12 ms·

Telegram Web Apps for Bots

196 points by soheilpro 4y ago

quyleanh 4y ago
They still have to apply 30% rule, haven't they?
- meowtimemania 4y ago
  The 30% rule only applies if you are paying to unlock software features. If you’re paying to purchase real world things it doesn’t apply. E.g. 30% rule doesn’t apply to amazon
  - kevingadd 4y ago
    It's not restricted to software features, though. Things like ebooks and (???) event tickets also have a 30% cut (Facebook had an angry dispute over this).
    - solarkraft 4y ago
      Bandcamp's iOS app doesn't have purchases, presumably because of this.
      - HelixEndeavor 4y ago
        lol I just saw a recent Bandcamp update for iOS where the changelog said it "updated payment workflow" or something and it got me real confused because the app has never let you buy anything
    - 55555 4y ago
      This is why the Kindle app doesn’t let you buy anything on iOS. Such an awkward flow because you can read a free sample of a book and as soon as you finish and are ready to continue it just appears that there’s no way to buy it.
      - fullstop 4y ago
        The behavior is the same on Android.
aww_dang 4y ago
Would love to see this platform opened up. I've been recommended by users, but telegram always demands an app install for account creation. App install + mobile number as a login/username is a deal breaker for me. Horrible experience trying to explain why this isn't a sane security model to users.
- konart 4y ago
  >mobile number as a login/username Well, you can buy a number (+888) on fragment and use one instead of your own.
  - skinkestek 4y ago
    Let me also add that this is a bigger problem than it needs to be. Why? Because countries insist on linking phone numbers to individuals. Why do I think this is borderline ridiculous? Because the phone system is still so open that any scammer can appear to call from any number, or even temporarily hijack reception of messages and calls.
  - HelixEndeavor 4y ago
    Fragment? You mean Telegram's attempt to cash in on the cryptocoin scam, with their own walled-garden system and marketplace where it's currently hovering around $30 to buy a number, when it's genuinely cheaper to just get a Google Voice number or some prepaid burner phone number? Fragment, the service that is currently banned in the USA for being such an obvious scam?
    - freddie_mercury 4y ago
      Is it only $30? I just looked and all of the "ending soon" auctions have prices of $150 and up. With several of them at $4,000 and more. I know nothing about Fragment but I can only assume there's some kind of money laundering or other illegal activity involved to justify those prices.
      - konart 4y ago
andrewcamel 4y ago
Incredibly well positioned vs WhatsApp, iMessage, etc in the new world of LLM-enabled agents / chat bots… I’d put money on others launching similar things. Hard to see the current web UI remain the long-term format on mobile, maybe web too if the Telegram / other messaging apps well support this.
- illiarian 4y ago
  > I’d put money on others launching similar things. WeChat has had this for years (and other messengers in South Wast Asia). I have no idea why in-chat apps were never successfully implemented in the "West". There were minimal attempts by bot Apple and Facebook to add apps to their chats, but at best it's "let's add stickers"
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    because Asia leap-frogged over old internet protocols in favor of platforms, whereas a lot of Western systems are tied into email, websites and the crawlable/open web. Same reason SMS is still popular in the US compared to ip-based chatting everywhere else.
    - echelon 4y ago
      Leap-frogged has the connotation of "progress". Walled gardens and controlled ecosystems are horrible and concentrate power in the gatekeepers. I hope the experience is kludgy and user unfriendly to the point that startups not contained in the straightjackets of other systems continue to win out.
      - afiori 4y ago
        On the other hand the only ecosystem where SMS work decently is the Apple walled garden that IIUC is not run on actuall SMS technology.
  - vachina 4y ago
    WeChat is garbage. The only reason it gained prominence is because (better) alternatives are banned or blocked, causing spillover network effect to Chinese outside of China.
the_gipsy 4y ago
Yea, I wouldn't build a bot on a platform that's continuously dancing with cryptocoins and freemium-premium. Just build a webapp.
lysecret 4y ago
The first thing you realise when you start playing with LLMs and want to build a product around it is that you might not need a UI anymore but a text interface might be at the same time easier to build and much more intuitive. In this case the messengers have a big opportunity to become the next big platform. Telegram seems to be the one with the best apis. This shift might even make it possible to create a new messenger app with some LLM app as killer feature. In a way ChatGPT could have been that messenger app.
- FridgeSeal 4y ago
  Pity that _using_ telegram is a frustrating, spam filled messaging experience. Nothing nets me as much annoying automated spam as simply having an account there. More frustratingly, disabling messages from unknown contacts doesn’t appear to be a feature.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    I wonder why your account is attacked by spam so often. Conversely, I've never had any account get so little spam as my Telegram account. My email gets literally dozens of spam mails per day. Telegram, I'd say less than once per month. Exactly yesterday I thought that I got a spam message, it turns out that the sender is a SpaceX fan and a real interesting human, not the crypto-pushing bot that I had suspected at first when I read the greeting "hi".
