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Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

reuters.com

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Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#71

Post by AdamHominem »

don-code wrote: post #30

I'm actually quite thrilled that end users found a way to communicate in spite of "the everyday solution" being down. That gives me some hope that smaller vendors do stand a chance against incumbents, even in Facebook's space.

I'm not particularly thrilled, given Telegram is based in the United Arab Emirates, its client-server encryption is almost purposefully garbage (they basically rolled their own TLS, and predictably researchers keep finding vulnerabilities in "MTProto"), they don't enable e2ee chats by default, and they don't e2ee group chats at all.

Do. Not. Use. Telegram.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#72

Post by kleiba »

zht wrote: post #29
kleiba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a no-go for me too... if I had a phone number. These days, it's actually surprisingly hard to get a free email account without having to provide a phone number.

how do you live life without a phone number?

I'm old.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#73

Post by dorchadas »

stephencoyner wrote: post #66
throwawaybutwhy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What downtime? There were rumors of degraded video chat capacity, which is a nuisance but not a catastrophe.

Notifications didn't work until about 5PM PDT for me

It didn't work on mobile for me in Ireland for about an hour or so -- couldn't get a call or messages out on WiFi or data, but it worked perfectly fine on my laptop.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#74

Post by kleiba »

gleenn wrote: post #54
zht wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you live life without a phone number?

I did it for a year in Japan, not easy but doable. I also hate giving out my phone number. It's just another way for companies to track users.

I've never had a phone. I suppose it's harder if I ever had one but since I never had to give up the conveniences, I don't really have a problem with it.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#75

Post by AdamHominem »

thepasswordis wrote: post #13

Is there a way to join telegram without giving them my phone number? That just feels like a honeypot/dataleak waiting to happen.

It's a UAE company with a custom encryption protocol, e2ee off by default, and no e2ee for group chat. You're damn right it's a honeypot.

Use Signal or Element/Matrix.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#76

Post by manquer »

gigatexal wrote: post #63

70M people were so worked up about not being able to use FB they signed up for Telegram -- the not-quite orthogonal alternative? Sounds 'sus

It is WhatsApp and Messenger users who were moving, if you need to talk to someone right now and the platform both of you were using is not working for hours, then it is not surprising people moved to another platform quickly, especially if phone calls/sms are not feasible (expensive/international/no video etc)

Few people have that much brand loyalty to delay communication with all their friends and family when a platform is down for so long and there is viable alternative available.

It is not because they ideologically cared either way, they just want a platform that is easy to use and other person is ready use as well.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#77

Post by otachack »

AdamHominem wrote: post #71
don-code wrote: post #30

I'm actually quite thrilled that end users found a way to communicate in spite of "the everyday solution" being down. That gives me some hope that smaller vendors do stand a chance against incumbents, even in Facebook's space.

I'm not particularly thrilled, given Telegram is based in the United Arab Emirates, its client-server encryption is almost purposefully garbage (they basically rolled their own TLS, and predictably researchers keep finding vulnerabilities in "MTProto"), they don't enable e2ee chats by default, and they don't e2ee group chats at all. Do. Not. Use. Telegram.

Don't use it for e2e, then? There are plenty other solutions for incredibly sensitive chats (Signal, Tox, etc)

I think Telegram is a good trade off for group chats, personally. It's feature rich compared to others.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#78

Post by morpheuskafka »

bilal4hmed wrote: post #7

How many are left after whatsapp returned ? The same thing happen when Signal took off, followed by 3 days of outage that to date has had no explanation. All those people joined and promptly returned to WhatsApp

From my experience, many friends in Iran strongly prefer Telegram even though it is blocked there are WhatsApp (inexplicably, since they are nearly the same service) isn't. So there does seem to be some brand loyalty in the chat market besides for convenience.

I suspect in general their losses were far greater in chat than in Instagram. Most students in the US use both Insta and Snap already and just have some overlapping and some different content on each, so I don't think one being down for a day will seriously bug anyone enough to stop using it.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#80

Post by AdamHominem »

notRobot wrote: post #56
whimsicalism wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The clients are open source, which provides better assurances around the E2E encryption than whatsapp.

Note that telegram chats are not e2e encrypted by default.

And that it uses a proprietary encryption protocol, "MTProto", which has been repeatedly found to have vulnerabilities, like every other self-made encryption scheme.

Now add in the fact that it's a UAE company...

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