Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Telegram Web Apps for Bots

core.telegram.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 122 posts

Re: Telegram Web Apps for Bots

#91

Post by AdrenalinMd »

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #75
AdrenalinMd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>WhatsApp backs up your encryption key to Google Drive by default, meaning it's far from end-to-end encryption. This is a lie[1]. If you don't enable backups yourself, you loose your messages. You can enable E2E encryption for your backups. WhatsApp is vastly superior to Telegram in terms of E2E encryption. Telegram can read users messages on their servers and they are not even trying to tell their users to enable E2…

> WhatsApp is vastly superior to Telegram in terms of E2E encryption. I must reiterate that this is a baseless claim because no one can see WhatsApp's source code and going by the track record of Facebook as a company, I'd rather choose to reject this statement than accept it as a possibility.

The argument regarding "source code" is misleading and not entirely relevant. It's worth noting that Telegram's backend is also closed source, yet its supporters often overlook this fact.

Decompiling and inspecting mobile apps is relatively simple, so if there were any issues with the WhatsApp client, they would likely have been uncovered already.

As for Telegram, its messages are stored in plain text on their servers, and it doesn't offer default end-to-end encryption. This means that if Russian secret services were to gain access to Telegram's backend, they could easily read all the messages.

Therefore, when using Telegram, it's important to be aware that its administrators have the ability to read all of your messages.

Re: Telegram Web Apps for Bots

#92

Post by rlex »

dsabanin wrote: post #84
AdrenalinMd wrote: post #60

Be cautious when using Telegram for important matters. I recently examined a situation where confidential messages from high-ranking Moldovan officials were leaked through Telegram. Unlike WhatsApp and Signal, which offer end-to-end encryption by default, protecting your messages even in case of a SIM swap, Telegram does not offer the same level of security. A SIM swap or a breach in their system can lead to message…

Telegram may also be under FSB (former KGB) control. https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-chat... https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/04/07/russian-fsb-has-the-k... https://pdmnews-ru.translate.goog/25704/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr... You may or may not trust these sources, however, even just the fact that at one point Durov was extremely afraid of being found by FSB, Telegram being the only network not blo…

>Telegram being the only network not blocked in Russia

This is not true. WhatsApp is still working. They banned facebook and instagram but not whatsapp. Viber, Signal, Threema, Wire still works, too. The only blocked currently, i think, is Line.

Not saying "trust telegram", but still.

Re: Telegram Web Apps for Bots

#93

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

lysecret wrote: post #24

The first thing you realise when you start playing with LLMs and want to build a product around it is that you might not need a UI anymore but a text interface might be at the same time easier to build and much more intuitive. In this case the messengers have a big opportunity to become the next big platform. Telegram seems to be the one with the best apis. This shift might even make it possible to create a new messe…

Haha, I just pictured iPhone users if one day all the colorful icons disappeared and they were presented with a white on black text prompt instead) Not gonna happen.

Re: Telegram Web Apps for Bots

#94

Post by miki123211 »

Telegram's bot API is really nice and easy-to-use, to the point where you could easily use it via curl or even a web browser.

The same can't be said about the third-party client protocol, which is a perfect example of NIH syndrome. Where the bot API is bog standard JSON over HTTPS, the client API has its own encryption protocol, its own connection protocol, its own serialization standard and its own schema language. Everything is reasonably well documented, but some of the documentation (particularly for the schema/serialization part) is somewhat hard to understand if you're not a mathematician and/or well-versed in statically-typed functional languages like Haskell and the associated theory. Some parts, voice and video calls in particular aren't documented at all. Where every other part of the API has a precisely defined schema, this one just expects a binary blob of unspecified contents. There's a tgcalls library (written in C++) that implements this protocol, but its Github repository doesn't contain the needed build scripts nor any information on what other libraries it relies on (and it definitely relies on at least WebRTC and probably some others.)

Re: Telegram Web Apps for Bots

#95

Post by monday_ »

dsabanin wrote: post #84
AdrenalinMd wrote: post #60

Be cautious when using Telegram for important matters. I recently examined a situation where confidential messages from high-ranking Moldovan officials were leaked through Telegram. Unlike WhatsApp and Signal, which offer end-to-end encryption by default, protecting your messages even in case of a SIM swap, Telegram does not offer the same level of security. A SIM swap or a breach in their system can lead to message…

Telegram may also be under FSB (former KGB) control. https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-chat... https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/04/07/russian-fsb-has-the-k... https://pdmnews-ru.translate.goog/25704/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr... You may or may not trust these sources, however, even just the fact that at one point Durov was extremely afraid of being found by FSB, Telegram being the only network not blo…

While this can be true, I'd be careful before making any inferences here. For example, there's good research [1] on how FSB uses the fact that Telegram metadata is in the open to run counter-insurgency on occupied territories. This is likely among FSB's highest priorities - but there's no evidence that they have used some level of insider access or control (or at least that they are willing to burn it even on Ukraine).

