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Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group
- nikivi 7y agoBoggles my mind how WhatsApp is still a more popular messenger than Telegram by a long shot. Talk about network effects and people not doing their research. Or not caring about UX.
- Aloha 7y agoTelegram wins for me, because desktop is a first class citizen.
- forinti 7y agoThat and it's dead easy to write a bot.
- StavrosK 7y agoIt's pretty easy to write a bot for Signal too, if you're willing to run a daemon: https://pypi.org/project/pysignald/ https://pypi.org/project/pysignald/
- fernandotakai 7y agoyup. i wrote a simple one for my group of friends (i was also playing around with asyncio for the first time) and it took me less than an afternoon.
- chupa 7y agoDesktop is a first class citizen, so much that encrypted chats aren't supported yet.
- kreetx 7y agoI have both Signal and Telegram and although I don't use as much Telegram to say this with absolute certainty, but Signal definitely has issues on all platforms I use (Android, macOS, Linux) - not deal-breakers, but issues. Telegram on the other hand has had none thus far.
- tylorr 7y agoI'm curious to know what issues you have with Signal on Android. I use Signal on Android daily and I haven't had problems with it for a few years now.
- jjeaff 7y agoI mean, your choice is between an app owned by Facebook or an app owned by the creators of the largest social network in Russia. I'm surprised more aren't using Signal, open source, and I believe funded by a non-profit organization. With founders that are known to care about organizational transparency and user privacy.
- sedeki 7y agoI think it is worth noting that the creator of VK (Russia’s Facebook equivalent; overtaken by the Russian state), is actually a known libertarian dissident.
- zzzcpan 7y agoYes, politically Telegram is in the best position between all three.
- daybreak 7y agoI like the concept of Signal but Telegram has some great features like usernames and public chat groups. In the end, better encryption by itself (Telegram rolled their own) loses out over function. Also, the owners of Telegram are not on good terms with the Russian government (its been banned before).
- tptacek 7y agoMy routine reminder that Signal doesn't have these features because they genuinely care about privacy and metadata security, and will withhold basic messaging app features until they know how to provide them without (a) creating a database of every pair of communicating users that they retain serverside and (b) leaking information about conversations to traffic analysis. See: user profiles, GIF sharing, both with really interesting explanations of how Signal ultimately figured out how to implement these features. It does make Signal a little less usable than some other messengers, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't use Slack a lot more than Signal. But this is also why Signal is what I use when the secrecy of what I'm talking about actually matters.
- dewey 7y agoIf I have to I use WhatsApp (Using Signal's encryption framework) over Telegram as I don't like to use a russian chat app that came up with their own encryption and doesn't even enable encryption by default. It's not just about UX or not doing research.
- kjaftaedi 7y agoEnd-to-end encryption only encrypts messages in-transit. The messages are still available in plaintext at either endpoint, and to the companies if they want them. Facebook already publicly announced that they are going to use their AI to scan whatsapp messages for content violations (prior to encryption).
- eitland 7y agoDislike Facebook as much as anyone here and expect them to do anything they can come up with as long as they can get away with it but it seems this particular piece was debunked: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/08/more_on_backdoo.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/08/more_on_backd...
- sb057 7y ago>russian chat app British-Emirati, but same difference.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y agoWhat's with the massive xenophobia here? It takes one second to find out they are not exactly in bed with the government and you're just left with racist statement.
- dewey 7y agoIt has nothing to do with xenophobia or racism. When the NSA tapped the dark fibers of Google etc they were also not exactly in bed with the government and yet they found out about the fact afterwards and started encrypting everything only then. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html? https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-i...) When you look at the surveillance happening in Russia paired with the unclear status of Telegram's encryption and it being off by default I'd say it's valid to be suspicious.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- technofiend 7y agoTaking to my friends who are heavy WhatsApp users it's less about text chatting and more about voice chat over data because it's far cheaper per minute than crossing the PSTN.
- jjeaff 7y agoSignal has great voice calling. At least, I rarely have any trouble and the calls are usually crystal clear.
- tialaramex 7y agoSpecifically, Signal's secured VoIP is Ogg Opus (better performance than the technology your phone uses to make actual phone calls) but in CBR mode (compression but with a fixed ratio so that a frame of audio is always the same number of bytes, thus a MITM attacker can't determine anything except how long your call lasted) An unencrypted voice chat app could do VBR Opus, which would need slightly less bandwidth on average for the same quality but might mess with flow performance estimators in the network and make the experience worse by mistake. One of the inadvertent benefits of Signal's strong centralisation of control is that they could just go "Opus CBR is great, we're using that now" and do it. No multi-year phase-in with most calls still being "legacy", no need to accumulate "buy in" from third parties who might not prioritize this work, they just did it.
