61–70 of 98 posts
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I believe everyone would disable (even those who insist in sending voice messages) and the feature would die.
If a (mis)feature gets disabled by many users, it gets removed from the app. With time, apps accumulate features and get bloated. This actually is a mechanism to allow cleaning up features users so not want.
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Telegram has a great thing working in its favor: it is mostly free of censorship, particularly of the kind that reacts to Western do-gooder sensibilities. I have learnt more about the Ukraine war from Telegram channels (Gruz 200, Truha, some local ones) than from all of the Western press combined. Analysts like Bellingcat, CIT and ISW keep citing Telegram channels as sources. Both DNR/LNR "separatists" and Ukrainian…
That's not because of its policies, it's just that Telegram is very popular in Eastern Europe/post-USSR land, network effects and such.
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Both are equally bad, for different reasons. As a user, one might be more worried of having their identity tied to their Facebook account (and therefore advertising/tracking), than about their government spying on them. Having worked with people in totalitarian countries, it's surprising how much protesting people can do in plain sight. Until the regime decides they went too far, and it won't matter what proofs or ch…
signal and telegram are a no brainer when it comes to totalitarian regimes. i live in Kashmir which has historically and continues to hunt down dissidents with agility. i cannot imagine being tied to my "mobile number" when the government has that data by law, tying a telegram/signal account to it is a gone case by that point. people who go with signal call it "better whatsapp without facebook tracking" but just like…
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I think the bigger question is anti-spam in anonymous chatrooms, even with the mobile phone requirements spammers (in particular from Nigeria, why does this country have so many scammers in particular?) are everywhere and spamming all the time, I'm in 5 or so groups and every day 2-3 spam messages have to be deleted. There are millions of fake channels and I wouldn't be surprised if up to or over 10% of telegrams mes…
the more public group that i am in, i leave "mentions and keywords only" notifications on so it does not bother me with every buzz. that way, only groups that i know are "relevant" can notify me, these groups i can browse later when i get the time
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You can't have a Telegram account without a phone number, can you? So the difference is merely whether it's your user identifier?
that is what i wrote. matrix does not by design force users to submit a mobile number while everyone else does because they want to use that for social graph, etc etc.
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signal and telegram are a no brainer when it comes to totalitarian regimes. i live in Kashmir which has historically and continues to hunt down dissidents with agility. i cannot imagine being tied to my "mobile number" when the government has that data by law, tying a telegram/signal account to it is a gone case by that point. people who go with signal call it "better whatsapp without facebook tracking" but just like…
> you can set up your own matrix server Synapse is still one of the worst installation processes[1] I've gone through. I'm extremely comfortable with Ansible and Docker but their install process sucks if you aren't exposing your Matrix instance to the world and don't have a domain pointing at it. On top of that, there are so many moving pieces to it if you want to bridge it to other services. I got it all installed b…
you do have stuff like yonohost that make it much easier, maybe try that?
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It's not worse, aside from chats being unencrypted by default. I've had suggestions on Instagram of people who I never got in touch with, only because my wife, who has no FB account, is in the same WhatsApp group as these people. They mixed in a bunch of other "you may know" people to make it less obvious, but when comparing her groupchat and my suggestions, it's clear they made links via IPs and phone numbers. At le…
> It's not worse, aside from chats being unencrypted by default. That is not a side point though. It's a major, major difference.
It is a trade-off between security and usability. By default, you get usability (e.g., you can chat across devices easily). But you think it is worth the cost, you can make encryption keys unavailable without corresponding devices (create secret chat).
My guess, most telegram users prefer usability or don't care/ignorant. It would be a mistake to make the experience worse (that people would notice ignorant or not).
Only just the word "Premium" in the title confirms my (totally unfounded because I didn't read much about nor try it) scepticism towards Telegram. I have an automatic aversion against the principle of two class services where the provider can over time tighten the screws and urge more people towards their premium offer. I'd prefer a service that just has one package an everyone pays the same. It's more transparent an…
Running servers and developing apps isn't free. I'd rather they sell their premium service to some users than sell data.
I don't use gmail, I paid for my IM app, ... and I sure try to avoid services that pay for themselves by selling my data.
I just see the distinction between normal and premium as some lever they can push more in the future to generate more revenue.
Let's just wait and see how it'll work out.
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For people looking for privacy: Briar is where it's at. A bit clunky UI (e.g. inviting someone isn't easy) but otherwise really well built client, and top notch network protocol and cryptographic features. [1] https://briarproject.org/
I've also heard good things about https://cwtch.im/
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> It's not worse, aside from chats being unencrypted by default. That is not a side point though. It's a major, major difference.
Chats are encrypted. The question who can decrypt them by default. It is a trade-off between security and usability. By default, you get usability (e.g., you can chat across devices easily). But you think it is worth the cost, you can make encryption keys unavailable without corresponding devices (create secret chat). My guess, most telegram users prefer usability or don't care/ignorant. It would be a mistake to make…
Not end to end. Let's not sell SSL connections as encryption please.