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Telegram Stars: Pay for Digital Goods and More
- datadrivenangel 2y agoIt appears that the stars are worth $0.05 each, so this will either be great for microtransactions, and/or lead to some insane money laundering issues.
- neilv 2y agoSeems manipulative design to me. Yellow stars are already used heavily in apps for ratings, favoriting, marking as important. And previously as stickers of approval on your childhood homework. In the example animation of purchases, note all the exciting confetti and sunburst reward-like animations... for spending money. Not only are they introducing a level of indirection over money (you're not spending real money, but some fun imaginary thing), but they're also appropriating and misusing a popular favorable symbol. Just show what these things cost in familiar real money (or at least make it a stylized gold coin already), stop preying upon children, and stop manipulating adults.
- reaperducer 2y agoImagine a society where the big tech companies encouraged people to save money, act civilly, and be polite to one another. "You didn't spend real money on pretend things today. Here's some confetti!"
- nucleardog 2y ago> Just show what these things cost in familiar real money Which real money? US dollars? Canadian dollars? Australian dollars? App is by Russians so maybe rubles? But their offices are in UAE so maybe dirham? For a company looking to facilitate international transactions and storage of value… making their own “currency” actually doesn’t sound entirely unreasonable.
- neilv 2y agoReal money in the currency of the buyer, so they know how much it costs. Content can be priced manually by region and currency, falling back to current exchange rate to seller's selected currency. (Of course, more dynamic pricing is possible, but that also has its own ethical issues to be careful of.)
- LeafItAlone 2y agoSince most of the users can do the math in their head of what their star cost x number of stars, surely their application can?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- CynicusRex 2y agoEach iteration I dislike Telegram a bit more. It used to be the sleek "flagship killer" among chat software, but now it's slowly becoming bloatware. Their positive stance on pyramid schemes was were it all went downhill.
- JZL003 2y agoAre there other messaging apps which are equally bot friendly. Telegram bots are just so nice and scriptable, I don't use it for anything else, just a personal bot (so maybe all this bloat and sketchiness doesn't matter) but I'd be happier to use another scriptable platform Even being able to have bot custom keyboards/buttons is pretty great
- preezer 2y agoSadly no. I tried Signal, but it's incredibly complicated. I would move to signal if they made their API more easy.
- Karrot_Kream 2y agoI use Telegram a lot, but Matrix is even more friendly to scripting. If you're just using the bots for yourself, you can setup a non-federated Dendrite instance and just write bots for it.
- thatloststudent 2y agoI like how flexible matrix bots are but there are some problems that I'm not able to easily solve, like finding out when a new person joins a matrix room because the m.join event is used for user info changes as well as joins. Edit: I found this [1] table that hopefully simplifies things, I'll see if that works out. [1]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.8/client-server-api/#mroommember https://spec.matrix.org/v1.8/client-server-api/#mroommember
- ravetcofx 2y agoWhat do you use bots for if you don't mind me asking? I've never found a use case for messaging app bots for personal or hobby use
- omani 2y agohome automation for example.
- fullspectrumdev 2y agoI wonder how fast this will be adopted by the automated bot-shops on telegram where you can buy illicit substances with a few taps?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nurumaik 2y agoShould've stayed with "grams" as base currency instead of renaming it to toncoin
- skeledrew 2y agoTBF Telegram doesn't exactly have a direct connection to Toncoin. It's primarily a community project which they heavily promote, since the SEC got on their case about Gram's direct integration. Yeah, I get the reply was meant to be punny.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoFantastic features. Telegram is the modern day Winamp. Amazing software with a cohesion in it's features unlike the buggy, broken, hideous Google Suite for example.
- GabeIsko 2y agoTrying to stand up an alt currency backed by Russian oligarchs with deep ties to Russian intelligence services? I smell a federal ban if this catches on.
- kmeisthax 2y agoNaah, the feds need Telegram to exist so people don't accidentally use something good like Signal.
- ChilledTonic 2y agoThis is pretty clever design to me. If Apple & Google don't try to change their policies to skirt around it, it seems like a good way to build so-called super apps on their respective platforms. Building a Telegram bot is incredibly easy, and a lot of digital services are more then capable of being handled in that format. Being able to easily charge for that built into the actual software library? Win-win to me.