- newscracker 7y agoAll these apps have voice calling, including Telegram.
- chupa 7y agoI've done my research. Whatsapp has encrypted chats by default, Telegram doesn't. Also Whatsapp UX is much simpler and I value simplicity. Telegram is starting to look like a spaceship with so many features.
- eitland 7y ago> I've done my research. Whatsapp has encrypted chats by default, Telegram doesn't. Telegram has encrypted chats by default, just not E2E-encrypted.
- chupa 7y agoI don't think we should be celebrating that the chats are not sent in plaintext over the net in 2019. That's not the point.
- eitland 7y agoYou not only implied that Telwgram chats where unencrypted (AKA plaintext), you outright stated it. That is wrong. I guess there are some real issues with Telegram, but lets be honest and not lie and say it isn't encrypted.
- ericd 7y agoWhat does it mean that they're encrypted, but not E2E? That means the chats are MITM'd by the company, no? If you're talking about HTTPS, that's an incredibly low bar.
- eitland 7y agoAs far as I understand it it means keys goes one way, messages another way, so that no single jurisdiction can get hold of anyones messages by seizing the servers. Warning: the above is just my very simplified explanation of my understanding of what I read a while ago. Edit: again, this is based on something I read a while ago, but I think Gmail has or had a similar system where you have to have access to two different places in the system to get hold of the messages, so yes, Google can get hold of anyones messages bjt it is not like anyone can do a select * from messages where accountid = 12345. (And this is not how I think they store the mails anyway :-)
- baby 7y agoIf you care about security Whatsapp is so much better imo.
- vezycash 7y agoI've brought over at least 10 people to telegram but only one uses it regularly. The main reason is notifications don't deliver. I'm not sure if telegram app developers suck or if IOS, Android and battery saver apps are in collusion with Whatsapp.
- jjeaff 7y agoIs the HN ranking algorithm open source? I'm curious as to why a story like this makes it to the 2nd or 3rd top ranking story with only 6 points. Especially for an article about what seems to be a minor feature upgrade. Is there some context about telegram that I am missing?
- misnome 7y agoI think it's supposed to be a combination of upvote speed and how quiet HN is at the given time. Given that most of the front page articles have been around most of the day I imagine prioritising things with fast upvotes becomes more important.
- jrimbault 7y agoAn earlier version was open source. https://github.com/wting/hackernews https://github.com/wting/hackernews https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/tree/5409fc74fdd6a05020f57a2a61888927073597ae/apps/news https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/tree/5409fc74fdd6a0502...
- bro25 7y agoI'd guess that some keywords are ranked higher. Put telegram, crypto, Trump and guns in the title, and it'll make to the top with 1 vote.
- plibither8 7y agoModerators will sometimes rescue a post which didn't receive a lot of upvotes and reset the submission time on the post. This is part of an experiment in giving good HN submissions multiple chances at the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380
- OrgNet 7y agoThe moderators leave a lot of notes (as comments) when they modify the flow of information, but do they in that case?
- 7y ago
- SimplyUnknown 7y agoI really like Telegram. Only end-to-end encryption by default and in group chats would make it perfect.
- tptacek 7y ago"I really like Telegram. It being a secure messenger would make it perfect". I'm not really snarking at you; a lot of things would be better if they were also secure messengers; Slack is an obvious example.
- ApolloFortyNine 7y agoThey have end to end encryption available but off by default because it affects searching (they can't index your chat if they don't know what you said). Since your average users would be fine with this, it seems fair to have it as an optional feature.
- vinay427 7y agoSignal (the messenger) and Tutanota (for emails) both have search on their mobile clients with end-to-end encryption. It's definitely feasible to implement client-side search.
- izacus 7y agoSignal will also lose all your messaging history and kick you out of all your group conversations if your phone breaks or you lose it. It also has no usable automated backup solution or sync. It's also completely unable to work on multiple devices. Not really comparable in usability.
- interfixus 7y agoAlso, it will snark on you to all contacts whenever you move to a new device. And plead with you to let it handle your ordinary sms texting, then hold your text messages hostage, not exportable back to any other app.
- forinti 7y agoI had this idea a while back. I was in a group with just too much useless conversation. So I listed a few things I would like: - customizable posting limits (per day, per week, etc); - timeouts; - time windows (no posts on Sundays, for instance);
- hos234 7y agoOnce upon a time that was called a chat room. You entered when you wanted to socialize and left when you were done. Which is more in tune with natural group interactions in real life. This group chat BS was cooked up more so app devs could hit engagement metrics to satisfy braindead unimaginative investors.
