that its default chats are not end-to-end encrypted and are stored in plaintext on its servers is a concern. "Concern"? This is a deal-breaker. > Everyone who talks about this as a huge deficiency should also consider that this applies to email too, unless one always uses encryption (like GPG/PGP or S/MIME). The contenders here are Signal and WhatsApp, not email. Having better UX and safer defaults than email is nothing to be proud of - it is the bare minimum.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    > "Concern"? This is a deal-breaker. For me it's a concern, not a deal breaker. Whenever another app with end-to-end encryption comes close to Telegram on features, speed and UX, I'll switch to it completely. Currently Wire seems closest, but it still has quite a bit of catching up to do.
  - eitland 8y ago
    > "Concern"? This is a deal-breaker. Anyone who finds themselves using email disagrees in practice. Plain text on the servers are no practical deal breaker to the vast majority of people, not even the majority of HNers. > The contenders here are Signal and WhatsApp, not email. This is the problem: Stop recommending WhatsApp and we are a little closer. Many of us can agree that Signal is probably more secure, even after the horrible bug they had in their desktop client not that long ago. But WhatsApp is nothing but a metadata collection engine for Facebook. I'm not too happy with the saying about not paying meaning you are the product, but in this case it fits perfectly: 1. Facebook buys WhatsApp, makes it free, promisese they can't combine it. 2. Turns out Facebook is too greedy to even pretend it wants to keep its promises, and goes on to update Terms Of Service, adding a default opt-in. Can we stop recommending WhatsApp now? Signal exists critical stuff. For everything else, use something that works: Telegram, email, whatever, -even WhatsApp.
Bombthecat 8y ago
Wow, this just shows how fragile the connection between users and apps are now... Ome Minute down and you lose 1M users..
zkar 8y ago
Most of the conversation here is pros/cons of Signal vs. Telegram. The bigger elephant in the room is whatsapp. Instead of telegram/signal trying to one up each other, try to be better than whatsapp. Even then, you will need to get to a critical mass usage to be useful which whatpass has already accomplished.
dkrich 8y ago
Serious question as someone who has never used Telegram and don't know anyone who uses it: what's the plan for sustainability from a financial perspective? Running the infrastructure for a scalable secure and reliable service like this for hundreds of millions of users has to be extremely expensive. Yet on Telegram's website it says that it will be free forever and will never sell advertisements or charge subscription fees. So is it donations?
- richjdsmith 8y ago
  That's the issue. Frankly, if I could donate or pay to use Telegram and in exchange, it was open-sourced so I could be sure I wasn't the product, I'd have my wallet out in a heartbeat.
- ubercow13 8y ago
  Yes, it is a donation from a rich founder. It says clearly on their website: >Q: How are you going to make money out of this? >We believe in fast and secure messaging that is also 100% free. >Pavel Durov, who shares our vision, supplied Telegram with a generous donation, so we have quite enough money for the time being. If Telegram runs out, we will introduce non-essential paid options to support the infrastructure and finance developer salaries. But making profits will never be an end-goal for Telegram.
  - dkrich 8y ago
    Ah, thanks. So the answer is that it's not sustainable. Got it.
    - jonlucc 8y ago
      Not necessarily. Would you say that a museum or university isn't sustainable because its revenue from goods and services is less money than it spends? If they have an endowment or similar vehicle set up, they can use interest to pay salaries, and other expenses. That's the kind of thing that could be enabled by a single large donation and should be considered sustainable despite a lack of other recurring revenue.
lykr0n 8y ago
Telegram is great because, for me, for two reasons: 1. Extremely well written mobile and desktop apps. Great performance and low resource usage. 2. Group functionality. It's not fully secure, but there are a bunch of thriving communities on there that are great. Local groups, coding groups, IT groups, etc. Also- if you're part of the furry community it is the de-facto communication platform.
- vonseel 8y ago
  > furry community it is the de-facto communication platform. Interesting fact, haha.
  - lykr0n 8y ago
    ProTip. If you ever see a furry sticker, don't open the pack. There is a 50% chance that they get NSFW
glitcher 8y ago
The interesting takeaway for me is how unpredictable and sudden a large shift away from a popular platform can be. This incident certainly isn't a big tipping point for fb, but it does serve as a good reminder of how the network effect does not necessarily lock a dominant player in permanently.
WA 8y ago
I guess nobody knows Threema (threema.ch) outside of Central Europe. The UI isn't as perfect as Whatsapp's, but close enough. I tried to use iMessage the other day and I'm extremely surprised that a product that is used that broadly in the US is that shitty. Downsides around sending voice messages (which I do frequently): - You must hold the stupid button to record - If you record and turn your phone, the recording button gets obviously relocated away from your thumb and the entire message is just discarded. Gone. How such a bug could escape Apple is beyond me. - There is no way to scroll through a voice message. I send and receive 10 minute messages occasionally and if you interrupt the listening, you have to start all over again.
- fabiandesimone 8y ago
  Love threema.
- kitsunesoba 8y ago
  Anecdotally, iMessage’s voice feature doesn’t get much use. Everybody I know uses it text only and opts for dictation over voice messages. Personally I prefer text. Telegram’s voice message support is much better, but without fail when someone sends me one I end up listening to it 2-3+ times to make sure I heard/understood it correctly. Never have that problem with text.
  - OJFord 8y ago
    I think Chinese people do, at least that was my experience of peers at university (in the UK) - many would wonder around either holding phone perpendicular to face, or with an earphone wire microphone strapped around their mouth having essentially asynchronous telephone conversations. Best of both, in a way? Maybe it's also about language - easier to speak Mandarin than type or draw it on a touchscreen? I don't know.
    - Markoff 8y ago
      they are just lazy or too old, actually typing simplified Chinese it's faster than English, amount of characters you have to type/swipe to deliver same content it's much lower than with latin languages due to length of words and primitive grammar (even more primitive than English and that's already something compared to European languages with tons of grammatical cases and forms for each word and multiple plurals and genders, heck Chinese doesn't even have singular, if they would switch to pinyin they could conquer the world)
AtHeartEngineer 8y ago
Telegram is alright, but I still prefer signal.
colordrops 8y ago
Why aren't discord and slack eating up this space? They seem to be much more feature filled than Telegram.
- martin_a 8y ago
  Slack would probably just kill your phone instantaneous, because it found new memory to consume.
- brink 8y ago
  Because the users just want a messenger. All those "extra features" get in the way when you're trying to send a friend a message.
- fernandotakai 8y ago
  honestly, as much as people like discord, it's absolutely trash on mobile. more often than not, it just won't deliver messages (even on really stable wifi).
vonseel 8y ago
I have no clue why anyone would choose Telegram over Signal or Keybase. Marketing.
- ubercow13 8y ago
  Better apps and more reliable service, maybe
godot 8y ago
I'm not advocating for any of Telegram, Signal, or any of FB's suite of apps, just noting an observation from someone at my age group. Most/all of my non-tech-savvy friends and relatives wouldn't even have heard of Telegram or Signal or any other messaging apps. My tech-savvy friends tend to be busy with their lives (most of my friends are 30+ and have family and kids to take care of), and when FB is down for 24 hours they tend to just not use FB or Whatsapp and "wait it out"; it's not like they have to message anyone while at work. I guess the 3M signups are mostly teeangers and young adults? I'm really not sure how anyone 30+ with a family really care enough about messaging friends on an app to switch apps (by installing a new one even!) when their usual one is down for a day. Most probably fall back to SMS even if some are on paid per message plans.
czei002 8y ago
Unfortunately Telegram nor Signal supports federation. I find it bit funny that people move from one wallet garden to the next one 8-) A good alternative is Riot. The recent Riot update actually makes it a pretty decent messenger!
ergocoder 8y ago
Honest question here. Isn't Telegram inherently unsafe/unsecure because all of its operations are in Russia? When a Russian authority knocks on their doors, they would be forced to answer. It's true that US would do the same thing. But I'd prefer US doing it over Russia or China doing it. Because, at least, transparency and justice system in US is a lot better than ones in Russia and China.
- alehul 8y ago
  Telegram moved out of Russia and has since been banned in the country. That aside, as an American, I feel like maybe there's some advantage to it being Russia rather than the US, as it's not your own country or an ally. Probably not enough of a reason to prefer Russia, but there is something to think about there. :)
  - ergocoder 8y ago
    Ha, I see. It seems the founder already left Russia and can't go back.