    - stavros 4y ago
      > Conversely, I've never had any account get so little spam as my Telegram account. I don't get that much spam in Telegram either, but this must be an exaggeration. My WhatsApp and Signal accounts get completely zero spam.
      - ohgodplsno 4y ago
        My five year old Telegram account has received exactly zero spam messages in my entire time there. Being a country that actually punishes companies for selling your phone number and personal information without your consent makes everything more pleasant.
mx20 4y ago
I am surprised this is even allowed by Google and Apple. Tiktok also has something similar called Jump. I thought there is no chance to get an App approved that is basically an alternative web app store. I feel like this could be even more dangerous to Googles business model, than current AI. Imagine someone builds a search engine that has apps integrated like google flight or a calculator. But basically for every query a different app.
lysecret 4y ago
We should rebrand bots, maybe to something like text apps or conversation apps or something like this bots have a bad rep and don’t really represent what these LLM driven apps are.
- TheFreim 4y ago
  Maybe I'm just blinded by experience but I don't have an issue distinguishing bad and good bots in common usage. I play Old School Runescape which is plagued with bots, but there's never confusion because linguistic markers naturally signal what is meant. The opposite has also been true in my experience. Maybe I'm just too wary of another stint on the euphemism treadmill.
edandersen 4y ago
Telegram moves closer to being the everything "X" app for the West.
V__ 4y ago
I really wish Signal would try something similar, with a strong focus on security and data-protection. I just don't want my data in Telegram's hands.
- stiltzkin 4y ago
  If people are ok with their data on Facebook, HN, Discord or Twitter the same can be on Telegram.
xeonax 4y ago
I have been using Telegram as my game server administrator. It gives me realtime updates about important activities from my players, As well as I can change settings directly from my mobile. Or start a new event.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  I use telegram for monitoring many services.... one botfather command, you get an api key and one curl command to send a message. Service restarted, server rebooted, low ram, low disk space, temperature too high, etc., everything comes to telegram. "Back in the time" I would've used email for that, but if you don't run your own server, getting a free email address that doesn't either need a phone number verification, doesn't get banned for random reasons or doesn't stop working suddenly, because it decided it needed 2 factor authenticaion is practically impossible. (btw, if anyone knows a service, that gives you a free email address (well, more than one) with smtp access, no phone number or any other verification and doesn't ban accounts after a few automated messages, please tell.. I don't care about getting marked as spam, I can whitelist it on my side)
  - TheFreim 4y ago
    > "Back in the time" I would've used email for that One thing I like about chat is the different mindset and granularity. I can have a bot post a message to a channel for normal messages and then tag me, thus giving me a notification, for urgent matters. Email is more like digital mail, I don't want to have to check it often (I disable email notifications).
- TheFreim 4y ago
  What game server? Did you write the telegram integration plugin/script yourself?
  - xeonax 4y ago
    Yes, I am making a game. Its game server, is integrated into discord as well as telegram.
mattrighetti 4y ago
Bots are super useful on Telegram. It’s probably the only thing that I miss on other platforms. I have a pretty successful one that interacts with libgen and I couldn’t live without it! The chat layout also becomes a super useful feature in a lot of cases, especially when you want to keep track of history data like past searches.
AdrenalinMd 4y ago
Be cautious when using Telegram for important matters. I recently examined a situation where confidential messages from high-ranking Moldovan officials were leaked through Telegram. Unlike WhatsApp and Signal, which offer end-to-end encryption by default, protecting your messages even in case of a SIM swap, Telegram does not offer the same level of security. A SIM swap or a breach in their system can lead to message leaks. Despite advertising themselves as a "secure messaging" platform, Telegram lacks default end-to-end encryption, making it less secure than its competitors. Read this excellent thread from Moxie https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1474067549574688768 https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1474067549574688768
- slondr 4y ago
  Telegram is not less secure, this is misinformation. Telegram is less secure by default; it has a worse UX for secure messaging, as a deliberate choice to improve default UX for new users.
  - titaniczero 4y ago
