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Telegram's getting ads

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41–50 of 97 posts

Re: Telegram's getting ads

#41
post #37
post #20

As someone who knew Durov personally, I'd say that it's very unlikely that the UX will be ruined by ads, and even more unlikely that users will be manipulated and/or tracked in any way. If there's one thing he does well it's respecting his users. He knows what "we're earning enough to cover our expenses" means. The company is privately owned so no one will be pushing him into anything either. Many popular Telegram ch…

> I'd say that it's very unlikely that the UX will be ruined by ads [...]. If there's one thing he does well it's respecting his users. If there's one thing Telegram isn't good at, it's having a UX that respect its users. If that was the case, it would be possible to opt out of notifications from group chats and still receive notifications for private chats, but it's not. This forces one to juggle with multiple accou…

Huh? I can mute groups very easily, and it has been possible for almost as long as they existed AFAIK.

TG has in my opinion the best UI and functionality of all chat-apps available too.

Re: Telegram's getting ads

#42

While Im not a fan of telegrams encryption, the title is a bit misleading. It makes it seem as if ALL of telegram is getting ads. if you go to the founders post https://t.me/durov/142 It clearly says ads will be for the 1:many public community channels and not the private 1:1 and group chats. Other ways of funding will be premium services for businesses and premium stickers. Sounds reasonable to me

What do you dislike about telegrams encryption? The only private messaging app Im really familiar with signal

The reason primarily is that they have rolled their own crypto, which based on a lot of reading and comments from other experts suggests is the wrong thing to do.

To this end I havent seen a good explanation from Telegram as to why they have taken this route given there are so many proven & battle tested methods and algorithms. "We havent been hacked yet" doesnt seem good enough for me.

1:1 messages aren't e2e by default and group messages dont support e2e.

For these reasons about encryption I dont like it but their UI/UX is the absolute best.

Re: Telegram's getting ads

#43
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has investors though. Telegram is wholly owned by Durov. I've also seen him run monetization at VK. Basically: there was one developer responsible for ads, and he sat in another office together with financial staff because of the different values.

Now he doesn't.

Now who doesn't what?

Re: Telegram's getting ads

#44
post #35
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, ALL UX is ruined by addition of ads. I bet there is not a single user of any app anywhere ever that can claim that their UX was bettered by ads. Also, users WILL be have to manipulated and/or tracked for the purpose of monetization via ads. By now everyone is well acquainted with these monetization techniques, so no point in pretending otherwise.

Disagree. I like musical instruments. I don’t mind ads for guitar companies. I like embedded systems. I love seeing ads for new esp32 variants or low cost e-ink screens. Also I never object to women’s swimsuit ads. Just sayin’.

Still, ads will distract you in moments that you don't want to be distracted.

If you like guitars, you can visit a good, large online guitar store, say once a week, and you will always be up to date. Same for swimsuits.

Re: Telegram's getting ads

#45
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never found signal lacking in any way, except that occasionally push notifications don’t get through. When people say signal is lacking in features, what do they mean? Simplicity is appealing too

They (at least it's me) are possibly meaning the excellent multi-device use. I can easilly use Telegram on like 10 different devices, all chats are in sync.

This also means that it's much easier to spy on someone on Telegram: just create a fake device with telegram, then login the user into it using a phone with fake identity. Easy-peasy for a (Russian) government.

Re: Telegram's getting ads

#46

I don't understand how Telegram has managed to stay free for 8 (?) years until now. Was there ever a catch? Since the start it has continuously improved to become a feature-packed product that's easy to use, with a pleasant UI.

The founder had been covering the costs

Which shows the extent to which the mainstream internet is overrun with greed

Re: Telegram's getting ads

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 min walkthrough/registration process versus a <1 min registration. Think whatever of it but people appreciate convenience over everything.

"Look, mom/dad/wife/brother/friends, I know that WhatsApp is easier and everyone else is using it and it you already know it and it is super convenient. But I don't want to use it anymore for a bunch of different reasons. If you want to talk to me , I can help you get set up on this app and we can talk. I know it sounds like a pain in the ass, but I am willing to help you with whatever issue you have. Just please don…

100% conversion rate with those you can apply sufficient pressure on, perhaps. Who'd want to lose contact with a son, brother, father over something like that? But it's a hassle, even if you don't see it that way.

Over the years I myself have been converted to Signal, Telegram (encrypted chats), Threema, some kind of encrypted IRC and OTR on at least two other messengers, Google Wave, Google Talk, Viber, ... can't remember them all. I have no idea anymore what person prefers which app and since most of those people weren't the very best of friends, contact to almost all of them has effectively ceased (in part because those specific people don't often start conversations themselves), which is a pity, but it's simply really bothersome to cater to everyone's preferences, and I absolutely can't and won't switch to $other_app fully myself, because I really value being able to talk to all my acquaintances and friends and relatives and being able to stay in touch with new ones easily and frictionlessly, and pretty much everyone is on Whatsapp, and all I need is a phone number.

If some people categorically don't value other people who don't use their preferred app, that totally weirds me out. Their choice, but not one I'm willing to make, especially since that notion of freedom I gain feels like a very, very abstract kind of freedom in a world where billions use Whatsapp for next to anything and all sorts of devices, apps and websites from all sorts of brands and sources phone home lots and lots of data, which also means eschewing Whatsapp doesn't matter a thing unless I make dozens of other painfull choices like opting out of all mainstream social media, complex privacy-centric browser setups that need constant attention to not fall behind, no mainstream phone (possibly no smartphone at all), no smart devices at all, Linux exclusively, etc. pp., otherwise I'll just leak data like a sieve elsewhere. Given that I gain what feels like very little, life just feels too short for this.

Re: Telegram's getting ads

#48

While Im not a fan of telegrams encryption, the title is a bit misleading. It makes it seem as if ALL of telegram is getting ads. if you go to the founders post https://t.me/durov/142 It clearly says ads will be for the 1:many public community channels and not the private 1:1 and group chats. Other ways of funding will be premium services for businesses and premium stickers. Sounds reasonable to me

Ads are never, ever reasonable. Never let other companies brain hack your users. It's unethical and an awful UX. No one is ever pleased to see an ad.

It's not like we can't do instant messaging without ads. I have used IRC every day for the past 15 years. Not every project needs a business model to work and not every approach is justified because the business needs it.

Re: Telegram's getting ads

#49
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never found signal lacking in any way, except that occasionally push notifications don’t get through. When people say signal is lacking in features, what do they mean? Simplicity is appealing too

They (at least it's me) are possibly meaning the excellent multi-device use. I can easilly use Telegram on like 10 different devices, all chats are in sync.

Yeah, e2ee importance for chat is grossly overrepresented. Vast majority of users would happily trade security and privacy for convenience.

Re: Telegram's getting ads

#50
post #12

I'd recommend Signal[0] as an alternative. It's fully Open-Source (including the backend) and their crypto is public and independently verified[1][2][3]... [0] https://signal.org/en/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Encryption_p... [2] https://threatpost.com/signal-audit-reveals-protocol-cryptog... [3] https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf [PDF]

Does signal still have a problem of dropping messages? I tried to use it as a replacement for Android Messages a while ago but roughly 10-25% of all messages were not received any given day.

I experience this quite a lot, at least in group chats (I mainly use Signal for group chats). Some of the participants receive my message, others not. When I check the message details it says "message not sent" or "not delivered" (not sure which one) for some group members while it does not display any errors other members. As far as i noticed, no error means the message was delivered but even when it showed an error it could be that people actually got my message.

This error seems to happen a lot more often, when i send messages via Signal Desktop.

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