370 points by Ours90 8y ago

ar7hur 8y ago

... or so says Durov, CEO of Telegram, without providing any way to fact-check his affirmation. I admire the PR stunt.

patrickxb 8y ago
Also, the article doesn't mention how many users sign up in a regular 24 hour period (say on Wednesday a week ago). 3M in 24h is a lot of sign ups regardless (if they had 200M users a year ago, that's over a 1% jump in total number of users), but it would be interesting to know how many more than usual that is.

nextstep 8y ago

Please, please, please use Signal instead. And tell your friends! Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims, but even if you trust the company, Signal has a far superior user experience. Telegram’s private messages are not enabled by default, and when you are using private messaging, numerous other features are disabled defeating the point.

sz4kerto 8y ago
> Signal has a far superior user experience. Why? I think Telegram is cool, not because of privacy but because of overall UX (speed, battery usage, reliability, etc.) Is Signal way superior in anything apart from privacy?
- AiaMD13 8y ago
  Can't agree more. Have been using Telegram since I quit using Facebook, and it proved to be far more reliable then even whatsapp. The only problem is that most of people I know prefer and use whatsapp and it's been challenging fo me to maintain all the contacts in one app.
  - fvjft 8y ago
    In my experience Telegram has an outage every couple of months, while WhatsApp only drops dead once a year or so.
    - renholder 8y ago
      Since we're talking personal experience, Signal has never had an outage (that I was aware of).
      - fvjft 8y ago
        We were talking about apps that have users.
      - detaro 8y ago
        Group chats have been quite unreliable at times, although probably not due to outages, but bugs.
      - robjan 8y ago
        In my experience, signal doesn't have reliable push notifications and sometimes takes a while to deliver group messages. Sometimes my friends send me messages on WhatsApp asking me to check Signal and the message hasn't arrived yet. I do prefer signal though because there is less chance that one of my contacts has backed up our conversation to Google Drive.
    - AiaMD13 8y ago
      I wasn't really implying that whatsapp is in any way better. I personally enjoy using Telegram. I just expressed my frustration, because I'd really like to have only one app in my phone with all the contacts in it instead of 3 or 4.
      - martin_a 8y ago
        Same for me. I want end-to-end-encryption by default, bot integration and all people in one place. Would even pay monthly for that.
purerandomness 8y ago
Telegram is used primarily as a replacement for Facebook Groups, not for one-to-one communication. Signal doesn't offer Groups, so it's not something people will switch to. (Signal has Group Chats however, which is something completely different)
- mourner 8y ago
  That's not true, at least not in areas where Telegram is prevalent (Eastern Europe). Here, it's quickly becoming the default 1-1 messenger.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  Using Telegram heavily for both one-to-one, groups and channels. I don't know if it is different in other markets but this seems to be common in my circles. Oh, and BTW: The security situation around Telegram continues to confuse me so I'm personally only recommending it for postcard-style messaging.
- roel_v 8y ago
  What is the difference?
- lavezzi 8y ago
  >Telegram is used primarily as a replacement for Facebook Groups, not for one-to-one communication. That's simply not true. People using it for group chat is a much more recent turn of events.
- robjan 8y ago
  Telegram groups and Facebook Groups are incomparable. Facebook Groups is more like a forum with threaded discussions and Telegram groups is more like IRC channels with one realtime chat
franky47 8y ago
Signal on Android relies upon Google Play Services for the microphone and camera permissions, which can't be turned off. It is open-source [1] so one could install it without going through the Google Play Store (it's not on F-Droid though), but it's another case of Google's ever-expanding grasp over "interesting" (read: competing) Android apps. [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android
- Vinnl 8y ago
  It only depends on GPS if you actually have that installed. I don't, and Signal works fine using an official package (which you install the first time from their website, after which it self-updates).
- _Microft 8y ago
  Wasn't the real reason that Moxie Marlinspike considered hosting with Google less questionable than allowing installing apps from third party sites?
simias 8y ago
I've never used Telegram but I do use Signal daily and if it really offers a "far superior experience" then Telegram must be akin to connecting to an IRC server with telnet as a client. Seriously though, Signal's UI is pretty terrible and they go out of their way to discourage third party clients. It's fine as a replacement for SMS (the way I use it) but if you're used to more fully featured web messengers it's a pretty big leap backwards.
- kochthesecond 8y ago
  Feature wise I feel Signal has all the stuff I want in a messenger now. I use it on many different platforms and still experience a few too many bugs. I report them, but it breaks in subtle ways that are hard to reproduce. I think Telegram still has a better user experience.
- emerongi 8y ago
  Which features are missing? I text and call through Signal and I've not felt like there is anything missing. For a while they didn't have support for front-facing cameras, but that was added some time in the last year. Only other problem I've had is that on some Android phones the "voicemail" feature (or w/e it's called) wasn't working well, but not sure if it's still a thing.
  - simias 8y ago
    The desktop app is electron junk that lacks basic features like changing spellchecking language and there's no pure web client like Whatsapp for instance. I also think it lacks some features of the mobile client like creating new groups and adding new contacts (or at least I haven't figured out how to do it). When I install the client on a new computer I can't access the history of the messages from the phone for a reason that eludes me. Frankly 90% of my frustrations with Signal come from this client, the experience on mobile is better, although still far from perfect. I'm not a fan of pure web clients but web.whatsapp.com is lightyears ahead of Signal's electron bloated and under-featured mess. The Android client crops the image when I take a picture through the app. No other application does that so I don't really know why it does it. I suspect it's a bug or maybe a bad setting I flipped by mistake but I can't figure out what's going on. As far as I can tell when you get a new phone the only way to synchronize message history is to create a local backup on one phone, write down the ~24 digit passphrase, transfer the backup by yourself on the new phone then load it from there. If there's a simpler way I haven't found it. Also I don't think you can move your "secret key" to the new phone, so you have to re-validate your safety number with them. Maybe there's a way to do all that but if I as a technical user wasn't able to figure it out while actively looking for it I have little hope for the average Facebooker. There's also no support for WhatsApp-style stickers, URL preview, Youtube embedding and all these bells and whistles that I personally don't care for but I'm sure would be missed by many WhatsApp/messenger users.
lucideer 8y ago