    IMO if your app is less secure than your competition by default, the app is less secure, period. Telegram is said to have been given authorities access to user data [1], despite the fact that they advertise the opposite. I guess that’s what happens when your app is not encrypted E2E by default. Also, they have used their own encryption algorithm in the past (I don’t know now) instead of the well known and proven algorithms out there. Something highly criticized by experts, back then [2] -[1] https://www.androidpolice.com/telegram-germany-user-data-surrendered/ https://www.androidpolice.com/telegram-germany-user-data-sur... -[2] https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1177 https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1177
    - ikt 4y ago
      > Also, they have used their own encryption algorithm in the past (I don’t know now) why not just look this info up before replying ?
      - 4y ago
Mxbonn 4y ago
For me, Midjourney was the killer app which showed that chat apps can be good interfaces for products. It takes away many UI development costs and problems and allows you to focus on the product/backend.
- lucasverra 4y ago
  is discord the best way to execute midjourney ?
  - wraptile 4y ago
    Clearly no as Midjourney is working on a web UI that'll be out this year. Personally, I'm turned off by Discord's UX and one of the main reasons I don't use midjourney.
- gazby 4y ago
  On the contrary, personally I'd be on any competing platform were it as-good-as just to escape the Discord integration. Maybe if they didn't spend so long on that absurd homepage they could have built an API or something.
ComodoHacker 4y ago
This is really cool, but... Allowing third-party JavaScript execution on the client is a bold move. They better have both user- and admin-accessible way to disable this.
miki123211 4y ago
Telegram's bot API is really nice and easy-to-use, to the point where you could easily use it via curl or even a web browser. The same can't be said about the third-party client protocol, which is a perfect example of NIH syndrome. Where the bot API is bog standard JSON over HTTPS, the client API has its own encryption protocol, its own connection protocol, its own serialization standard and its own schema language. Everything is reasonably well documented, but some of the documentation (particularly for the schema/serialization part) is somewhat hard to understand if you're not a mathematician and/or well-versed in statically-typed functional languages like Haskell and the associated theory. Some parts, voice and video calls in particular aren't documented at all. Where every other part of the API has a precisely defined schema, this one just expects a binary blob of unspecified contents. There's a tgcalls library (written in C++) that implements this protocol, but its Github repository doesn't contain the needed build scripts nor any information on what other libraries it relies on (and it definitely relies on at least WebRTC and probably some others.)
ivanmontillam 4y ago
This feature is such a killer. I love it. WhatsApp bots are overly simplistic. I'm not talking about specific implementations where bots only accept simple strings or just integer numbers (your typical city bot), I know that's not WhatsApp's fault. It's just that WhatsApp bot capabilities have these 1.0 vibes. Bots that just chat and aren't rich anyhow like Telegram ones. WhatsApp bots don't come close, and WhatsApp users live in such Plato's Cave with it. I just wish The West could come up with something like this, and at the same time not coming from your typical FAANG. That'd make me jump ship. Such a great product management. Also, Zuckerberg is so deep in the privacy troubles with the Congress, that he cannot open WhatsApp Bot API freely like Telegram can. That hinders the development of bots in WhatsApp a lot. Only big companies have direct WhatsApp API access and are able to re-sell it through tech partnerships (e.g.: You cannot call WhatsApp's API directly, you have to pay a company like Freshworks for its Freshchat product and then you can use WhatsApp's API indirectly through Freshchat API, walling the garden this much is just non-sense). -- Full disclosure: I love Telegram far more than WhatsApp. I resent WhatsApp because I'm not able to quit it because of network effects. I also recently berated my phone carrier for offering WhatsApp for free, but not other messenger apps (which also violates my net neutrality rights). Disclaimer: I know Telegram gets a lot of hate because of its Russian origins. Same hate TikTok gets for seemingly being CCP-controlled.
- blep-arsh 4y ago
  Telegram offers a powerful platform but the default client is so weird. I'd very much prefer interacting with a website instead. For example, every bit of the UI is so aggressively animated, emoji, stickers, full-screen effects, it's a pain to look at. Meanwhile the iPad client still can't properly handle the hardware keyboard or even switching to another app and back (the input field gets stuck floating mid-screen).
- Self-Perfection 4y ago
  I had to start WhatsApp a year ago due to network effect. Though I despise the idea of communication network that forbids you from creating alternative clients. At least I managed to vent the steam off by setting an image that asks to write to me via Telegram instead as my avatar. You can find it here: https://gist.github.com/Self-Perfection/f470d5120f938221769dbf5990e28e3e https://gist.github.com/Self-Perfection/f470d5120f938221769d.... The image is in SVG format, so you can customize it to your liking.

