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Blocking a large messaging platform because a minority of people are using it for piracy, of all things, seems extremely disproportionate
And it is pointless too as there are countless other messaging apps that can be used and countless others ways that can be created to circumvent. Law makers clearly do not get tech.
The other messaging apps offering better privacy on top of that, making it harder to control.
Honestly, Telegram sucks. Use Signal for private communications and Matrix for groups/communities.
Telegram is great for nothing related to privacy.
It’s the best app when it comes to functionality. It has it all.
Can you name a feature that other apps are missing?
- You can schedule messages
- Have supergroups, subgroups, broadcasts, admin roles in groups,…
- Channels can be configured in various ways. For example, you can post messages and choose the type of previews links render.
- You can add voting options to posts
- Members of the channel can only reply in threads so the replies are bundled.
- You can decide wheter new group members can view chat history or not.
- Members can be muted.
- Bots can be built withing the app
- Chats can be arranged in folders *…
I could go on.
Ok, I see. Telegram tries to combine Discord, WhatsApp and WeChat, but it isn’t a great replacement for either of them.
Discord has groups, chanels, threaded conversations, allows you to mute people, great support for bots, folders, etc. Signal is much better for private chats though, it has a very secure encryption protocol and enables E2EE by default and is very focused on privacy in general. Btw Signal also allows scheduling messages. I tried Telegram for both groups/chanels and private chats and I found it really annoying to have my groups and channels in the same app as my normal conversations. Just use Signal and Discord/Matrix/Revolt.
I get it. That’s why I use Plus messenger. It’s a better, more customisable UI. Private chats, groups and channels are on a different page, if you want it.
Unfortunately I use Discord, WhatsApp, Signal, Element (Matrix) and SimpleX all combined because my contacts are spread out. Looking forward to secure interoperability.
Plus Messenger looks proprietary. You might be interested in Beeper once it’s released, it let’s you use all your messaging platforms in one app. And it’s supposed to be secure and open-source.
I’m on the waiting list. I hope they get e2ee sorted out.
Also Telegram Mini Apps.
We don’t need a Russian version of WeChat.
Yes like make it American is so much better. You are just racist.
No I think you are just stupid. I’m not even American lol. What does this have to do with racism? I don’t care about the nationality or ethnicity of the developers, but about the country from which the company operates or has ties to.
Telegram has Russian developers, but I would expect that it
sells data to everyonecomplies to some other jurisdictionThe company is based in the UAE, not a great country either
Matrix is good for personal communications too The us companies made you to use phone numbers for chatting Id’s are convenient
I mean, sure, you can use Matrix for personal chats. It’s perfectly secure, but it’s not as easy to use as Signal. For example, if I told my grandma to install Element and send me her Matrix ID, she would be really confused. Signal is very easy to use, and the user experience is basically the same as on mainstream platforms like WhatsApp. I also don’t think that the phone number requirement is a US thing, as Telegram also has it. Signal only requires phone numbers to prevent spam, but they recently introduced usernames, so you don’t have to give people your phone number in order for them to message you.
Element is just a piece of shit. Matrix is fine for almost all use cases. If you actually need metadata protection use Session.
The old version of Element ain’t great, but it is currently being replaced with a complete new, rewritten app called Element X. Check it out, it’s really awesome. Session isn’t good at protecting metadata, as it removes important parts of the Signal protocol, in order to work on a decentralized network. Just using Signal is probably the best solution for private communications.
Yes.
My server doesn’t support sliding sync.
That’s unfortunate
Why Signal is a bad idea
This is BS, half of it is pure speculation, the other half consists of conspiracy theories.
Does Telegram have anything that torrents and usenet don’t?
It indeed empowers common people by distributing full seasons of series all in one place in a somewhat user friendly way without “10 chicks in 10mt” popups.
A bunch of my friends, who don’t even know how to install an adblocker, have a very rich catalog of things there.
Also, it is more difficult for a telegram channel to be banned than a website.
Lots and lots of sticker packs.
Sticker packs are a gateway drug to, well, drugs. Which you can buy on telegram too of course.
:)
I make my own thank you very much. Sticker packs are a right of passage to navigation on Telegram. We also have the gif game.
I think we’ve lasted 20mins of replying in gifs to each other, in context. Is a very hard “game”.
It’s normie-accessible
Probably not, but Telegram is very easy to use.
So are Signal, Element, Revolt and many other apps. What’s to special about Telegram?
It has it all and 900 million users.
Actually, yes, there are a few groups with unique niche content that isn’t available anywhere else.
You know Telegram is secure when every government in the world is trying to ban it.
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To be honest Telegram doesn’t ban private groups “for piracy” and only takes out public groups that receive a DMCA.
I think the above user is pointing out a rather fun fact - if you’re in some of the many private groups where shit is shared freely…those wanting to ban it don’t like the fact that they can’t see in those private groups.