> Signal has a far superior user experience No. It doesn't. If you're going to advocate for an open alternative, at least be intellectually honest about it's pros/cons. You might have gotten used to Signal, and be unfamiliar with Telegram (and sure, much of usability has an element of subjectivity to it), but... the above statement simply isn't true in the general sense. Personally, I tend to try and advocate for Riot.im over Signal when trying to push friends to an alternative platform—it's preferable from an openness perspective for a lot of reasons. I am however well aware that Signal (along with most things) has a better user experience than Riot.im does currently. Telegram and WhatsApp are quite close in usability (they've each copied quite a few UI features back and forth, so there's a lot of familiarity in switching). And unfortunately not many alternatives really come close to either of them.
- roel_v 8y ago
  Having just installed Signal yesterday, in what respect is it worse than Whatsapp (from a UI pov)? The only thing I found so far is the bad integration with contacts.
  - cosarara 8y ago
    Bad integration with contacts sounds pretty serious.
    - roel_v 8y ago
      Well yeah but it's not the mess the gp alludes to.
      - kekebo 8y ago
        plus Signal doesn't store all your contacts on their server as Telegram and WhatsApp do
        roel_v 8y ago
        Do you mean that as a positive or a negative thing? Also, apart from what I mentioned above, I've also found out that with Signal it's very hard to transfer your chat history to another phone. (involves manually copying over a backup, entering 30 char key). I can't in good conscience recommend an app like that as a replacement to anyone, so I guess my Signal experiment will be short-lived.
dpq 8y ago
> Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims My love for the word "dubious" cannot be overstated. While there's been a lot of solidly-seeming (I am not a security researcher) criticism of TG security infrastructure, I don't recall a single instance of chats or metadata being actually compromised so far. > Signal has a far superior user experience. Not in this Universe, unfortunately. Signal is borderline unusable, and if I have the choice of pushing Signal vs pushing Telegram, I'll choose the latter - simply because it provides a much much better experience and will be able to retain the audience to a better degree, while people who install Signal will probably go back to Whatsapp/Messenger. > When you are using private messaging, numerous other features are disabled defeating the point Such as? The only feature that comes to mind is the absence of sync to other devices (which is kinda expected). Basically all one-on-one chat features are retained in Telegram's secret chats, and keep in mind that Signal doesn't offer these features to begin with.
- DownGoat 8y ago
  > The only feature that comes to mind is the absence of sync to other devices (which is kinda expected). Why is that expected? Just because things are encrypted does not mean that they shouldn't be syncable. Signal offers this.
  - dpq 8y ago
    I stand corrected then: which was expected by me. It's awesome that Signal provides this feature, but I'm afraid it alone won't be sufficient to entice users to switch to Signal en masse. Still, this doesn't invalidate my question as of which other features are missing from TG secret chats; being an active Telegram user I can't put my finger on any.
- Arnt 8y ago
  Signal is borderline unusable? I've never used Telegram but if that's your assessment of Signal, Telegram must be great. Can you tell me about it?
  - dpq 8y ago
ymolodtsov 8y ago
Even cloud synced messages alone will be a better user experience for the majority of users.
teekert 8y ago
The user experience of Telegram is by far the best of all apps with the sleekest ui's and the native (electron) apps for all platforms. Moreover because of the lack of e2e encryption (on standard chat) all your messages are just there when you log in and are easily searchable. Telegram also has very nice channels and some excellent bots and a very nice feature to send yourself stuff you want accessible anywhere... But imo Signal is superior and has my preference due to its privacy focus. It also has a desktop app by the way and it works ok. Of course Signal's server implementation is still closed but something like Matrix/Riot is too much to ask from "normal people" (like my mother and father who I got onto Singal with ease...).
- j16sdiz 8y ago
  It is Qt-based, not electron
  - runn1ng 8y ago
    At least on Mac, Telegram has mysteriously two apps in Mac App Store, one is Electron and one is native. I never know which is which One is named "Telegram" and one is "Telegram for Desktop" and they have exactly the same icon, but different sets of features. edit: I was wrong, neither of the two is Electron, see below
    - fnord123 8y ago
      Telegram for Desktop is https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop (Qt, open source stuff) Telegram is https://github.com/overtake/TelegramSwift https://github.com/overtake/TelegramSwift (Swift, Core* libraries) Both are native.
      - runn1ng 8y ago
        Oh. In that case, I was wrong. I still don't understand the need for two official apps though
lloeki 8y ago
Seriously, you have to realise this is about migrating from Messenger. Messenger, from Facebook. Any doubts about the "dubious claims" of Telegram are completely overshadowed by the definitive certainty that Messenger is extremely privacy invasive. Also, the Telegram experience is simply stellar throughout, performing brilliantly even under harsh network conditions. Signal just offers an insanely bad user experience.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  > Signal just offers an insanely bad user experience. I don't agree with the claim that Signal has superior UX over Telegram, but it's definitely not insanely bad either. It has some rough edges, and it's desktop client is not that fully featured and doesn't look that great, but otherwise it's a perfectly fine app that my mother can use without problems and without specific instructions. That's leagues above, say, Riot, or IRC, and I feel that "insanely bad UX" really paints the wrong picture.
tadzik_ 8y ago
Please, please don't. Open Whisper Systems is a company that uses "open-source" as a marketing term while bullying the people who choose to take advantage of it. You can build your own client, but if you start to distribute it, they'll ban you from using their servers[1], with an explanation plain ridiculous for a company that took thousands of dollars from various open source foundations. The server is open source, but again, you have no guarantee that the official (and only) signal server is anything close to the software they published as open source. Telegram at least publishes libraries that you can actually use with their official service [2]. You still have to „trust the company” to a certain degree: you'll never get proper security without something like Matrix or XMPP where you can be in control over both ends of the communication. Still, a company like OWS or Telegram can do more or less to put users more in control over their end: and I'd argue that OWS is doing way less for that than Telegram does. [1] https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... [2] https://github.com/tdlib/td https://github.com/tdlib/td EDIT: removed "dishonest" – I wish I had strikethrough to use :)
- detaro 8y ago