196 points by soheilpro 4y ago

quyleanh 4y ago

They still have to apply 30% rule, haven't they?

meowtimemania 4y ago
The 30% rule only applies if you are paying to unlock software features. If you’re paying to purchase real world things it doesn’t apply. E.g. 30% rule doesn’t apply to amazon
- kevingadd 4y ago
  It's not restricted to software features, though. Things like ebooks and (???) event tickets also have a 30% cut (Facebook had an angry dispute over this).
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    Bandcamp's iOS app doesn't have purchases, presumably because of this.
    - HelixEndeavor 4y ago
      lol I just saw a recent Bandcamp update for iOS where the changelog said it "updated payment workflow" or something and it got me real confused because the app has never let you buy anything
  - 55555 4y ago
    This is why the Kindle app doesn’t let you buy anything on iOS. Such an awkward flow because you can read a free sample of a book and as soon as you finish and are ready to continue it just appears that there’s no way to buy it.
    - fullstop 4y ago
      The behavior is the same on Android.

aww_dang 4y ago

Would love to see this platform opened up. I've been recommended by users, but telegram always demands an app install for account creation. App install + mobile number as a login/username is a deal breaker for me. Horrible experience trying to explain why this isn't a sane security model to users.

konart 4y ago
>mobile number as a login/username Well, you can buy a number (+888) on fragment and use one instead of your own.
- skinkestek 4y ago
  Let me also add that this is a bigger problem than it needs to be. Why? Because countries insist on linking phone numbers to individuals. Why do I think this is borderline ridiculous? Because the phone system is still so open that any scammer can appear to call from any number, or even temporarily hijack reception of messages and calls.
- HelixEndeavor 4y ago
  Fragment? You mean Telegram's attempt to cash in on the cryptocoin scam, with their own walled-garden system and marketplace where it's currently hovering around $30 to buy a number, when it's genuinely cheaper to just get a Google Voice number or some prepaid burner phone number? Fragment, the service that is currently banned in the USA for being such an obvious scam?
  - freddie_mercury 4y ago
    Is it only $30? I just looked and all of the "ending soon" auctions have prices of $150 and up. With several of them at $4,000 and more. I know nothing about Fragment but I can only assume there's some kind of money laundering or other illegal activity involved to justify those prices.
    - konart 4y ago

