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Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats

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Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats

#61

Post by jeroenhd »

WolfRazu wrote: post #37
rvz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest explanation for this is the fact that the desktop apps are native apps and not based on the massive and sluggish electron framework.

I don't think this necessarily has to hold true (Discord for instance have implemented their apps really well), but in reality this holds true for most electron apps in my experience.

Could just be me, but the Discord app is full of glitches and random pauses for me. The app is better on my phone, but on several Linux distros the feel of the application is just off to me. Switching servers and channels has a tiny but noticeable delay that I haven't seen native applications have.

Unfortunately, there aren't many native applications any more. At this point I'd prefer a Windows application that works in Wine over yet another "cross-platform" Electron webbrowser-with-builtin-website.

Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats

#62

Post by vetinari »

newscracker wrote: post #46
blue_box wrote: post #13

I really like Telegram and these features but I don’t use it because they don’t have end2end encryption as default. Also you can’t create a secret group chat that you can start from your phone and continue from your Mac.

Actually, you can't start a secret group chat at all in Telegram. It supports secret chats only for chats between two people, and that's where it's tied to the devices used for initiating the chat.

Secret chat with multiple devices or with group has the key distribution problem - what's good to receive the message, if you cannot read it? When there are exactly two devices, you avoid that problem.

That's why it is not on by default and why it doesn't work for groups. Most users favor convenience over strict e2e.

Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats

#63

Post by newscracker »

parhamn wrote: post #36
randomhodler84 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no. No. “You have nothing to share.” E2e by default or GTFO. This isn’t about your secrets. It’s about making your regular discourse indistinguishable from secrets. There is no con to e2e, and many cons for snake oil/plaintext.

> There is no con to e2e, and many cons for snake oil/plaintext. Is this true? From anecdata every e2e encrypted platform I used is much lower quality than the alternatives (iMessage, Signal, etc). Things like multi-device sync don’t work that well. Is this really just a coincidence? Telegram claims they can’t provide the same quality chat (and snappy cross platform crispness is really their competitive advantage) wi…

Technically, E2E increases the complexity of the applications and servers, but it shouldn't really affect quality of chats or messages. One area where this will be a problem is in search. Telegram claims that is can search chats faster because those are on its servers, and anecdotally, I have seen Telegram's search being better and faster than the other platforms I use or have tried (they have to search only on the local device, which then has an impact on battery life for phones and tablets).

The other bigger drawback with E2E is that the servers of those platforms don't store the chats permanently (they store it for about 30 days or so to deliver the messages to devices when they come online, depending on the platform). So syncing chat history across devices gets affected by this choice (it could still be done, but the complexity and speed of syncing grows a lot).

Wire does E2E for all chats and syncs all chats across devices. But it too doesn't sync chat history on newer linked devices. It also took the (what I consider as inferior) choice of using Electron for its desktop apps, which makes it quite sluggish.

Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats

#64

Post by vetinari »

rakoo wrote: post #43
xorcist wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no con to e2e, No multi device support. No transcoding for video. No shared history for group chats. Scaling get progressively harder with increasing participants.

> No multi device support. That's an issue with your client and protocol, not with e2e > No shared history for group chats. Same > Scaling get progressively harder with increasing participants. Same > No transcoding for video. Now that's a more palpable issue. Also no size reduction of photos which is probably more used as a media.

> That's an issue with your client and protocol, not with e2e

That's issue with distributing the keys among multiple parties.

> No shared history for group chats.

> Same

Exactly. What's e2e good for, if you give keys to the entity that does the archiving?

Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats

#65

Post by newscracker »

behnamoh wrote: post #16
antihero wrote: post #6

This looks bloody neat - Clubhouse seemed annoying and exclusive, whereas Telegram feels a lot more inclusive.

Exactly. I don't like how CH was only introduced for iOS and follows the same annoying strategy that Gmail used before (invitation).

What's even more annoying is that Clubhouse requires access to the entire contacts list/address book if you as a user would like to invite someone else. You can't invite someone by just entering their phone number (since a phone number is the only way to register for it). It doesn't have to be this way, but the Clubhouse team doesn't seem to care.

Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats

#66

Post by TedShiller »

TheChaplain wrote: post #31
blue_box wrote: post #13

I really like Telegram and these features but I don’t use it because they don’t have end2end encryption as default. Also you can’t create a secret group chat that you can start from your phone and continue from your Mac.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of discussion do you have that require e2e? Myself I use TG extensively with friends, family, girlfriend and I think I've used secret chats once when the gf wanted to send a naughty photo. It's not that I don't have anything to hide, it's just I choose what to say according to the environment and I feel the features of telegram far outweigh the con of not having e2e at all times.

Can you send me a zip archive of all your chats? It would be fun for me to read and ok with you since you have nothing to hide. You can contact me here.

If you don’t send me your chats then I assume you want privacy after all.

Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats

#68

Post by newscracker »

throwawaysea wrote: post #49

Does Telegram perform any censorship or deplatforming like Twitter when it comes to controversial topics (like illegal immigration, trans issues, race issues, etc)? I see from this post they have public groups but I also worry that these tech companies are all too willing to deplatform those that disagree with the progressive political platform, especially when they try to make the turn towards monetization. That’s r…

Telegram can and will remove content and users who violate its policies. Since the content is not end to end encrypted by default (except in one to one secret chats), Telegram has access to scan/listen/process the content. There is also a content moderation team that works on handling content removal, though it seems like it has mostly focused on terrorism in the past. The FAQ [1] has more details. So does the ToS. [2]

[1]: https://telegram.org/faq

[2]: https://telegram.org/tos

Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats

#69

Post by AnyTimeTraveler »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #33
TheChaplain wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of discussion do you have that require e2e? Myself I use TG extensively with friends, family, girlfriend and I think I've used secret chats once when the gf wanted to send a naughty photo. It's not that I don't have anything to hide, it's just I choose what to say according to the environment and I feel the features of telegram far outweigh the con of not having e2e at all times.

Oh no. No. “You have nothing to share.” E2e by default or GTFO. This isn’t about your secrets. It’s about making your regular discourse indistinguishable from secrets. There is no con to e2e, and many cons for snake oil/plaintext.

Actually, there are many cons to e2e, especially with bigger groups. I've read a lot about Signal's and Matrix's development and there are many problems that don't exist when sending data over a simple SSL connectiom to a server.

For example: You have a group with 100 Members, do you encrtpy each message you send 99 times for each recipient? Not likely. So you use a send key that everyone else can decrypt.

But then what if the group changes? Does everyone has to replace their send-keys, because the party that left can still decrypt all those messages otherwise.

That means you have to do n-1 key exchanges whenever a party leaves or joins. Otherwise it wouldn't be secure anymore.

There are some clever ideas about key exchanges, but so far the messengers that implement them are not widely used and since there is no profit in it, no one is in a hurry to compete.

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