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Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

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Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#131

Post by inigyou »

orbital-decay wrote: post #40
bflesch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more about the fact that five eyes intelligence services prefer to officially spy on each other's countries so they don't have to answer to their respective bureaucrats. They prefer plausible deniability. Something like this: DC1 politically belongs to UK which "spies" on CA/US but physical servers are located in US so US ultimately retains control. DC2 politically belongs to France which "spies" on RUS/UKR/DE b…

The reason it's in Singapore is that Telegram can't operate in China, and Singapore-washing is the closest thing to doing it. A ton of VPNs and other services targeting mainland users but not allowed in the mainland are hosted there, it's a huge hub for companies and networks.

Is that because Hong Kong is falling under Chinese authority again?

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#132

Post by inigyou »

mdasen wrote: post #71
isatty wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Telegram has exemplary fast, native clients on most platforms I’ve used it on - Cat stickers - Did I mention it has the best native clients out of all the messaging apps? It boggles the mind why other companies can’t get this done.

I'll add: - Telegram had usernames in 2014 before Signal added them a decade later, allowing people to chat without sharing their phone number - Telegram has unencrypted chats which allow for giant chat rooms of 200,000+ and channels with millions of subscribers. Signal warns about performance issues when you have more than 150 people in a group. Telegram isn't just a messenger - it's often used as a social publishin…

Ah the classic tension between encryption and large groups. You can have e2ee or you can have large groups. Not both.

Large groups usually don't need e2ee anyway as the adversary can just join the group - anyone can - that's how they get large.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#133

Post by inigyou »

Theodores wrote: post #74
wronex wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I don’t see the appeal compared to Signal. Although, Signal is also sketchy with an operating cost in the tens of millions of dollars per year. Where does the money come from?

Telegram is important if you get your news from sources outside of the 'Anglo American empire'. People all over the planet use Telegram to curate their own news feeds and cultivate their own communities. This is generally done with a view to promote understanding rather than to spread misinformation. Telegram is great if you want the perspective of 'the other side' or 'both sides' if you 'trust but verify'. Some peop…

> Telegram is important if you get your news from sources outside of the 'Anglo American empire'.

Or 'alternative views' within the empire, like antivax, flat earth, anti immigration, and so on.

I bet these two things are related to each other.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#134

Post by AntronX »

Anon1096 wrote: post #16
AntronX wrote: post #11

DC in Miami, explains why Telegram app is snappy fast for me. I notice similar speed improvement with Meta and other big tech apps when I'm on the west coast. I guess latency matters when your app is making tons of requests.

Most of big tech's major data centers are in Loudoun County, VA on the east coast not the west coast. It's centrally located to be great latency for the east coast and OK latency for west coast and Europe. Plus a friendly regulatory environment and lots of existing DCs (AWS us-east-1, Azure East US 1/2) If you're feeling any better latency on the west coast it's more likely to be placebo than real.

When I was in Seattle I noticed youtube, facebook and maybe other apps load and run faster. I was on fiber internet at an apartment. Back in Miami I was on Comcast cable but recently got fiber here as well and there was not noticeable improvement. I guess next time I'm in Seattle I will do screen recording to compare.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#135

Post by darksim905 »

siffin wrote: post #115
darksim905 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say that I've ever seen genuine uses like this that you mention unless it's a 'community' for adult content or sketchy content. Is this that common?

Not a regular telegram user here but I follow a Ukranian guy who hand builds led bulbs/products by hand. He has a telegram group chat where he enthusiastically posts pictures of everything he's doing, it's great.

Curious seeing as he's in Ukranian, is there also a mindset/distrust of U.S. centric products/services and wanting to feel safe posting updates of whatever it is someone may be doing? Cool!

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#136

Post by siffin »

darksim905 wrote: post #135
siffin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a regular telegram user here but I follow a Ukranian guy who hand builds led bulbs/products by hand. He has a telegram group chat where he enthusiastically posts pictures of everything he's doing, it's great.

Curious seeing as he's in Ukranian, is there also a mindset/distrust of U.S. centric products/services and wanting to feel safe posting updates of whatever it is someone may be doing? Cool!

He fled Ukraine actually and setup shop in Scandanavia, in Sweden I think. He doesn't seem political at all, he just does lights. https://t.me/sunlikenews

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#137

Post by jacobgold »

stavros wrote: post #113
jacobgold wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal users who want to use it with their agents are running an unofficial extracted-and-patched `signal-cli` off GitHub. It's based on an archived official Signal repo and then patched for years by some random accounts. It looks incredibly untrustworthy. Meanwhile Telegram has bot support and added features specifically for interacting w/agents. It's incredibly easy to write clients and work with it. No one should…

Wait, the open source cli of an E2E encrypted messenger seems untrustworthy, but the official API of a completely unencrypted messenger seems trustworthy? I guess "we can definitely spy on your messages" is a lot more honest than "we are very unlikely to spy on your messages", if it turns out spying takes place.

You're getting the issues confused.

Signal does not have an official Signal CLI (or method of creating integrations) so users are compromising their use of Signal by using heavily patched and out-of-date code written by unknown third parties.

Telegram has support for integrations and clients but isn't a service anyone should trust.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#138

Post by jesterson »

thisislife2 wrote: post #75
wronex wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I don’t see the appeal compared to Signal. Although, Signal is also sketchy with an operating cost in the tens of millions of dollars per year. Where does the money come from?

The appeal of Telegram over Signal or WhatsApp is that it is not an American or BigTech service. (And, ofcourse, it's really good). Signal is funded by 2 rich American entrepreneurs who made their fortune when their services were acquired by Twitter (TextSecure / RedPhone) and Meta (WhatsApp), respectively. Whether it is indeed altruism behind this, you'll have to judge for yourself ...

Would you explain why "American or BigTech" is worse than some sketchy bro sitting in tax haven?

Would be good if we can compare technologies rather than feelings. I hate what US tech has turned into, but presence of E2EE on whatsapp makes it incredibly way better than telegram to that matter. Even though undoubtedly Meta farms metadata on WA.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#139

Post by Grombobulous »

vvpan wrote: post #126

Somebody already posted it but I wanted to mention it again, investigations that Telegram has not been able to dispute have revealed that Telegram's infrastructure is managed by a person who is also managing infra for FSB. And this is happening unbeknownst to Telegram employees. https://istories.media/en/stories/2025/06/10/telegram-fsb/

This just makes me realize that three letter agencies of basically every country probably have an extremely easy time getting access to things by simply getting people hired as regular employees through mundane and routine means.

Re: Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers (2022)

#140

Post by Krasnol »

econ wrote: post #76
Paracompact wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are three people in this thread with this "personal" problem.

It's the gold standard for bad support: pretend the user has a problem. There once was this thread on a blog for a windows XP pirated edition. Someone commented that something small didn't work. They replied in less than a minute, that's terrible! 10 minutes later the version was incremented and a new reply said: Try the new version! After 30 minutes the bug fix was confirmed. They weren't trying to be funny but it s…

I worked for a long time in IT Support and this generalisation, like all of them, is false.

If someone tells me that a program crashes in 50% of the time on launch but it's only him reporting it, it is almost certainly his problem and not a problem of the program. Especially if you're supporting millions of people.

This is not some prejudice story people make up. It is happening. Every day to thousands of poor IT Warriors on the front.

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