andrewcamel 4y ago

Incredibly well positioned vs WhatsApp, iMessage, etc in the new world of LLM-enabled agents / chat bots… I’d put money on others launching similar things. Hard to see the current web UI remain the long-term format on mobile, maybe web too if the Telegram / other messaging apps well support this.

illiarian 4y ago
> I’d put money on others launching similar things. WeChat has had this for years (and other messengers in South Wast Asia). I have no idea why in-chat apps were never successfully implemented in the "West". There were minimal attempts by bot Apple and Facebook to add apps to their chats, but at best it's "let's add stickers"
- Barrin92 4y ago
  because Asia leap-frogged over old internet protocols in favor of platforms, whereas a lot of Western systems are tied into email, websites and the crawlable/open web. Same reason SMS is still popular in the US compared to ip-based chatting everywhere else.
  - echelon 4y ago
    Leap-frogged has the connotation of "progress". Walled gardens and controlled ecosystems are horrible and concentrate power in the gatekeepers. I hope the experience is kludgy and user unfriendly to the point that startups not contained in the straightjackets of other systems continue to win out.
    - afiori 4y ago
      On the other hand the only ecosystem where SMS work decently is the Apple walled garden that IIUC is not run on actuall SMS technology.
- vachina 4y ago
  WeChat is garbage. The only reason it gained prominence is because (better) alternatives are banned or blocked, causing spillover network effect to Chinese outside of China.

the_gipsy 4y ago

Yea, I wouldn't build a bot on a platform that's continuously dancing with cryptocoins and freemium-premium. Just build a webapp.

lysecret 4y ago

The first thing you realise when you start playing with LLMs and want to build a product around it is that you might not need a UI anymore but a text interface might be at the same time easier to build and much more intuitive. In this case the messengers have a big opportunity to become the next big platform. Telegram seems to be the one with the best apis. This shift might even make it possible to create a new messenger app with some LLM app as killer feature. In a way ChatGPT could have been that messenger app.

FridgeSeal 4y ago
Pity that _using_ telegram is a frustrating, spam filled messaging experience. Nothing nets me as much annoying automated spam as simply having an account there. More frustratingly, disabling messages from unknown contacts doesn’t appear to be a feature.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  I wonder why your account is attacked by spam so often. Conversely, I've never had any account get so little spam as my Telegram account. My email gets literally dozens of spam mails per day. Telegram, I'd say less than once per month. Exactly yesterday I thought that I got a spam message, it turns out that the sender is a SpaceX fan and a real interesting human, not the crypto-pushing bot that I had suspected at first when I read the greeting "hi".
  - stavros 4y ago
    > Conversely, I've never had any account get so little spam as my Telegram account. I don't get that much spam in Telegram either, but this must be an exaggeration. My WhatsApp and Signal accounts get completely zero spam.
    - ohgodplsno 4y ago
      My five year old Telegram account has received exactly zero spam messages in my entire time there. Being a country that actually punishes companies for selling your phone number and personal information without your consent makes everything more pleasant.

mx20 4y ago

I am surprised this is even allowed by Google and Apple. Tiktok also has something similar called Jump. I thought there is no chance to get an App approved that is basically an alternative web app store. I feel like this could be even more dangerous to Googles business model, than current AI. Imagine someone builds a search engine that has apps integrated like google flight or a calculator. But basically for every query a different app.

lysecret 4y ago

We should rebrand bots, maybe to something like text apps or conversation apps or something like this bots have a bad rep and don’t really represent what these LLM driven apps are.