  That's not dishonest. You might not like their policy (I'm not a fan of it either), but it's clearly stated, based on consistent logic and not at odds with the software being open-source.
  - tadzik_ 8y ago
    Fair point; I guess too often I expect "free software" when I see "open-source". I don't think I'm the only one though, at least to a degree. When the only thing you allow your users is to read the source code, you are technically open-source, but it's the kind of openness that doesn't guarantee anything. More and more often companies use the term "Open source software" because they know that people will walk around the internet and say "it's safe and secure: after all, it's open source!" OWS is aware of this, which is especially valuable when you brag about privacy as a communications network, but they deliberately chose to limit what you can do with said "open source" – to a degree that's quite ridiculous for a company that calls themselves "Open (...) Systems" :)
h91wka 8y ago
Both Signal and Telegram use SMS for authN tokens, enough said. Being secure and censorship proof while relying on mobile networks just doesn't compute. Correction: or at least they used to? Now I realize that I am not completely sure.
- kome 8y ago
  Signal is way worse because it requires you to have the cellphone always on. With Telegram you need a phone number to sign-in and then you can forget about it, and use it just on desktop/laptop. You can set a password as a 2 factor authentication (1st: sms or code to another telegram client 2nd: password).
  - oda 8y ago
    > Signal is way worse because it requires you to have the cellphone always on. Bullcrap. Signal works fine on data alone. I have Tasker automatically turn on airplane mode when I'm on WiFi and it's never caused me to miss a Signal message.
  - detaro 8y ago
    No it doesn't. you only need the phone for the initial link.
    - kome 8y ago
      so, yeah, every time you open your desktop you need a cellphone
      - detaro 8y ago
        No. To set up Signal Desktop on a computer, you need a cellphone once.
      - newscracker 8y ago
        Maybe you're thinking of WhatsApp, which requires the phone to be around. Signal Desktop doesn't need the phone to be around once you've finished linking the desktop to your account (which is one time). From the second time onwards, you could as well leave your phone turned off and/or in a different country and Signal Desktop would still work fine.
reacharavindh 8y ago
I mean, say Telegram is bad, but don't hype up Signal as the pariah to this peril. It is open source in the sense that you can read the source of the project, but can't really build it and use it for yourselves or verify the build you get via the App Store is the same as open source project. Practically open source as a marketing strategy. Secondly, it needs a phone number all the time to use, which ties in with personal identity. Why? A better alternative would be a project that allows someone to choose a username and be done with it! Like HN! The true danger of security is the false sense of it. It makes you feel okay to share personal and sensitive information. ️ I'd love for the Mattix project and riot.im to take off. Hopefully the government of France can throw its weight behind it for good causes.
- kruczek 8y ago
  > Secondly, it needs a phone number all the time to use, which ties in with personal identity. Why? A better alternative would be a project that allows someone to choose a username and be done with it! Like HN! Thousand times this! And it is actually a problem both with Signal and Telegram. In the latter case, I managed to avoid installing Telegram app on the phone, by using Android emulator and registering from that, but why forcing users to use such workarounds, instead of simply allowing to register without any ties to the telephone. I'd be willing to pay for a messenger which provides privacy and is not tied to the phone.
- meruru 8y ago
  >A better alternative would be a project that allows someone to choose a username and be done with it! Like HN! Like Riot!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ubercow13 8y ago
  It's on fdroid
kome 8y ago
Just saying: with Telegram you need a cellphone to open an account, but you don't need a cellphone to use Telegram. With Signal you have to use a cellphone. And that's so unsafe and against any reasonable definition of privacy. Cellphones are tightly closed, data hungry, tracking devices. A IM that force the user to use a cellphone is a BAD at privacy.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
krageon 8y ago
You say Signal has a superior user experience, but you then start talking about privacy features. Privacy features are important, but they have nothing to do with the user experience. That is leaving aside completely how much of a lunatic the main dev of Signal is (see his extreme reluctance to release on f-droid, for example. It took ages to get an apk that you could sideload and it comes with a lot of warnings about how much of a bad boy you are for using it), which is a compelling argument to never use it in my opinion.
aclsid 8y ago
Let's see, Signal is based in the US. Wechat is a Chinese system with a great UX that is based in China. Telegram used to be based in Russia. Whatsapp is owned by Facebook. I think it is pretty self-explanatory that in all these countries, governments haven't been exactly subtle when it comes to their efforts to intercept communications. In my mind, Telegram is the only software that resisted such interference in an almost heroic way and ended up having to move out of the country.
- amedvednikov 8y ago
  Telegram is still banned in Russia.
- AtHeartEngineer 8y ago
  Signal is in no way tied to the US government though, just because the developers are here doesn't mean anything. And if you are talking about the servers being here, everything is end to end encrypted, even if the government was to try to get useful data off signal servers, there is nothing to get.
- fernandotakai 8y ago
  >Telegram used to be based in Russia. no, it's not. it was created by a russian (pavel durov) but it's developed by a company registered in london with servers all over the world[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Servers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Servers
codedokode 8y ago
Signal requires a phone number which discloses your identity and location and doesn't allow any alternative options. If you could use it anonymously there would be more privacy.
gsich 8y ago
>Signal has a far superior user experience Signal has no bots. [0] is terrible to use, since you need a new phone number for every new bot you make. (Of course you could all cram it into a single number) 0 https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli
Fice 8y ago
Neither Signal nor Telegram are acceptable communication systems. Both are isolated and fully controlled by a single company, both require mobile phone numbers and unduly trust mobile carriers for user authentication (at least by default), see https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-hack/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-h....
Kye 8y ago
Signal lacks a key feature that drives everyone I talk to regularly to use it: custom stickers. Maybe other chat platforms let people upload stickers, but Telegram already has them from hundreds of artists.
Krasnol 8y ago
Its funny how much drama you can stir up with that. It seems it's more important to kids today to have stickers and all kind of fancy useless crap. So yeah, it is "borderline unusable" for them. I get this and I don't care. I guess we have a way to filter out a certain audience with Signal ;)

