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To me Telegram is better even from a privacy point. Sure, if someone breaks into the Telegram servers can read you messages, but to me that isn't the first priv

To me Telegram is better even from a privacy point. Sure, if someone breaks into the Telegram servers can read you messages, but to me that isn't the first privacy concern. I'm more concerned about every day privacy, and Telegram is far better on them. Do you realized that you sent by mistake some data to the wrong people? In Telegram you can delete or edit every messages you want whenever you want. Don't you want to share your phone number in a group? In Telegram your phone number is hidden by default, meaning that other group members doesn't see you number unless you share it with them. Also Signal is open source but not really open. In Telegram you can use whatever client you want, in Signal you are forbidden to use anything else than the official client. And the official client is open source, but it depends on proprietary services, like the Google Play services on Android, so you really can't use it on a 100% open source system. You can't even find online the Signal apk by their choice, so the only official way is to install it from the Google Play Store (and how do you verify that the apk that Google provided to you doesn't contain a backdoor?)

growse 6y ago
> To me Telegram is better even from a privacy point. Sure, if someone breaks into the Telegram servers can read you messages, but to me that isn't the first privacy concern. For a lot of people, that's exactly the concern. > Also Signal is open source but not really open. In Telegram you can use whatever client you want, in Signal you are forbidden to use anything else than the official client. There's nothing in open source that requires people running services to allow anyone to connect to it however they like. You still have the freedom to inspect, modify, run and distribute both the server and client, so it's to see what part of that in "not really open". > And the official client is open source, but it depends on proprietary services, like the Google Play services on Android, so you really can't use it on a 100% open source system. I agree, this is annoying. But it depends on your threat model and it seems that most people don't see Google as the threat to protect against. > You can't even find online the Signal apk by their choice, so the only official way is to install it from the Google Play Store https://signal.org/android/apk/ https://signal.org/android/apk/ > (and how do you verify that the apk that Google provided to you doesn't contain a backdoor?) https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/ https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  The source is open. The system is closed.
Normille 6y ago
>In Telegram you can delete or edit every messages you want whenever you want... I'm always gobsmacked when people cite this as a positive. I'm a [mostly] happy user of Telegram. But this is the single stupidest 'feature' of the app. The only person who should be able to decide to delete data off my devices is me. No-one else. Full stop. Remember the furore when Amazon were caught deleting books off people's Kindles? Everyone was rightly outraged by that. Yet so many people think it's a great idea that Telegram allows other people to arbitrarily delete content from your devices.

growse 6y ago

> To me Telegram is better even from a privacy point. Sure, if someone breaks into the Telegram servers can read you messages, but to me that isn't the first privacy concern. For a lot of people, that's exactly the concern. > Also Signal is open source but not really open. In Telegram you can use whatever client you want, in Signal you are forbidden to use anything else than the official client. There's nothing in open source that requires people running services to allow anyone to connect to it however they like. You still have the freedom to inspect, modify, run and distribute both the server and client, so it's to see what part of that in "not really open". > And the official client is open source, but it depends on proprietary services, like the Google Play services on Android, so you really can't use it on a 100% open source system. I agree, this is annoying. But it depends on your threat model and it seems that most people don't see Google as the threat to protect against. > You can't even find online the Signal apk by their choice, so the only official way is to install it from the Google Play Store https://signal.org/android/apk/ https://signal.org/android/apk/ > (and how do you verify that the apk that Google provided to you doesn't contain a backdoor?) https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/ https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/

pseudalopex 6y ago
The source is open. The system is closed.

Normille 6y ago

>In Telegram you can delete or edit every messages you want whenever you want... I'm always gobsmacked when people cite this as a positive. I'm a [mostly] happy user of Telegram. But this is the single stupidest 'feature' of the app. The only person who should be able to decide to delete data off my devices is me. No-one else. Full stop. Remember the furore when Amazon were caught deleting books off people's Kindles? Everyone was rightly outraged by that. Yet so many people think it's a great idea that Telegram allows other people to arbitrarily delete content from your devices.