Second, Telegram not being blocked is hardly an argument. Neither are Signal, WhatsApp or YouTube for example. Are all of these also controlled by the FSB? And the general embrace of z-propagandists is likely due the fact that Telegram is extremely popular all over post-Soviet space. As far as I know, pro-Ukrainian people use Telegram just as much, and just as much as a news source.

None of this is to say that Telegram is a good choice for a reasonably secure messenger or is trustworthy at all (and [1] lists some very convincing reasons for why it is not so). But "may be run by the feds" is a strong claim, and so far it is not supported by evidence.

[1] https://www.pwnallthethings.com/p/russia-is-spying-on-telegr...

Re: Telegram Web Apps for Bots

#96

Post by xeonax »

TheFreim wrote: post #86
xeonax wrote: post #49

I have been using Telegram as my game server administrator. It gives me realtime updates about important activities from my players, As well as I can change settings directly from my mobile. Or start a new event.

What game server? Did you write the telegram integration plugin/script yourself?

Yes, I am making a game. Its game server, is integrated into discord as well as telegram.

Re: Telegram Web Apps for Bots

#97

Post by ivanmontillam »

This feature is such a killer. I love it.

WhatsApp bots are overly simplistic. I'm not talking about specific implementations where bots only accept simple strings or just integer numbers (your typical city bot), I know that's not WhatsApp's fault.

It's just that WhatsApp bot capabilities have these 1.0 vibes. Bots that just chat and aren't rich anyhow like Telegram ones. WhatsApp bots don't come close, and WhatsApp users live in such Plato's Cave with it.

I just wish The West could come up with something like this, and at the same time not coming from your typical FAANG. That'd make me jump ship. Such a great product management.

Also, Zuckerberg is so deep in the privacy troubles with the Congress, that he cannot open WhatsApp Bot API freely like Telegram can. That hinders the development of bots in WhatsApp a lot.

Only big companies have direct WhatsApp API access and are able to re-sell it through tech partnerships (e.g.: You cannot call WhatsApp's API directly, you have to pay a company like Freshworks for its Freshchat product and then you can use WhatsApp's API indirectly through Freshchat API, walling the garden this much is just non-sense).

--

Full disclosure: I love Telegram far more than WhatsApp. I resent WhatsApp because I'm not able to quit it because of network effects. I also recently berated my phone carrier for offering WhatsApp for free, but not other messenger apps (which also violates my net neutrality rights).

Disclaimer: I know Telegram gets a lot of hate because of its Russian origins. Same hate TikTok gets for seemingly being CCP-controlled.

Re: Telegram Web Apps for Bots

#98

Post by blep-arsh »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #26
HelixEndeavor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fragment? You mean Telegram's attempt to cash in on the cryptocoin scam, with their own walled-garden system and marketplace where it's currently hovering around $30 to buy a number, when it's genuinely cheaper to just get a Google Voice number or some prepaid burner phone number? Fragment, the service that is currently banned in the USA for being such an obvious scam?

Is it only $30? I just looked and all of the "ending soon" auctions have prices of $150 and up. With several of them at $4,000 and more. I know nothing about Fragment but I can only assume there's some kind of money laundering or other illegal activity involved to justify those prices.

It's just a crypto token exchange. Moreover, phone numbers it sells aren't "real", these are NFTs of phone numbers, nothing more. You can't use them for calls or anything else, there's no network service, the only purpose is Telegram authentication with an associated token.

Re: Telegram Web Apps for Bots

#99

Post by fullstop »

55555 wrote: post #46
kevingadd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not restricted to software features, though. Things like ebooks and (???) event tickets also have a 30% cut (Facebook had an angry dispute over this).

This is why the Kindle app doesn’t let you buy anything on iOS. Such an awkward flow because you can read a free sample of a book and as soon as you finish and are ready to continue it just appears that there’s no way to buy it.

The behavior is the same on Android.

Re: Telegram Web Apps for Bots

#100

Post by blep-arsh »

ivanmontillam wrote: post #97

This feature is such a killer. I love it. WhatsApp bots are overly simplistic. I'm not talking about specific implementations where bots only accept simple strings or just integer numbers (your typical city bot), I know that's not WhatsApp's fault. It's just that WhatsApp bot capabilities have these 1.0 vibes. Bots that just chat and aren't rich anyhow like Telegram ones. WhatsApp bots don't come close, and WhatsApp…

Telegram offers a powerful platform but the default client is so weird. I'd very much prefer interacting with a website instead. For example, every bit of the UI is so aggressively animated, emoji, stickers, full-screen effects, it's a pain to look at. Meanwhile the iPad client still can't properly handle the hardware keyboard or even switching to another app and back (the input field gets stuck floating mid-screen).
Post reply on HN