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So, who has actually launched "a pretty intense" campaign here? https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1788386090841161913 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_gr

So, who has actually launched "a pretty intense" campaign here? https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1788386090841161913 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/17883860908411619... https://twitter.com/evacide/status/1788040276331884593 https://twitter.com/evacide/status/1788040276331884593 https://twitter.com/naomibrockwell/status/1788634952269009390 https://twitter.com/naomibrockwell/status/178863495226900939... https://twitter.com/paulmillr/status/1788563576455610552 https://twitter.com/paulmillr/status/1788563576455610552 (I'm pretty sure the list goes on)

r721 2y ago
Here's the other side: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40301508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40301508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40336005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40336005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40330694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40330694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40308241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40308241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40299313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40299313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40298608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40298608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40279661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40279661 https://twitter.com/jack/status/1787895769183268948 https://twitter.com/jack/status/1787895769183268948 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1787908190799278360 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1787908190799278360 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1787589564917490059 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1787589564917490059
- cryptoboy2283 2y ago
  Are you pointing out that Mr. Durov is in conspiracy with... Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk?
  - r721 2y ago
    In my opinion this has started as part of Rufo's campaign against Katherine Maher (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40341993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40341993), then Dorsey and Musk boosted that article because it aligns with their political views. Durov decided to add Telegram vs Signal angle in his post.
    - cryptoboy2283 2y ago
      Thanks, this is helpful. Still kinda hilarious that their target for damage control is... Telegram. Musk and Dorsey never even mentioned it
kome 2y ago
this is honestly quite surprising... why are they so adamant? we know telegram is not super safe, but at least is not facebook.
- supriyo-biswas 2y ago
  It’s ultimately a distinction without a difference, as it is an appeal to the morality of the corporation behind the product, which can change from based on their incentives. E2EE protects against that.
- jimkleiber 2y ago
  Ironically I saw that FB Messenger started adding E2EE by default to my chats, whereas Telegram I believe still requires opt-in.
  - kome 2y ago
    yes, but that's the point: it's not a technical problem, it's an institutional problem. Facebook is pure surveillance capitalism. They live by scooping your data. E2EE is hardly a concern or a solution.
    - jimkleiber 2y ago
      While metadata can leak a lot about conversations, it doesn't leak nearly as much as plain-text data of conversations. I've argued for years that companies have an incentive to do E2EE on private messages so they don't have to be held liable or have to get involved in a lot of investigations if they don't have any access to the info. Telegram has access to the plain-text data of the conversations, as far as I know. Signal, WhatsApp, and Messenger (more and more), seem to not have much, if any, access to the plain-text data of conversations. But the Meta companies are lying about E2EE, I don't know? Signal has seemed to me to be the company (org actually, nonprofit) that cares the most about privacy in terms of intentions and implementation.
- lynndotpy 2y ago
  Facebook actually has had optional E2EE with the Signal protocol since at least 2016 (in my experience), as "secret chats". This puts it on a better security standing than Telegram.
jxi 2y ago
That was my impression too, that this was more of a thread to slander Telegram than anything. The main leg that Signal has to stand on is it uses standard encryption, but it has all kinds of shady components like it used to require sharing phone number to contact someone, and the cofounder Moxie launched some MOB crypto scam which went to 0 and he has now quit the project too.
- jsheard 2y ago
  As I recall they went out of their way to hide that they were working on that shitcoin integration as well, Signals open source releases went dark for a year or so without explanation and then it turned out to be because they didn't want people to know about MobileCoin. Compromising the transparency of the project to obfuscate the development of a feature that they surely knew would be unpopular isn't a good look.
ants_everywhere 2y ago
Yeah, the pro-encryption and pro-privacy people sure seem to be trying to tell us something about Telegram
- cryptoboy2283 2y ago
  Perhaps you're right, and all of them have the "greater good" intentions, but it's ridiculous how their "regular reminders" popped up in the same 24h interval
  - ants_everywhere 2y ago
    > have the "greater good" intentions, It's getting harder and harder to tell because bot activity has gotten so good, but Matthew Green has been around a while and is a genuine old school crypto dude. There is a group of people who just believes that crypto and privacy are good things and want to promote them. The reason it gets harder is because you can spin up a handful of "expert" accounts shilling for this or that privacy VPN or bitcoin scam etc. So it's hard to just pull up a list of statements and know whether it has any weight. In this case, Matthew Green has a lot of weight because I've followed him for a while and I know what he's about.
    - cryptoboy2283 2y ago
      > There is a group of people who just believes that crypto and privacy are good things and want to promote them. Doesn't mean one can't become a sellout eventually. Especially in Green's particular case - he had invested a lot of attention to Margaret Salter, e.g. https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1357890731369709571 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/13578907313697095...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
lynndotpy 2y ago
This seems organic to me. I was a security researcher, and for years I've been telling anyone who would listen that Telegram is not as secure as their marketing says it is, while Signal is. The reasons why are already pretty well listed in the thread above. Telegram's E2EE is hand-rolled and not the default. Signal's E2EE is always on, and it's _the_ industry standard protocol. (Outside of iMessage, I believe the Signal protocol is used on every well-adopted messaging service which offers E2EE chats.) People also aren't aware that phone numbers and usernames are tied on Telegram. When a former friend of mine joined Telegram, I searched up his username, and found his _very_ explicit Reddit account. This identity compromise issue isn't mentioned more often. You can add me to the list. There is no good reason to pick Telegram over Signal, unless you don't care about security. It DOES have more sticker packs.
- kelthuzad 2y ago
  >People also aren't aware that phone numbers and usernames are tied on Telegram. But you can, under Privacy & Security, switch Phone number visibility to "nobody". You can also change your username anytime you want to. A new feature called "anonymous numbers" allows you to purchase and use virtual numbers (they start with +888). I think the bigger problem here is that Telegram has not e2e encryption enabled by default, which is definitely suspect.