TheFreim 4y ago
Maybe I'm just blinded by experience but I don't have an issue distinguishing bad and good bots in common usage. I play Old School Runescape which is plagued with bots, but there's never confusion because linguistic markers naturally signal what is meant. The opposite has also been true in my experience. Maybe I'm just too wary of another stint on the euphemism treadmill.

edandersen 4y ago

Telegram moves closer to being the everything "X" app for the West.

V__ 4y ago

I really wish Signal would try something similar, with a strong focus on security and data-protection. I just don't want my data in Telegram's hands.

stiltzkin 4y ago
If people are ok with their data on Facebook, HN, Discord or Twitter the same can be on Telegram.

xeonax 4y ago

I have been using Telegram as my game server administrator. It gives me realtime updates about important activities from my players, As well as I can change settings directly from my mobile. Or start a new event.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
I use telegram for monitoring many services.... one botfather command, you get an api key and one curl command to send a message. Service restarted, server rebooted, low ram, low disk space, temperature too high, etc., everything comes to telegram. "Back in the time" I would've used email for that, but if you don't run your own server, getting a free email address that doesn't either need a phone number verification, doesn't get banned for random reasons or doesn't stop working suddenly, because it decided it needed 2 factor authenticaion is practically impossible. (btw, if anyone knows a service, that gives you a free email address (well, more than one) with smtp access, no phone number or any other verification and doesn't ban accounts after a few automated messages, please tell.. I don't care about getting marked as spam, I can whitelist it on my side)
- TheFreim 4y ago
  > "Back in the time" I would've used email for that One thing I like about chat is the different mindset and granularity. I can have a bot post a message to a channel for normal messages and then tag me, thus giving me a notification, for urgent matters. Email is more like digital mail, I don't want to have to check it often (I disable email notifications).
TheFreim 4y ago
What game server? Did you write the telegram integration plugin/script yourself?
- xeonax 4y ago
  Yes, I am making a game. Its game server, is integrated into discord as well as telegram.

mattrighetti 4y ago

Bots are super useful on Telegram. It’s probably the only thing that I miss on other platforms. I have a pretty successful one that interacts with libgen and I couldn’t live without it! The chat layout also becomes a super useful feature in a lot of cases, especially when you want to keep track of history data like past searches.

AdrenalinMd 4y ago

Be cautious when using Telegram for important matters. I recently examined a situation where confidential messages from high-ranking Moldovan officials were leaked through Telegram. Unlike WhatsApp and Signal, which offer end-to-end encryption by default, protecting your messages even in case of a SIM swap, Telegram does not offer the same level of security. A SIM swap or a breach in their system can lead to message leaks. Despite advertising themselves as a "secure messaging" platform, Telegram lacks default end-to-end encryption, making it less secure than its competitors. Read this excellent thread from Moxie https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1474067549574688768 https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1474067549574688768

slondr 4y ago
Telegram is not less secure, this is misinformation. Telegram is less secure by default; it has a worse UX for secure messaging, as a deliberate choice to improve default UX for new users.
- titaniczero 4y ago
  IMO if your app is less secure than your competition by default, the app is less secure, period. Telegram is said to have been given authorities access to user data [1], despite the fact that they advertise the opposite. I guess that’s what happens when your app is not encrypted E2E by default. Also, they have used their own encryption algorithm in the past (I don’t know now) instead of the well known and proven algorithms out there. Something highly criticized by experts, back then [2] -[1] https://www.androidpolice.com/telegram-germany-user-data-surrendered/ https://www.androidpolice.com/telegram-germany-user-data-sur... -[2] https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1177 https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1177
  - ikt 4y ago
    > Also, they have used their own encryption algorithm in the past (I don’t know now) why not just look this info up before replying ?
    - 4y ago

Mxbonn 4y ago

For me, Midjourney was the killer app which showed that chat apps can be good interfaces for products. It takes away many UI development costs and problems and allows you to focus on the product/backend.

lucasverra 4y ago
is discord the best way to execute midjourney ?
- wraptile 4y ago
  Clearly no as Midjourney is working on a web UI that'll be out this year. Personally, I'm turned off by Discord's UX and one of the main reasons I don't use midjourney.
gazby 4y ago
On the contrary, personally I'd be on any competing platform were it as-good-as just to escape the Discord integration. Maybe if they didn't spend so long on that absurd homepage they could have built an API or something.