- eitland 7y ago> This group chat BS was cooked up more so app devs could hit engagement metrics to satisfy braindead unimaginative investors. Or alternatively so that my family could have a persistent, searchable group chat solution.
- vinayan3 7y agoI feel like the point of a group chat is to have a channel to speak to a set of people. By having a rate at which you can send messages seems to defeat the purpose of having the communication channel. What if you made a typo or forgot to say something? At the same time group chat does encourage background chatter and it's a bit annoying to put your phone down and see the notification bubble say there is a ton of unread. Sub-channels really can help because people can create specific channels for a specific events, hangouts, topics etc... and not have to get everyone's attention. Though, invariably there will be someone who will go into the #general chat and send a message to @everyone. But sub-channels hasn't made it into SMS, and WhatsApp. Maybe the real problem is people aren't mindful of how wide their messages are being sent and how annoying it can be to get a bunch of messages that aren't relevant to you?
- jdnenej 7y agoYou can still edit your messages.
- dgellow 7y agoThey also added a feature to send silent messages, which is a pretty nice idea.
- stevenpetryk 7y agoI could swear I just read about that somewhere ;)
- RiversHaveWings 7y agoDiscord has already had it for a while. Some users seem to appreciate the mandatory cooling-off period while others feel it makes it harder for them to respond when a bunch of users pile on them in quick succession.
- gtirloni 7y agoSay what you want about Telegram, they innovate much faster than WhatsApp with way fewer resources.
- techntoke 7y agoDefinitely, but they need video chat like yesteryear.
- hnarn 7y agoI'd argue they don't need it, out of the 10-20 people I know that use Telegram I've never heard one of them mention it being something that bothers them, especially not since you can send video clips (which arguably is better anyway in my opinion, since it sacrifices near-real time comms for no stuttering, and I vastly prefer the latter). I imagine the ones that really do care about real time video chat will solve it through a different app for the occasions they use it. Hopefully Telegram is aware that they shouldn't sprawl too much, lest they risk being seen as a worse alternative to Snapchat, Duo, Skype etc. in addition to all the lunches they're already eating.
- michelb 7y agoInteresting to see more and more forum features from way back being integrated into chat apps. Are chat apps the new forums now? Discord sure is already there I guess.
- code_duck 7y agoTypically, forums are public and can be read by a great number of people. The replacement for that seems to be Facebook and reddit. Chat apps are basically the new IRC. They’re not too different than apps available decades ago like ICQ and AIM.
- floatingatoll 7y ago@dang I’d enjoy seeing a trial run of this on HN for one day.
- dewey 7y agoI don't really see the reason for that. Usually people don't reply in bursts here like you'd expect in a chat app. If there are multiple comments by a person in a short amount it's usually because you are replying to questions or addressing points of a discussion, hindering that doesn't really seem like something that helps the discussion.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoI've been in the comments sections of HN hot-topics where one person basically derails the conversation on every top-level thread with their same argument, yet it's such tempting flame-bait that nobody can resist responding every time. Sometimes you just need to contain your arguments to a single thread so others can enjoy the show. HN has a rate limit but I think it should kick in more aggressively once you're making your, say, 5th post on the same submission.
- teddyh 7y agoI seem to recall hitting the limit after posting something like two replies on one story and being confronted with “you’re posting too fast” when trying to post an unrelated comment on another story. I think the limiter kicks in as soon as one of one’s comments get any downvotes at all (i.e. even when also being mostly upvoted), but I’m obviously not sure about this. This is obviously very annoying, and I can’t see how it helps discussions.
- eitland 7y agoIt does exist :-) If you haven't seen it you have either been very nice and avoided angering anyone or you haven't posted many times in a day
- 7y ago
- kys228 7y agoExplain to me why the F would I ever use an app that requires my phone number to run?
- room505 7y agoWhat does everyone think of Microsoft Kaizala? It meets HIPPA requirements and you can backup your messages. It has a lot of group chat features. It also has a beta web chat. I've heard a lot of people in India are moving to it for personal and work chat ilo WhatsApp.
- pranau 7y ago> I've heard a lot of people in India are moving to it for personal and work chat ilo WhatsApp. I'm from India and I had to go look up what you were talking about. Literally the first time I'm hearing about this. I am also pretty sure that not many have moved to it from WhatsApp. Truth is, after so many years I am just now seeing the slow growth of Telegram amongst the city crowd.
- room505 7y agoFrom what I've read, it was developed in India under Microsoft Garage. It's being used more for business.
- johnm1019 7y agoI will ask the ignorant question, why Kaizala and not MS Teams? It also has groups, DMs, picture messaging, office integration, etc... I feel rather overwhelmed lately with all the various messaging options on the market with the same company often having multiple solutions.