r721 2y ago

Here's the other side: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40301508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40301508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40336005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40336005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40330694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40330694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40308241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40308241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40299313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40299313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40298608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40298608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40279661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40279661 https://twitter.com/jack/status/1787895769183268948 https://twitter.com/jack/status/1787895769183268948 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1787908190799278360 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1787908190799278360 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1787589564917490059 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1787589564917490059

cryptoboy2283 2y ago
Are you pointing out that Mr. Durov is in conspiracy with... Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk?
- r721 2y ago
  In my opinion this has started as part of Rufo's campaign against Katherine Maher (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40341993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40341993), then Dorsey and Musk boosted that article because it aligns with their political views. Durov decided to add Telegram vs Signal angle in his post.
  - cryptoboy2283 2y ago
    Thanks, this is helpful. Still kinda hilarious that their target for damage control is... Telegram. Musk and Dorsey never even mentioned it

kome 2y ago

this is honestly quite surprising... why are they so adamant? we know telegram is not super safe, but at least is not facebook.

supriyo-biswas 2y ago
It’s ultimately a distinction without a difference, as it is an appeal to the morality of the corporation behind the product, which can change from based on their incentives. E2EE protects against that.
jimkleiber 2y ago
Ironically I saw that FB Messenger started adding E2EE by default to my chats, whereas Telegram I believe still requires opt-in.
- kome 2y ago
  yes, but that's the point: it's not a technical problem, it's an institutional problem. Facebook is pure surveillance capitalism. They live by scooping your data. E2EE is hardly a concern or a solution.
  - jimkleiber 2y ago
    While metadata can leak a lot about conversations, it doesn't leak nearly as much as plain-text data of conversations. I've argued for years that companies have an incentive to do E2EE on private messages so they don't have to be held liable or have to get involved in a lot of investigations if they don't have any access to the info. Telegram has access to the plain-text data of the conversations, as far as I know. Signal, WhatsApp, and Messenger (more and more), seem to not have much, if any, access to the plain-text data of conversations. But the Meta companies are lying about E2EE, I don't know? Signal has seemed to me to be the company (org actually, nonprofit) that cares the most about privacy in terms of intentions and implementation.
lynndotpy 2y ago
Facebook actually has had optional E2EE with the Signal protocol since at least 2016 (in my experience), as "secret chats". This puts it on a better security standing than Telegram.

jxi 2y ago

That was my impression too, that this was more of a thread to slander Telegram than anything. The main leg that Signal has to stand on is it uses standard encryption, but it has all kinds of shady components like it used to require sharing phone number to contact someone, and the cofounder Moxie launched some MOB crypto scam which went to 0 and he has now quit the project too.

jsheard 2y ago
As I recall they went out of their way to hide that they were working on that shitcoin integration as well, Signals open source releases went dark for a year or so without explanation and then it turned out to be because they didn't want people to know about MobileCoin. Compromising the transparency of the project to obfuscate the development of a feature that they surely knew would be unpopular isn't a good look.

ants_everywhere 2y ago

Yeah, the pro-encryption and pro-privacy people sure seem to be trying to tell us something about Telegram

cryptoboy2283 2y ago
Perhaps you're right, and all of them have the "greater good" intentions, but it's ridiculous how their "regular reminders" popped up in the same 24h interval
- ants_everywhere 2y ago
  > have the "greater good" intentions, It's getting harder and harder to tell because bot activity has gotten so good, but Matthew Green has been around a while and is a genuine old school crypto dude. There is a group of people who just believes that crypto and privacy are good things and want to promote them. The reason it gets harder is because you can spin up a handful of "expert" accounts shilling for this or that privacy VPN or bitcoin scam etc. So it's hard to just pull up a list of statements and know whether it has any weight. In this case, Matthew Green has a lot of weight because I've followed him for a while and I know what he's about.
  - cryptoboy2283 2y ago
    > There is a group of people who just believes that crypto and privacy are good things and want to promote them. Doesn't mean one can't become a sellout eventually. Especially in Green's particular case - he had invested a lot of attention to Margaret Salter, e.g. https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1357890731369709571 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/13578907313697095...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

lynndotpy 2y ago

This seems organic to me. I was a security researcher, and for years I've been telling anyone who would listen that Telegram is not as secure as their marketing says it is, while Signal is. The reasons why are already pretty well listed in the thread above. Telegram's E2EE is hand-rolled and not the default. Signal's E2EE is always on, and it's _the_ industry standard protocol. (Outside of iMessage, I believe the Signal protocol is used on every well-adopted messaging service which offers E2EE chats.) People also aren't aware that phone numbers and usernames are tied on Telegram. When a former friend of mine joined Telegram, I searched up his username, and found his _very_ explicit Reddit account. This identity compromise issue isn't mentioned more often. You can add me to the list. There is no good reason to pick Telegram over Signal, unless you don't care about security. It DOES have more sticker packs.

kelthuzad 2y ago
>People also aren't aware that phone numbers and usernames are tied on Telegram. But you can, under Privacy & Security, switch Phone number visibility to "nobody". You can also change your username anytime you want to. A new feature called "anonymous numbers" allows you to purchase and use virtual numbers (they start with +888). I think the bigger problem here is that Telegram has not e2e encryption enabled by default, which is definitely suspect.