Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook

#121

Post by wruza » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:41 AM UTC

shp0ngle wrote: post #107

wruza wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

protocol is weird You’re repeating weird , but working with both bot api and tg api weekly or so (tg api through a wrapper, but I’ve read about lower level calls and used these in gramjs) I can’t see what do you mean by that.

Meaning MTProto. Not the bot API.

So, crypto part or mtproto in general? I’m not a fanboy who is going to defend tg crypto, and personally I wonder why they didn’t use the same security stack e.g. my browser uses for gmail access. But apart from that it feels to me like a regular rpc protocol, clumsy sometimes, but nothing particularly weird. Working also with many stock exchanges protocols, I can tell these are sometimes weird af, despite being mostly over-https. E.g. bitfinex and iirc bitmex are funny ones, not to mention FIX/FAST or large exchanges native protocols.

Re: Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook

#122

Post by donw » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:41 AM UTC

silvercove wrote: post #84

It's hilarious to watch Americans get triggered at Telegram's success. I'll grab my popcorn.

Nope, am American as they come and loving it.

Re: Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook

#123

Post by motoxpro » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:43 AM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #90

Krasnol wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are they not allowed to write about the "far right" or doesn't it exist according to you?

As someone mentioned somewhere, there are more articles in mainstream media mentioning Ku Klux Klan than there actually are KKK members. The far right exists and is potentially dangerous, but overconcentrating on it will let other dangers fly under the radar.

To respond to your first point, I mean there are more articles mentioning members of congress than there are members of congress. Or more articles mentioning Taylor Swift than there are Taylor Swifts. Not sure how quantity of articles is a unit of measurement here.

Re: Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook

#124

Post by Tenoke » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:52 AM UTC

bakuninsbart wrote: post #109

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #83

People are consistently surprised that Telegram is not encrypted by default in any setting. You have to create a device-to-device-specific encrypted chat with your counter-party. It's not a reasonable security model, vastly outclassed by (the still quite flawed) Signal. Ultimately, we need encrypted-by-default messaging based on public/private key pairs (obscured from the uninterested user, of course).

Both Threema and Signal are the way to go with chat apps, the only advantage Telegram offers are vast groups for specific purposes. Here in Berlin, I'm getting cheap produce through telegram, get alerted to public transport controls (I do have a ticket, but sometimes friends do not), and sell/buy stuff I don't need.

Funnily enough given the title, those same things have even bigger groups on Facebook than telegram in Berlin even accounting for how popular it is here.

Re: Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook

#125

Post by tentacleuno » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:54 AM UTC

krzyk wrote: post #118

theshrike79 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram's advantages are a simple bot API and proper moderation tools for large channels.

And an app that is small and fast (and a proper desktop app, not some electron).

I'm consistently surprised when I remind myself that Telegram is a Qt app. It's so out of the norm today, when so many things [I use] are bloated Electron apps.

Re: Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook

#126

Post by tuoret » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:54 AM UTC

baxuz wrote: post #115

Telegram supports e2ee. https://tsf.telegram.org/manuals/e2ee-simple

The article doesn't claim otherwise, it just states that you have to enable it manually for every chat, which most people don't seem to realize (or care about).

Re: Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook

#127

Post by mellavora » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:54 AM UTC

shp0ngle wrote: post #36

tpoacher wrote: post #17

I mean, I've seen hit pieces before, but man was this elaborate. It even had chapters !

You have not read many "hit pieces" then. My favourite one from Wired is when they critically examined Project Xanadu leader and its history. It's from 1995 but people still keep linking to it whenever Xanadu is mentioned. https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/

So even you couldn't resist the curse?

Re: Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook

#128

Post by N19PEDL2 » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:55 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #27

dijit wrote: post #3

"Telegram is favoured by Jihadists" "Telegram is Russian Spying" "Telegram has extremely weak crypto" "Telegram is used by pedophiles" "Telegram is used by far-right terrorists" .... Use Signal! sigh The amount of times people bash on telegram is becoming painful. But lets take a logical argument; NSA has made it's mission in backdooring basically everything. We know from the Snowden revalations that their technical…

> If telegram was strong: NSA would do everything in it's power to push users to more controlled platforms. What power does the NSA have to influence those choices? When has it happened? Do you have evidence of it?

Speaking hypothetically: the NSA could push the US Government to ask Apple and Google to remove Telegram from their app stores. Without mobile apps, Telegram would die very quickly.

Re: Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook

#129

Post by gefhfffh » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:57 AM UTC

bakuninsbart wrote: post #109

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #83

People are consistently surprised that Telegram is not encrypted by default in any setting. You have to create a device-to-device-specific encrypted chat with your counter-party. It's not a reasonable security model, vastly outclassed by (the still quite flawed) Signal. Ultimately, we need encrypted-by-default messaging based on public/private key pairs (obscured from the uninterested user, of course).

Both Threema and Signal are the way to go with chat apps, the only advantage Telegram offers are vast groups for specific purposes. Here in Berlin, I'm getting cheap produce through telegram, get alerted to public transport controls (I do have a ticket, but sometimes friends do not), and sell/buy stuff I don't need.

TBH I would consider Matrix the way to go regarding chat. It allows app and vendor independent communication and combines e2ee with Synchronisation across arbitrary many devices (something that many people like from Telegram).

These days, Threema and Signal don't support the Matrix Protocol.

Re: Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook

#130

Post by tentacleuno » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:57 AM UTC

shp0ngle wrote: post #23

This article is good. Telegram is really weird and sketchy; the rants Durov posts on his channel against WhatsApp usually make no sense; and their claims of security are dubious. And TON was a disaster. On the other hand. If I did any social organizing today, I would definitely use Telegram. Signal is fine , but nobody is using it and the UX is just worse. I don't trust Facebook to randomly not shut everything down b…

> Telegram is really weird and sketchy; the rants Durov posts on his channel against WhatsApp usually make no sense; and their claims of security are dubious. And TON was a disaster.

Oh yes, definitely. Whenever I read them it feels strange, understanding the technical context of Telegram. He never mentions that WhatsApp is actually end-to-end encrypted. He does continue to talk about 'encryption', though. It's very very misleading. It just seems to be bashing WhatsApp without talking about Telegram's shortcomings too. He obviously isn't going to be non-partisan but it would be nice if he would be a little more honest.