Like, is there any evidence of private groups being monitored by media corps or their lackeys in gov?
This doesn’t make it secure for anything else. There are also plenty of private torrent trackers.
Yeah, more my point is I was curious if Telegram has previously taken down private groups Vs public ones (I’ve seen a fair few of these obviously since they adhere to DMCA requests) but have never seen a private group taken down.
Just use Signal if you want an easy, relatively privacy friendly and secure messenger.
Telegram hands over data to goverments, is infested with spammers and scammers and its encryption is not end to end for group chat which lets Telegram access those chats.
Edit: Telegram is great for lots of things like big groups, communities, piracy, drugs etc but its just not the place where you should expect secure communication.
I’m not using Signal as long as Signal Foundation is based in the US. Also Signal is not on FDroid, so I can’t use it anyway.
I installed Signal via Obtanium. Just use this URL when searching/adding the app
Why would you need to use obtanium to get the Signal apk file from that link?
You can just download the apk from that website and install it. The app can update itself.
The app doesn’t auto update for me.
Huh, that’s strange. On my 3 Android devices, I downloaded the APK from the website, and it always auto-updates.
It existed ever since they added the APK to their website as a compromise for people who don’t want to get Signal from the Play Store.
But Russian/UAE-based Telegram is fine? 😂
Also, it really doesn’t matter where Signal is based, as long as it’s client code is open source and it uses E2EE by default. Telegram doesn’t encrypt chats by default, and even if you enable ‘secret chats’ it uses a pretty weak encryption protocol.
Btw the official version of Telegram isn’t available on F-Droid either, only a fork called Telegram-FOSS. You can get the exact same thing for Signal from a 3rd-party repo: https://www.twinhelix.com/apps/signal-foss/, or use Molly.
Better than USA-based.
Absolutely not.
This might not be relevant because you have other reasons not to use Signal, but you can get android signal directly from their website and via aurora store (on fdroid)
It’s more the attitude that bothers me. Signal’s refusal to support alternative appstores and clients is very disturbing. It gives the impression that Signal is a honeypot.
You seem to have really high standards around who you trust and in the same moment you call Telegram secure. I feel like you should atleast use the same amount of scepticism for Telegram that you use for Signal.
The official version of Telegram isn’t available on F-Droid either, and it doesn’t use end-to-end encryption by default, so it’s much more likely that it is a honeypot
That is not the official Telegram app. It is a fork called “Telegram-FOSS”. If you go to the F-Droid page and click on ‘Source code’, you will see that it links to this repo: https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS
This is the description of that GitHub repository:
Unofficial, FOSS-friendly fork of the original Telegram client for Android
You can side load.signal though from their website
It’s Signal Foundation’s hostility to open and non-Google platforms that is very disturbing.
Signal releases their own self-updating apk on their site, and this release doesn’t use Google services for push notifications. There are legitimate reasons why publishers sometimes avoid f-droid.
Also there’s Molly, which is a signal fork that allows database encryption; or Session, which doesn’t require a phone number for account registration and is decentralized. Both of these forks have repos that you can add to f-droid.
I do understand the hesitance to use a platform that has its infrastructure in the US, but I will say that international compliance with the US is a problem even if the infrastructure is located elsewhere. Session is a really promising option, since it’s decentralized, and I’d love to see more people using it.
It would be better even if they just hosted an F-droid repo for their app. If they don’t trust the f-droid organization with building the app, that’s fine I guess. But as I’m aware, they had said no to allf of what is f-droid.
The CEO is a Russian, the company is based out of Dubai, and messages aren’t encrypted by default. In fact, only private messages can be encrypted, group messages cannot. Telegram is not a trustworthy platform and a champion for user privacy like most people think, Signal is what you’re looking for.
All of that is more reliable then an entity based in the US.
WTF is this ignorant “I know what they want but I’m smarter” crap, if you don’t know how it works you know nothing, and “what they want” you get from news.
I know of a few governments not trying to really. Like the Russian one.
Read something about its internals before saying something as stupid.
XMPP with OMEMO is secure (not for targeted attacks, in that case you’ll just get a trojan on your Android device via some unclosed vulnerability and finita la comedia, or rubber hose cryptanalysis will be applied).
Good luck ban it, Telegram runs everywhere without playstore and with proxy.
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Truly Spain without the S
My buddy in Spain says the block it pretty easier to get around at least.
Spain? Really? I thought they had a pretty left government?
They do, but this is coming from a right-dominated tribunal known to be extremely conservative and reactionary in nature.
What is the relationship between the government ideology and the court system? Both are independent from each other.
Lol.
It’s a monarchy
Eh, the tech-illiterate come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors.
As if this is something good.
Infinitely better than a hard-right government.
I hijack the post to ask for a telegram client suggestions?
you didn’t specify your system. If android then there are regularly updated solutions on fdroid. On Linux I’m just using the flathub official package
