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Telegram raises $210M through bond sales

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Re: Telegram raises $210M through bond sales

#71

Post by dgellow »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #4
nafey wrote: post #2

Getting into debt with highest interest rate in decades doesn't bode well for the future. On the other hand, VC funding seems to have dried up as well. Between rock and a hard place.

Telegram is one social network that has a huge potential for growth today. It is a dominant platform for War reporting from both sides. And it is not compromised by history of censorship, and CIA connections, like other social networks. We will probably see it growing in US, as we get closer to elections, and censorship tightens!

I don’t know what you’re implying exactly but Telegram does collaborate with local laws in countries they operate, and that’s counting takedowns and criminal investigations when illegal content is being shared, as every business entity should do.

Re: Telegram raises $210M through bond sales

#72

Post by hardware2win »

solarkraft wrote: post #68

I have my issues with Telegram, but damn, the thing works. That's more than I can say about basically all the alternatives. The apps are designed and made well and the servers are pretty reliable. Who'd have thought that it's so hard to make a chat app?

Discord?

Re: Telegram raises $210M through bond sales

#73

Post by dgellow »

ushakov wrote: post #34
DANmode wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...didn't the founder get ousted out of VK (which he also founded) for not playing ball with Russian intelligence? Or did I get that wrong?

I think they’re playing ball, otherwise Telegram would have been declared a “foreign agent” like any other free press

That’s pure conspiracy thinking. Their service has been more or less blocked countrywide in Russia multiple times in the past, without too much success. Pavlov Durov has been publicly anti Putin since 2014 and exiled himself following euromaiden. Telegram has never been a Russian company, it was Berlin based, and is now in Dubai.

All of this has been public information since years, there isn’t any proof of anything malevolent happening with the service.

Re: Telegram raises $210M through bond sales

#74

Post by CyberDildonics »

fisherjeff wrote: post #3
nafey wrote: post #2

Getting into debt with highest interest rate in decades doesn't bode well for the future. On the other hand, VC funding seems to have dried up as well. Between rock and a hard place.

Eh, I’d be surprised if the bonds weren’t callable.

Eh, why do you think that?

Re: Telegram raises $210M through bond sales

#75

Post by spacebanana7 »

chologrande wrote: post #6
Thoeu388 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is one social network that has a huge potential for growth today. It is a dominant platform for War reporting from both sides. And it is not compromised by history of censorship, and CIA connections, like other social networks. We will probably see it growing in US, as we get closer to elections, and censorship tightens!

Sure - but where's the revenue come from?

Chinese chat apps have monetised really well through e-commerce. Admittedly this success hasn't be achieved by WhatsApp etc, so it not trivial to replicate.

Re: Telegram raises $210M through bond sales

#76

Post by darthrupert »

Arathorn wrote: post #67
kaba0 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for mentioning Element X. I do like the Matrix protocol, but their former ios app was very buggy.

Element X is already out on iOS (as an early release which isn't feature complete yet): https://element.io/blog/element-x-experience-the-future-of-e... . We explicitly used Telegram as the UX yardstick to be at least as good at in terms of quality and performance (sync speed, smoothness of scrolling, proper native UI, etc)... while also being E2EE throughout (unlike Telegram). Agreed that the classic Element iOS app…

Unfortunately the server I use doesn't support sliding sync yet.

edit Also, how far is Element X? I just tried it out with a matrix.org account, and it still makes the pretty bad UX blunder of confusing private one-on-one chats with rooms. I don't doubt that they're rooms technically, but you really need to hide that fact from the user if you wish to reach Telegram's usability.

Re: Telegram raises $210M through bond sales

#77

Post by aaomidi »

the_gipsy wrote: post #52
000ooo000 wrote: post #16

Telegram is probably the only app that I use that I'm completely fine with it automatically updating. Hard to find software that doesn't fk it up by adding stupid or user-hostile "features"/bloat. Telegram has been solid across the web, android, linux and windows clients I've been using for years. For that reason, I bought telegram premium. Shame to hear they're still not breaking even, must be tough. E: downvoted fo…

> stupid or user-hostile "features"/bloat Pushing cryptoscams and paywalling a subset of emoji-reactions made me move off of telegram. Now I use matrix and as a nice side effect I have whatsapp and telegram bridged in one app. Of course, it's all open source with the typical lack of polishing. But nobody is gonna pull the rug under me because the company needs $$$ after acquiring users.

> Pushing cryptoscams and paywalling a subset of emoji-reactions made me move off of telegram. Now I use matrix and as a nice side effect I have whatsapp and telegram bridged in one app.

You mean adding extra sets of emojis and not changing the existing ones? Paying for cosmetics is a pretty good way of monetizing.

> Of course, it's all open source with the typical lack of polishing. But nobody is gonna pull the rug under me because the company needs $$$ after acquiring users.

It literally works better than all the "non opensource polished" apps. Looking at you Discord - a shame of a company to all users.

Re: Telegram raises $210M through bond sales

#78

Post by shubb »

dgellow wrote: post #71
Thoeu388 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is one social network that has a huge potential for growth today. It is a dominant platform for War reporting from both sides. And it is not compromised by history of censorship, and CIA connections, like other social networks. We will probably see it growing in US, as we get closer to elections, and censorship tightens!

I don’t know what you’re implying exactly but Telegram does collaborate with local laws in countries they operate, and that’s counting takedowns and criminal investigations when illegal content is being shared, as every business entity should do.

Telegram is based in UAE, a country famous for Totok, a social network designed to spy on you.

The UAE is an absolute monarchy, and the law is a little more openly a tool if the state than in the west. A company with legal challenges exists there because the state wants it to.

The UAE looks unaligned but in a real way it is part of a Chinese Russian axis when it comes to this sort of thing. For example totok was based on Chinese spyware.

For those of us who don't share truly sensitive information, I'm sure it's fine, but Ukrainian war reporters probably shouldn't have it installed.

Re: Telegram raises $210M through bond sales

#80

Post by arein3 »

p-e-w wrote: post #36
qlkjwenf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and tax authorities who refuse to communicate by using anything else but paper documents sent as letters... Glad I will leave Germany soon.

It took me a long time to realize that in the big picture, all those inefficiencies are actually upsides. Most of what governments do is harmful to society. The more inefficient and inept they are at it, the better. Sure, it may be an inconvenience sometimes. But it's nothing compared to the dystopian horror of what a truly efficient government would look like. The "ideal" government that works purely electronically…

You lost hope in the government, but a good government is not focused on spying but on making life better, basically opposite of what you described. Governemnt can be efficient at building things, maintaining infrastructure, but not spying and controlling it's citizens.
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