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Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

reuters.com

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Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#151
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handwavy rants about shoddy cryptography tend to be just that, handwavy. Repeating that Telegram does not enable end-to-end encryption by default does not make it more of a reason not to use Telegram. Here's what you can do to live comfortably on the net, having conversations with the world and its dog while still being able to plot the overthrow of the government without inviting prying eyes: use Telegram for the fo…

To quote a popular movie from my youth; I dunno, man; that sounds like a lot of work. I don't want to have to decide if every message I send is sensitive or not, then if it is, swap to a totally different app. Even worse: convincing friends and family to do the same!

> I don't want to have to decide if every message I send is sensitive or not, then if it is, swap to a totally different app

Only those messages which are sensitive enough should be sent over the secure channel, the rest goes over Telegram. Assuming that you're not a full-time professional anarchist of the comic-book type (picture man in cloak with a lit bomb in hand) you won't have all that many messages which are so sensitive that you don't want to run the risk of the enemy getting hold of them so don't worry, you'll be fine. As said, there is always the end-to-end encrypted 'private chat' function in Telegram for exchanging passwords and such, those have not caught the ire of the handwave-brigade (yet).

> Even worse: convincing friends and family to do the same!

Unless they're all wearing black cloaks while holding lit bombs in their hands (see above) the same goes for them. It is not the knitting patterns the enemy is interested in. Even more, the enemy might become suspicious if you all of a sudden stop sharing them in such a way that it might be theoretically feasible to decrypt them. What are you planning on knitting next, they'll wonder, sweaters with subversive messages on them? Before you know it they'll be hiding bugs in your cereal, and I don't mean weevils.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#152
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Messaging systems "working well" primarily means "the people I want to talk to are using it". Operational failures are a level-zero hurdle to pass, and after that it's all network effect.

I would agree that it's mostly network effect, but I don't agree that it's all network effect. How the app or service works and feels does count, at least a bit. Operational failures are honestly not a big factor unless they happen often. Facebook has had 2 such failures now in the past 3 years. Will this really cost them users? No. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and Apple's Messages have all had approximately that same…

Indeed. One reason I don't use Element/Matrix much is that I barely know anyone with an account (on any homeserver). The other reason is that it's unstable and missing features, so I won't be recommending this to any but the greatest of nerds. A bad user experience does matter.
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