secfirstmd 8y ago

Really wish Signal would get the bounce that occurs when this stuff happens instead.

xrisk 8y ago
I used Signal and my main qualm with it is that messages don’t sync between platforms and also the phone app is nowhere as good as Telegram’s.
- rplnt 8y ago
  Well, if it would sync, it's not private. Unless the app allows you to sync the keys offline. Telegram doesn't sync either if you enable e2e encryption. But I agree that Telegram apps are great. Both Android ones, and the desktop ones as well. Small, fast, reliable, great UX.
  - ymolodtsov 8y ago
    iMessage is one of the few both E2E and cloud-synced messengers, but it's iOS only.
  - snaky 8y ago
    > Unless the app allows you to sync the keys offline And why wouldn't the app allow it?
  - ytjohn 8y ago
    Wire does E2E and sync. Each device has its own key though. https://wire.com/en/blog/key-verification-secure-conversations/ https://wire.com/en/blog/key-verification-secure-conversatio...
alphadelphi 8y ago
I came here to write the very same sentence. Signal is so underrated.
- xrisk 8y ago

mourner 8y ago

It's a fantastic service from an engineering perspective. Fast, lightweight, reliable, simple, with low battery drain and data usage, and open source clients. A real joy to use.

saagarjha 8y ago
Telegram's clients are nominally open source.
- ubercow13 8y ago
  What more could you want?
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Clients that are actually open source, updated on time, and have source code that actually builds?
codedokode 8y ago
Also it works under Windows XP unlike most of the competitors with poor quality Electron apps.
fernandotakai 8y ago
and the clients are not electron (QT on linux and works super well!). is it as safe as end-to-end? no. but the convenience is just too great.

mgw 8y ago

I understand Telegram's appeal because of its high quality apps and big feature list, but articles such as this one really should be more nuanced when pushing Telegram's marketing message of "We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone.". Their default mode is not end-to-end encrypted [1] and as such the product is less private than WhatsApp. Even tech-savvy users in my social circles are not aware of this and blindly recommend Telegram as the more private option. When talking about privacy these articles should at least mention Signal. I hope they will use their recent funding [2] to polish their apps and increase the speed of innovation. [1] https://telegram.org/faq#q-so-how-do-you-encrypt-data https://telegram.org/faq#q-so-how-do-you-encrypt-data [2] https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/

s_dev 8y ago
>Secret chats are meant for people who want more secrecy than the average fella. All messages in secret chats use end-to-end encryption. Seems fair to me -- some people do want some archive of their conversations but the option to limit the storage duration of those conversations. Secret chat is a heavily promoted feature -- it's not some hidden mode just because it's not the deafult.
- dnate 8y ago
  There is literally no downside to end-to-end encrypting text messages. So it should be default. It is just harder to implement technically.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    That's not a very good use of "literally", because searching through encrypted messages will certainly be slower, and on mobile devices, this will have a bigger impact on responsiveness and battery life. That is a big downside on mobile (not desktop). Create similar chats that are long (like tens of thousands of messages) on different apps and compare Telegram's search speed with others'.
    - 8y ago

yes_man 8y ago

Telegram's end goal is to create value for shareholders. Eventually they will profit from user privacy violations. Not to parrot other comments, but we should all use Signal. Its' existence isn't based on investment dollars that expect returns in more dollars.

dpq 8y ago
> Eventually they will profit from user privacy violations. Where do you get this from? IIRC their plan is to launch a Internet platform TON and a cryptocurrency Gram, and make money off transactions. As far as monetization plans go, this one is a very long shot, risky and brilliant IMO.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
newscracker 8y ago
> Not to parrot other comments, but we should all use Signal. Its' existence isn't based on investment dollars that expect returns in more dollars. Your argument doesn't make much sense on the Signal side either. How long will the $50 million that the Signal Foundation has really last for? And what happens after that runs out?
- yes_man 8y ago
  What happens to Wikipedia every time the end of their runway is approaching? At least we can hope for a similar solution to appear for messaging.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    Why can’t that happen for Telegram and happen only for Signal? Who can predict if Telegram would do under some “foundation” and get funded that way soon? My point is that singling out Telegram doesn’t make sense in this context.

botto 8y ago

Telegram is scary and questionable. Inventing your own encryption is never the answer and reeks of horrible understanding of security, at this stage there is no reason they should not adopt a standard of communication like Signal protocol. Signal app itself is ok, it's a little....annoying as it requires a phone number and the UX needs some love. Keybase is great, It has ways of verifying you across multiple services and has end-to-end encryption using PGP. Also offers file storage.

