5 ms·

If it's good enough for organised criminals and to anger various governments, it's good enough for me

lrvick 6y ago
Don't forget Apple pressured Telegram to remove rooms or be banned. This type of pressure on centralized systems is exactly why it is unethical as technologists to suggest people centralize the internet. When you choose to send friends to centralized systems you are voting for the internet to have all the problems and advantages of dictatorships. When you support open decentralized protocols you get the problems and advantages of a democracy. Dictatorships can move fast and make sweeping changes. Look at China. Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, iMessage are all examples of centralized walled gardens, aka dictatorships. They are all doomed to be co-opted into doing something you don't like at some point and you will have no recourse. Meanwhile we have decentralized systems like like HTTP, SMTP, and Matrix. Yes they move slower, are more fragmented, need long periods of carefully discussed and rolled out protocol changes and many implementations and servers to all agree on those to function. Decentralized control is messy, and good UX takes longer to materialize, but that is how the internet was built, and how we kept it from being controlled by a single ISP/Browser like AOL. If you want a modern e2e chat protocol that lets you use any client, server, operating system, or architecture you want and take your social graph with you when you change your mind on any of those things, where no one single entity can change the rules of the network for profit or other reasons... you are looking for Matrix.
- theshrike79 6y ago
  > Don't forget Apple pressured Telegram to remove rooms or be banned. Apple pressured Telegram to remove specific posts. There was no way to stop spamming the posts, so they removed the whole channel because it was a lot easier.
amitport 6y ago
It's not really "good enough" for them. Some criminals seem to use it but it's just a matter of reputation. It doesn't offer any extra privacy over whatsapp.
approxim8ion 6y ago
That's your threat model and that's fair enough.

Don't forget Apple pressured Telegram to remove rooms or be banned. This type of pressure on centralized systems is exactly why it is unethical as technologists to suggest people centralize the internet. When you choose to send friends to centralized systems you are voting for the internet to have all the problems and advantages of dictatorships. When you support open decentralized protocols you get the problems and advantages of a democracy. Dictatorships can move fast and make sweeping changes. Look at China. Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, iMessage are all examples of centralized walled gardens, aka dictatorships. They are all doomed to be co-opted into doing something you don't like at some point and you will have no recourse. Meanwhile we have decentralized systems like like HTTP, SMTP, and Matrix. Yes they move slower, are more fragmented, need long periods of carefully discussed and rolled out protocol changes and many implementations and servers to all agree on those to function. Decentralized control is messy, and good UX takes longer to materialize, but that is how the internet was built, and how we kept it from being controlled by a single ISP/Browser like AOL. If you want a modern e2e chat protocol that lets you use any client, server, operating system, or architecture you want and take your social graph with you when you change your mind on any of those things, where no one single entity can change the rules of the network for profit or other reasons... you are looking for Matrix.

theshrike79 6y ago
> Don't forget Apple pressured Telegram to remove rooms or be banned. Apple pressured Telegram to remove specific posts. There was no way to stop spamming the posts, so they removed the whole channel because it was a lot easier.

amitport 6y ago

It's not really "good enough" for them. Some criminals seem to use it but it's just a matter of reputation. It doesn't offer any extra privacy over whatsapp.

approxim8ion 6y ago

That's your threat model and that's fair enough.