- Pufferbo 2y agoI mean there’s already examples of this: Line and WeChat. I can only speak on Line. It has so many things built into it. Including: a news app, retail coupons, calling, messaging, payment (both in app and at retail). A few more extreme things the app offers: cellular plans, car/bike/home/life insurance, and brokerage services. Another example of a “super” app, but one that’s not built off a messaging platform would be PayPay. It’s a popular QR code payment platform in Japan. It includes many of the services offered by Line but in a more integrated way.
- colesantiago 2y agoKiller app for criminals, money laundering and for illicit payments.
- nurumaik 2y agoTornado, Tonnel (tornado on ton) and Monero already exist. You can already easily launder any amount of money with that services
- reaperducer 2y ago"Don't be against this thing that's bad because all these other things are also bad. That makes it good!"
- _r4nc 2y agoYou must be thinking of the US dollar.
- kayodelycaon 2y agoAnd furries! Don’t forget us. :) Stickers are the killer feature.
- RicoElectrico 2y agoSo Telegram wants to become a "Russian" super app, akin to WeChat and LINE.
- DANmode 2y agoInternational, not "Russian". Seemingly. Edit: They publicly oppose the Russian government - care to explain your down vote?
- RicoElectrico 2y agoPer capita Russia probably has the most downloads. It's only surpassed by India in absolute terms. That's why I put Russian in quote marks :)
- grishka 2y agoThe Russian wannabe super app is VKontakte. Telegram is currently based in UAE.
- saos 2y agoTelegram UI/UX surely surpasses that of WhatsApp? That’s what I’ve noticed since joining the telegram. It simply lacks in E2EE by default
- cunidev 2y agoHas Telegram made any active effort on the encryption/privacy side in the last years? With no E2EE except in unpractical, single-device "secret chats", it falls behind the majority of chat platforms (aside from Meta-owned ones, at least), and feels like a Western WeChat more than a place I would like my data to be owned by. Which is a shame because its UX is consistently great.
- farukozderim 2y agoI see that lots of people mention it's missing E2E, but that's also the convenient part of it. You have all your chat history in the cloud, can open it at any new device including huge sizes of video and images. Signal is good for E2E but not comparable in terms of convenience.
- para_parolu 2y agoI don’t understand why people say telegram is missing e2e. There is a convenient way to create e2e chat when you need them (which is “rare” for me).
- throw20240511 2y agoSeveral problems: On mobile. Desktop not supported. Everything else is clear text and readable by telegram and authorities. Of course it’s missing encryption! Really, telegram is being naked for 99% of the time, with an optional clothes feature that is limited and mobile only. Whereas signal is fully dressed, all the time. Signal is 100% encrypted, all groups encrypted, all messages encrypted, all contacts encrypted. The vendor knows when your registered… that is all. Of course people who don’t understand the sheer dystopia of cleartext coms and visible social graphs — They will say “when I need them “ I will encrypt. No, you must encrypt all the time. Messages must be indistinguishable. You don’t just encrypt the sensitive stuff, you should encrypt everything!
- drdaeman 2y agoIt is effectively missing E2E, because it misses the point completely. The point of E2E (and, particularly, PFS) is to a) exist before you even realize you need it; and b) make your private and not-so-private conversations indistinguishable from each other. In other words, you want your chats with news and memes E2E by default, so when you chat about something sensitive you a) don't have to do anything, b) won't forget about it until it's too late and c) won't give away the fact that this particular conversation suddenly went private. Telegram management is weirdly stubborn af in this regard. Which could be either "we know better" syndrome, simple ignorance, or even malice. They, however, undeniably know their ways with UX and marketing, so, once again, as in an old Russian proverb, we end up with a barrel of honey, with a spoonful of tar - the nicest-looking but crappily implemented tech always wins.
- wesamco 2y ago> Soon, developers will be able to withdraw the stars earned by their bots in Toncoins via Fragment. So it's backed by Telegram's own cryptocurrency, or at least soon gonna be. reading this killed the little excitement I had.
- skeledrew 2y agoTelegram doesn't have a crypto, and likely never will. The SEC made sure of that. What they do is heavily promote and support the Toncoin community.