ymolodtsov 8y ago
We still haven't seen any examples of Telegram being compromised.
- botto 8y ago
  That's the same as saying that a car model is safe because there have not been any crashes yet with this make and model. No cars are safe because there are industry standards that a manufacturer is tested to ensure they are following. Closed source (both in code and implementation) has no place in the security world and anything security related should always be open for anyone to scrutinize.
  - GranPC 8y ago
    Feel free to scrutinize Telegram's crypto and E2E implementation for secret chats. It's open source and you can find it here: https://github.com/tdlib/td https://github.com/tdlib/td
    - rvnx 8y ago
      Yep, did it, not going to use Telegram now. Love the unsecure TLRPC objects deserialization that actually makes the native client crash and to not verify what other clients have sent: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DrKLO/Telegram/e397bd9afdfd9315bf099f78a903f8754d297d7a/TMessagesProj/src/main/java/org/telegram/tgnet/TLRPC.java https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DrKLO/Telegram/e397bd9afdf... and the tons of magic and undocumented numbers in the code: https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/jni/tgnet/Handshake.cpp#L278 https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/...

franky47 8y ago

Telegram got some bad press in France after it was revealed that some terrorist groups used it to coordinate their attacks [1]. Now most non-tech people I talk to about alternative messaging platforms know it as "The terrorist messaging app". [1] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/nouveau-monde/telegram-l-appli-des-terroristes_1790333.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/nouveau-monde/teleg... (French)

diego_moita 8y ago
And WhatsApp was used to promote and coordinate the genocide or the Rohinga people in Burma, spread fake news that helped elect the retarded proto-fascist Bolsonaro in Brazil, spread hate against gays in Eastern Africa,... I'm sure you also know how the Putin's friends used Facebook to help elect the Pussy-Graber in Chief in the US or give an hand to Brexit supporters. Maybe the problem is not the tool but how people use it?

paulie_a 8y ago

The only reason I saw fb messenger as popular was because fb was. the chat heads are dumb ( Google is trying to copy that for some reason), it tried to replace basic features of a phone, it randomly dialed people ( in HD!). In 2019, is it really that difficult to design an app, list of contacts, list conversation, timed delete etc in a normal looking ux. The state of messenging apps is terrible. On sure Google will release a new one soon though

vog 8y ago

I find it quite telling that a short outage does more damage to Facebook than any data breaches and mishandling of user data.

supernes 8y ago

I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy. People who care enough about the subject should know when and whether to use it for their communications. For everyone else, it's an outstanding alternative to Messenger/WhatsApp and Viber. Edit: I'd also like to add that maybe we need to make a distinction between the notions of privacy and secrecy. Privacy as understood by the majority of people is a broader concept than what more technically inclined people associate with the matter. I believe that then Telegram's decisions and use case can become clearer.

kuhhk 8y ago
> I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy. I recall the anger is not about any trade off. It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto. There’s no convenience factor or trade off here, they just literally did the thing the textbooks tell you not to do, and have ignored the industry’s calls to use strong crypto.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- p2detar 8y ago
  > It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto. I come across this a lot about Telegram and while I do agree, I think there have been no reports so far about hacks in Telegram's service, and it's online since 2013 or so.
  - kuhhk 8y ago
    6 years is a short time in cryptography. That isn't battle-tested. "Even worse, security doesn't provide immediate feedback. A dead patient on the operating table tells the doctor that maybe he doesn't understand brain surgery just because he read a book, but an insecure cryptosystem works just fine. It's not until someone takes the time to break it that the engineer might realize that he didn't do as good a job as he thought. Remember: Anyone can design a security system that he himself cannot break. Even the experts regularly get it wrong." -- Bruce Schneier Source: https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2009/0915.html https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2009/0915.html

chewz 8y ago

I am recommending Wire. https://wire.com/en/ https://wire.com/en/ https://wire.com/en/about/ https://wire.com/en/about/ https://wire.com/en/security/ https://wire.com/en/security/

iagooar 8y ago
If I could choose, it would be Wire for me, too. Unfortunately, it hasn't got real traction yet.
Sendotsh 8y ago
Wire is definitely my favourite of the secure IMs as far as UI/UX. It's also the one I've had most luck with when referring non-tech family and friends. They didn't like Signal or Riot (for a variety of reasons) but are happy to use Wire.
- tome 8y ago
  It looks like you have to pay for Wire. Is that right?
  - chewz 8y ago
    Free for personal account, paid for commercial use. Discounts for edu and NGO.
  - nitrohorse 8y ago
    Not for Wire “Personal” (https://wire.com/en/products/personal-secure-messenger https://wire.com/en/products/personal-secure-messenger).
Dolores12 8y ago
i am an early user of wire. Logged in few weeks ago just to find out they took my username. Support say non-sense and now they just ignore my messages.
Barrin92 8y ago
Also somewhat off-topic, their backend is written in Haskell and on GitHub. Not terribly relevant for the end user, but I found it an interesting choice.

rvanmil 8y ago

When will HN learn that convenience beats security every single time? All posts that mention Telegram get the same tiring comments about security and they're all utterly pointless and preaching to the choir. Yes, we know there are more secure messenger apps out there, thanks. But unless they offer at least the same convenience as Telegram does, no one will use them except you and some of your tech friends. If you want security and privacy to become mainstream, simply make it a boring, invisible implementation detail of your messenging platform which is superior in convenience.

botto 8y ago
Keybase is very convenient, same features and is based on known standards and has arguably as good a UX as telegram. Why isn't that used more?
- HHalvi 8y ago
  I hate the hassle of setting up Keybase on Mobile andDesktop so i have never bothered about it till now.
  - vonseel 8y ago
    Hassle? It’s incredibly straightforward. Maybe 2 steps to login to an account on iOS that already exists on desktop (preferences add devise, scan QR code).
- pnutjam 8y ago
  I use keybase too, but I don't know anyone else; even though I've invited them...
ta2223332221 8y ago
If you want security and privacy to become mainstream, simply make it a boring, invisible implementation detail of your messenging platform which is superior in convenience I believe that is precisely Signal's philosophy. Which is why for example it uses/requires a phone number instead of a username - which then people also complain about on HN and elsewhere. That it's less convenient than other messengers (which I don't dispute) is not for the lack of trying. So I suspect the answer is the loudest users/commenters will "never" learn this.