- techntoke 7y ago
- codedokode 7y agoIt is worth noting that earlier moderators in some chats used bots with admin rights to limit posting rate. So Telegram just made this feature easier to use, without needing to set up a server with bot.
- johnnycab 7y agoTelegram is a great way to read HN articles, by subscribing to the channel, especially if you can't onboard enough people in your circle, to use it as a primary messenger. It also fires up on iPad, unlike WhatsApp.
- ignoramous 7y ago> Telegram is a great way to read HN articles, Do you mean browsing news.yc through the InstantView feature? https://instantview.telegram.org/ https://instantview.telegram.org/
- ngrilly 7y agoWhich channel?
- qqn 7y agoI like https://t.me/hacker_news_feed https://t.me/hacker_news_feed, it posts only the articles that have a score of 100+ so you don't get flooded by goodness, it just trickles in ; ) ... in fact, this is so useful I think it merits its own HN post!
- hnarn 7y agoAgreed, I had no idea it's been around for so long, this seems to be the original comment (2017): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15312468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15312468
- mattnguyen 7y agoA growing number of people and organizations are starting to choose Telegram over Slack. This became prevalent in the blockchain space where pretty much everyone prefers Telegram to other messaging apps. OTC brokers, quant funds, and the largest exchanges use Telegram in some capacity, some almost exclusively. Since the official Telegram clients are open source and the org encourages open competition between third party clients, it's now possible to build a Slack-like experience with workspaces, folders, integrations, and hot keys. Telefuel.com is one example. As Telegram launches their $1.7bn blockchain by eoy, it'll be interesting to see how they develop their crypto-economy. There seems to be a bit of development activity in various Telegram groups, but there's still a cloud of secrecy about the whole thing. Disclosure - I cofounded Telefuel.
- dillondoyle 7y agoHow can finance firms use telegram? aren't there strict compliance laws which require logging of messages - e.g. why Bloomberg chat is popular? Or maybe that's the point... but seems short sighted
- doomrobo 7y agoCouldn't a bot do logging?
- dillondoyle 7y agoSure but then what's the point of the extra encryption hassle
- karlmcguire 7y agoDo you have a source for their blockchain being launched EOY? I've been following their blockchain project since the whitepaper, and they've been quietly missing their launch goals by many quarters... I think Telegram has a unique position to combat Facebook's Libra.
- mattnguyen 7y ago
- wruza 7y agoWhatsApp vs Telegram E2E encryption seems to be a hot topic here, so I’m not sure in which subthread to ask. The question is how WhatsApp is E2E by default, if I can open a browser, read the QR-code and see all my E2E chats in there instantly? WA either has them unencrypted or can see my phone’s secret key in transit. Isn’t the whole point of END to END messaging being undecipherable on devices other than these two? Or how does that work? Is my browser establishing e2e to my phone and downloading all chats? This seems unlikely. Does it synchronize the secret key? Then I see it as a security hole — I don’t want my secret chats to leak to other devices that may be not as protected as a phone.
- zenexer 7y ago> Or how does that work? Is my browser establishing e2e to my phone and downloading all chats? More or less. It interfaces with your phone, which has a number of caveats. You can’t use the web interface without your phone.
- otachack 7y agoIt piggybacks off your cell phone app, I believe. It basically mirrors what's on your app, and if the connection severs at all then the data is wiped from the browser. You do bring up a good point on how it can be an attack vector, though.
- nichos 7y agoI always heard that telegram encryption was disabled by default. If you want security use signal, if you wants stickers and the like, use telegram.
- pentae 7y agoTelegram is still a step up from what most people use (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp). And if you really want a chat to be secure it's easy to set one up. I find it to be a perfect blend of security and usability. Saying it's only good for stickers is pretty disingenuous
- 7y ago
- phs318u 7y agoIf I may ask a tangential question. In none of the comments have I seen mention of Wickr messenger which seems well designed with respect to security and provides e2e encryption, ephemeral messaging, device anonymity (to the servers), video and audio comms. And I believe it’s open source. Is this a case of just not being well known or is there some problem with it that everyone but me has heard about? https://wickr.com/security/ https://wickr.com/security/
- kevincox 7y agoI think the idea is useful for large groups however a simple "cool down period" is far too simple. Something like "10 messages an hour" would be far more useful I think as you can still have quick and efficient exchanges while preventing the ability for any single user to be dominant. However even that is too simple. You would need to pair it with good UX so users aren't stuck without messages when someone is asking them a question.
- 1023bytes 7y agoI think this would be an interesting concept even in 1-1 communication. Instant messaging is too fast, we don't think before we send. I think adding a 1 minute delay between all messages would lead to much higher quality conversation