ComodoHacker 4y ago

This is really cool, but... Allowing third-party JavaScript execution on the client is a bold move. They better have both user- and admin-accessible way to disable this.

miki123211 4y ago

Telegram's bot API is really nice and easy-to-use, to the point where you could easily use it via curl or even a web browser. The same can't be said about the third-party client protocol, which is a perfect example of NIH syndrome. Where the bot API is bog standard JSON over HTTPS, the client API has its own encryption protocol, its own connection protocol, its own serialization standard and its own schema language. Everything is reasonably well documented, but some of the documentation (particularly for the schema/serialization part) is somewhat hard to understand if you're not a mathematician and/or well-versed in statically-typed functional languages like Haskell and the associated theory. Some parts, voice and video calls in particular aren't documented at all. Where every other part of the API has a precisely defined schema, this one just expects a binary blob of unspecified contents. There's a tgcalls library (written in C++) that implements this protocol, but its Github repository doesn't contain the needed build scripts nor any information on what other libraries it relies on (and it definitely relies on at least WebRTC and probably some others.)

ivanmontillam 4y ago

This feature is such a killer. I love it. WhatsApp bots are overly simplistic. I'm not talking about specific implementations where bots only accept simple strings or just integer numbers (your typical city bot), I know that's not WhatsApp's fault. It's just that WhatsApp bot capabilities have these 1.0 vibes. Bots that just chat and aren't rich anyhow like Telegram ones. WhatsApp bots don't come close, and WhatsApp users live in such Plato's Cave with it. I just wish The West could come up with something like this, and at the same time not coming from your typical FAANG. That'd make me jump ship. Such a great product management. Also, Zuckerberg is so deep in the privacy troubles with the Congress, that he cannot open WhatsApp Bot API freely like Telegram can. That hinders the development of bots in WhatsApp a lot. Only big companies have direct WhatsApp API access and are able to re-sell it through tech partnerships (e.g.: You cannot call WhatsApp's API directly, you have to pay a company like Freshworks for its Freshchat product and then you can use WhatsApp's API indirectly through Freshchat API, walling the garden this much is just non-sense). -- Full disclosure: I love Telegram far more than WhatsApp. I resent WhatsApp because I'm not able to quit it because of network effects. I also recently berated my phone carrier for offering WhatsApp for free, but not other messenger apps (which also violates my net neutrality rights). Disclaimer: I know Telegram gets a lot of hate because of its Russian origins. Same hate TikTok gets for seemingly being CCP-controlled.

blep-arsh 4y ago
Telegram offers a powerful platform but the default client is so weird. I'd very much prefer interacting with a website instead. For example, every bit of the UI is so aggressively animated, emoji, stickers, full-screen effects, it's a pain to look at. Meanwhile the iPad client still can't properly handle the hardware keyboard or even switching to another app and back (the input field gets stuck floating mid-screen).
Self-Perfection 4y ago
I had to start WhatsApp a year ago due to network effect. Though I despise the idea of communication network that forbids you from creating alternative clients. At least I managed to vent the steam off by setting an image that asks to write to me via Telegram instead as my avatar. You can find it here: https://gist.github.com/Self-Perfection/f470d5120f938221769dbf5990e28e3e https://gist.github.com/Self-Perfection/f470d5120f938221769d.... The image is in SVG format, so you can customize it to your liking.