rygxqpbsngav 8y ago

I think Signal is a good alternate to Whatsapp. I like the voice quality of Signal and it's privacy features. I used Telegram too and I think its a good alternate to FB. Always stable and Has some great public and private channels. And doesn't drain battery like FB messenger does.

fouc 8y ago

Telegram is a great alternative to iMessage because it has great mobile & desktop clients.

saagarjha 8y ago
Personally, I find iMessage's clients to be far superior to Telegram's offerings. They're more reliable, lightweight, and just work better and look nicer overall.
- kitsunesoba 8y ago
  I prefer iMessage for folks with Apple stuff, but for those who don’t I fall back on Telegram. It’ll never happen but I’d be ecstatic if Apple released iMessage for other platforms.
- fouc 8y ago
  iMessage is great, but sometimes it breaks for some people, hence the fallback back to Telegram

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bfuller 8y ago

Telegram has become my social media mainstay. So much better than anything else, but maybe I just got lucky with the groups I am in.

MildlySerious 8y ago
I am in the same boat. I started using it around 4 years ago when the constant degration of Skype hit a point where I could no longer treat it as my main messenger. Since then, everyone I have regular contact with has become available there, and I haven't looked back. At all. In the last two years it has also become the main hub for a lot of crypto communities, which was very fortunate for me I guess. I don't use it for privacy, as much as I would like that to be a more prominent feature. It is my Facebook, and I hope to move to a more private platform eventually, but until then the features, usability, unobtrusiveness and solid clients on all my devices are the reason I'm staying.

diego_moita 8y ago

Telegram user here. For me, by far the best use case for it are the bots. I live in Brazil and can't stand my relatives barfing bullshit about that idiotic Bolsonaro on WhatsApp. A simple bot on Telegram is the perfect antidote against political stupidity. Bye, bye WhatsApp... Give me bots on Signal/WhatsApp and I'll begin paying attention. Before that, no thanks.

nicpottier 8y ago
Telegram has done an amazing job of this compared to basically everybody else. Anybody can create a bot in a few minutes and they are full featured. You have to initiate a chat with a bot for a bot to be able to interact with you and you can block them at any time. (I'm sure they have some internal metrics that also intervenes for bots that are getting blocked a ton) Compare this to anybody else and it is head and shoulders better. WhatsApp is launching bots, but they will be paid, they can reach out to you without you interacting with them and they will be heavily policed. (IE, you will need to get approval from WhatsApp to launch your bot) They have also made hosting be a problem of aggregators like Nexmo, Twilio and Clicaktell. So you need to pay them as well. Clickatell is advertising over $1,000 a month to host a WhatsApp number. Bananas and a total shame. This is the kind of walled garden bullshit that makes me sad for the internet.
newscracker 8y ago
Any generic (not region specific) bots that you use regularly? I've tried some bots (for polls and certain other things), but privacy with the bots is a concern for me.
Krasnol 8y ago
> A simple bot on Telegram is the perfect antidote against political stupidity. It's a perfect vehicle for political stupidity too. Here in Germany Telegram has a history of being the preferred nest for all kinds of fascist hate groups that have been banned on Facebook. Actually this is the only times I've heard/read about Telegram in the media here.
- karlmcguire 8y ago

newscracker 8y ago

Telegram is a fantastic app and platform in the IM/chat space. The feature set, speed and pace of development are far ahead of any others I've seen. The fact that its default chats are not end-to-end encrypted and are stored in plaintext on its servers is a concern. Everyone who talks about this as a huge deficiency should also consider that this applies to email too, unless one always uses encryption (like GPG/PGP or S/MIME). Sharing personal photos and such may have shifted from emails and websites to chat platforms, but email is still a place where the most sensitive of information tends to be exchanged. That said, the UX of end-to-end email encryption in a federated and widespread way is not yet a solved problem (without kludges, like for example, hosting the encrypted email on a site and sending the link across if the email is sent to a user on another provider), whereas key end-to-end encryption on chat apps is a (mostly/completely?) solved problem.

vog 8y ago
> The fact that its default chats are not end-to-end encrypted and are stored in plaintext on its servers is a concern. "Concern"? This is a deal-breaker. > Everyone who talks about this as a huge deficiency should also consider that this applies to email too, unless one always uses encryption (like GPG/PGP or S/MIME). The contenders here are Signal and WhatsApp, not email. Having better UX and safer defaults than email is nothing to be proud of - it is the bare minimum.
- newscracker 8y ago
  > "Concern"? This is a deal-breaker. For me it's a concern, not a deal breaker. Whenever another app with end-to-end encryption comes close to Telegram on features, speed and UX, I'll switch to it completely. Currently Wire seems closest, but it still has quite a bit of catching up to do.
- eitland 8y ago
  > "Concern"? This is a deal-breaker. Anyone who finds themselves using email disagrees in practice. Plain text on the servers are no practical deal breaker to the vast majority of people, not even the majority of HNers. > The contenders here are Signal and WhatsApp, not email. This is the problem: Stop recommending WhatsApp and we are a little closer. Many of us can agree that Signal is probably more secure, even after the horrible bug they had in their desktop client not that long ago. But WhatsApp is nothing but a metadata collection engine for Facebook. I'm not too happy with the saying about not paying meaning you are the product, but in this case it fits perfectly: 1. Facebook buys WhatsApp, makes it free, promisese they can't combine it. 2. Turns out Facebook is too greedy to even pretend it wants to keep its promises, and goes on to update Terms Of Service, adding a default opt-in. Can we stop recommending WhatsApp now? Signal exists critical stuff. For everything else, use something that works: Telegram, email, whatever, -even WhatsApp.

