Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by nixpulvis » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #61

nixpulvis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- I do not understand how 'mln' is more SEO than 'M' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_(unit) states that it's 'mol', but what do I know, I'm not a chemist Without context '70M' should be assumed unitless, and therefor must be interpreted as a power suffix symbol. Better yet, it falls outside the hex range, making life even better for everyone. Perhaps, if I'm really trying to be difficult, we could try to interpr…

> " - I do not understand how 'mln' is more SEO than 'M'" There are limits to how many characters and pixels Google and Bing will display before cutting off a title and appending an ellipsis. I believe that mln was chosen for stylistic reasons, to differentiate from molarity... > "[Wikipedia] states that it's 'mol', but what do I know, I'm not a chemist" 'M' is used for molarity (molar concentration), not moles.[1] […

Let's agree to disagree.

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

#102

Post by fluential » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

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.

Telegram is miles ahead in terms of scalability and features that makes it fun to use and work with their API. Kudos to the engineering team for creating such a great product. Imagine you can have groups up to 200 000 people, post files up to 2GB, have options to share your screen with unlimited amount of users - both desktop and mobile. Its really good. Yes if you need secrecy you may look elsewhere.

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

#103

Post by ggregoire » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

noahtallen wrote: post #97

ggregoire wrote: post #86

Makes me wonder if people even remember that SMS is a thing. Seems to me like the most obvious solution when your communication app is temporarily unavailable. Instead of the annoying process to look for an alternative app, download it, sign in, add contacts… just for a few hours. Or people thought Whatsapp & Messenger were gone forever and they were looking for a long term replacement?

I mean, SMS or even MMS is a terrible standard for modern chats, especially group chats. Compared to Telegram, it’s slower, has terrible multimedia support, poor UX, limits on group size, limits on character counts, etc. Not to mention security or privacy. Plus, most of the group chat apps will integrate with contacts and your phone number anyways.

I wouldn't definitely replace WhatsApp or Telegram with SMS, but for 3 hours it did the job for me and my contacts.

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

#104

Post by approxim8ion » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:56 PM UTC

ggregoire wrote: post #98

approxim8ion wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS isn't a viable option for a lot of people. It's probably the least private or secure form of messaging available, and quite often isn't very reliable, at least in my country.. I understand when you say it is a fallback, but it's a very lousy one in my opinion.

You raise a good point, although I doubt 70 millions of people were actually looking for a "private or secure form of messaging". They wouldn't use Facebook/WhatsApp/Messenger in the first place if it was the case.

You're not wrong either. Of course, for all their signalling (pun not intended), it's not like Telegram fares much better on that front so you're probably right that security/privacy aren't the first priority. Creature comforts like group chats/stickers/GIFs, VOIP etc from the same app might be more compelling.

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

#105

Post by BTCOG » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

toby- wrote: post #11

aaomidi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than the 1:30 hour downtime that happened to a lot of old accounts. I actually think it's genius if they throttled old accounts just to let new people see how good telegram is.

Source re 'old accounts'? I have an account as old as you can get, and had no problems, so I'd be interested in proof of a disproportionate impact on older accounts.

Same. No issues.

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

#106

Post by kaba0 » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC

AdamHominem wrote: post #80

notRobot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Do not roll your own crypto is meant for software engineers, not a team of professional cryptologists.

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

#107

Post by Talanes » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

znpy wrote: post #87

lucb1e wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about a few things: - If you have at least one alternative to Facebook installed, you lessen their network effect. People now have a choice how to talk to you. (I have another five messaging systems installed myself, but I will settle for everyone picking just their one favorite alternative to avoid a complete monopoly.) - If you install a Facebook messenger, you know what they're going to do with your metadata.…

> - If you install a Facebook messenger, you know what they're going to do with your metadata. No that's false. Didn't you learn anything from the Cambridge Analytica scandal?

I'd rate the Cambridge Analytica scandal about the same as the Panama Papers: the only surprise was that we actually caught them in the act for once.

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

#108

Post by grishka » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

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.

Any sources about any real vulnerabilities in MTProto?

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

#109

Post by vinay427 » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

trenchgun wrote: post #91

morpheuskafka wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 overla…

Telegram offers the absolute best user experience IMHO. I would love to use Signal, but I can't really stand it.

Are they competitors? As far as I can tell, Telegram focuses on non-E2EE messaging and is more of an alternative to Facebook Messenger, Google Talk, etc. for non-private messaging.

That's fine, but its support for E2EE is incredibly limited compared to Signal (or even WhatsApp), which includes multi-device support, a fairly-functional encrypted backup method especially in the case of Signal, etc.

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

#110

Post by BTCOG » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

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.

Post some links with any evidence that any researchers have found vulnerabilities in MTProto?