Bombthecat 8y ago

Wow, this just shows how fragile the connection between users and apps are now... Ome Minute down and you lose 1M users..

zkar 8y ago

Most of the conversation here is pros/cons of Signal vs. Telegram. The bigger elephant in the room is whatsapp. Instead of telegram/signal trying to one up each other, try to be better than whatsapp. Even then, you will need to get to a critical mass usage to be useful which whatpass has already accomplished.

dkrich 8y ago

Serious question as someone who has never used Telegram and don't know anyone who uses it: what's the plan for sustainability from a financial perspective? Running the infrastructure for a scalable secure and reliable service like this for hundreds of millions of users has to be extremely expensive. Yet on Telegram's website it says that it will be free forever and will never sell advertisements or charge subscription fees. So is it donations?

richjdsmith 8y ago
That's the issue. Frankly, if I could donate or pay to use Telegram and in exchange, it was open-sourced so I could be sure I wasn't the product, I'd have my wallet out in a heartbeat.
ubercow13 8y ago
Yes, it is a donation from a rich founder. It says clearly on their website: >Q: How are you going to make money out of this? >We believe in fast and secure messaging that is also 100% free. >Pavel Durov, who shares our vision, supplied Telegram with a generous donation, so we have quite enough money for the time being. If Telegram runs out, we will introduce non-essential paid options to support the infrastructure and finance developer salaries. But making profits will never be an end-goal for Telegram.
- dkrich 8y ago
  Ah, thanks. So the answer is that it's not sustainable. Got it.
  - jonlucc 8y ago
    Not necessarily. Would you say that a museum or university isn't sustainable because its revenue from goods and services is less money than it spends? If they have an endowment or similar vehicle set up, they can use interest to pay salaries, and other expenses. That's the kind of thing that could be enabled by a single large donation and should be considered sustainable despite a lack of other recurring revenue.

lykr0n 8y ago

Telegram is great because, for me, for two reasons: 1. Extremely well written mobile and desktop apps. Great performance and low resource usage. 2. Group functionality. It's not fully secure, but there are a bunch of thriving communities on there that are great. Local groups, coding groups, IT groups, etc. Also- if you're part of the furry community it is the de-facto communication platform.

vonseel 8y ago
> furry community it is the de-facto communication platform. Interesting fact, haha.
- lykr0n 8y ago
  ProTip. If you ever see a furry sticker, don't open the pack. There is a 50% chance that they get NSFW

glitcher 8y ago

The interesting takeaway for me is how unpredictable and sudden a large shift away from a popular platform can be. This incident certainly isn't a big tipping point for fb, but it does serve as a good reminder of how the network effect does not necessarily lock a dominant player in permanently.

WA 8y ago

I guess nobody knows Threema (threema.ch) outside of Central Europe. The UI isn't as perfect as Whatsapp's, but close enough. I tried to use iMessage the other day and I'm extremely surprised that a product that is used that broadly in the US is that shitty. Downsides around sending voice messages (which I do frequently): - You must hold the stupid button to record - If you record and turn your phone, the recording button gets obviously relocated away from your thumb and the entire message is just discarded. Gone. How such a bug could escape Apple is beyond me. - There is no way to scroll through a voice message. I send and receive 10 minute messages occasionally and if you interrupt the listening, you have to start all over again.

fabiandesimone 8y ago
Love threema.
kitsunesoba 8y ago
Anecdotally, iMessage’s voice feature doesn’t get much use. Everybody I know uses it text only and opts for dictation over voice messages. Personally I prefer text. Telegram’s voice message support is much better, but without fail when someone sends me one I end up listening to it 2-3+ times to make sure I heard/understood it correctly. Never have that problem with text.
- OJFord 8y ago
  I think Chinese people do, at least that was my experience of peers at university (in the UK) - many would wonder around either holding phone perpendicular to face, or with an earphone wire microphone strapped around their mouth having essentially asynchronous telephone conversations. Best of both, in a way? Maybe it's also about language - easier to speak Mandarin than type or draw it on a touchscreen? I don't know.
  - Markoff 8y ago
    they are just lazy or too old, actually typing simplified Chinese it's faster than English, amount of characters you have to type/swipe to deliver same content it's much lower than with latin languages due to length of words and primitive grammar (even more primitive than English and that's already something compared to European languages with tons of grammatical cases and forms for each word and multiple plurals and genders, heck Chinese doesn't even have singular, if they would switch to pinyin they could conquer the world)

AtHeartEngineer 8y ago

Telegram is alright, but I still prefer signal.

colordrops 8y ago

Why aren't discord and slack eating up this space? They seem to be much more feature filled than Telegram.

martin_a 8y ago
Slack would probably just kill your phone instantaneous, because it found new memory to consume.
brink 8y ago
Because the users just want a messenger. All those "extra features" get in the way when you're trying to send a friend a message.
fernandotakai 8y ago
honestly, as much as people like discord, it's absolutely trash on mobile. more often than not, it just won't deliver messages (even on really stable wifi).

vonseel 8y ago

I have no clue why anyone would choose Telegram over Signal or Keybase. Marketing.

ubercow13 8y ago
Better apps and more reliable service, maybe

godot 8y ago

I'm not advocating for any of Telegram, Signal, or any of FB's suite of apps, just noting an observation from someone at my age group. Most/all of my non-tech-savvy friends and relatives wouldn't even have heard of Telegram or Signal or any other messaging apps. My tech-savvy friends tend to be busy with their lives (most of my friends are 30+ and have family and kids to take care of), and when FB is down for 24 hours they tend to just not use FB or Whatsapp and "wait it out"; it's not like they have to message anyone while at work. I guess the 3M signups are mostly teeangers and young adults? I'm really not sure how anyone 30+ with a family really care enough about messaging friends on an app to switch apps (by installing a new one even!) when their usual one is down for a day. Most probably fall back to SMS even if some are on paid per message plans.

czei002 8y ago

Unfortunately Telegram nor Signal supports federation. I find it bit funny that people move from one wallet garden to the next one 8-) A good alternative is Riot. The recent Riot update actually makes it a pretty decent messenger!

ergocoder 8y ago

Honest question here. Isn't Telegram inherently unsafe/unsecure because all of its operations are in Russia? When a Russian authority knocks on their doors, they would be forced to answer. It's true that US would do the same thing. But I'd prefer US doing it over Russia or China doing it. Because, at least, transparency and justice system in US is a lot better than ones in Russia and China.

alehul 8y ago
Telegram moved out of Russia and has since been banned in the country. That aside, as an American, I feel like maybe there's some advantage to it being Russia rather than the US, as it's not your own country or an ally. Probably not enough of a reason to prefer Russia, but there is something to think about there. :)
- ergocoder 8y ago
  Ha, I see. It seems the founder already left Russia and can't go back.