Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage • Hacker News Board

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#171

Post by p2detar » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

kuhhk wrote: post #106

supernes wrote: post #34

I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy. People who care enough about the subject should know when and whether to use it for their communications. For everyone else, it's an outstanding alternative to Messenger/WhatsApp and Viber. Edit: I'd also like to add that maybe we need to make a distinction between the notions of privacy and secrecy.…

> I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy. I recall the anger is not about any trade off. It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto. There’s no convenience factor or trade off here, they just literally did the thing the textbooks tell you not to do, and have ignored the industry’s calls to use strong…

> It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto.

I come across this a lot about Telegram and while I do agree, I think there have been no reports so far about hacks in Telegram's service, and it's online since 2013 or so.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#172

Post by glitcher » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

The interesting takeaway for me is how unpredictable and sudden a large shift away from a popular platform can be. This incident certainly isn't a big tipping point for fb, but it does serve as a good reminder of how the network effect does not necessarily lock a dominant player in permanently.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#173

Post by lucideer » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #154

meruru wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding the Riot.im/Matrix recommendation. It checks all the right boxes: federated, multiple FOSS clients, multiple FOSS servers, no phone/email requirement, etc.

I'm just waiting for end-to-end encryption to be available, stable and be the default on Matrix.

FWIW, I've been using it and had zero issues.

Obviously my experience probably doesn't reflect everyone's, so hopefully whatever stability issues others are experiencing can be resolved soon, but from my own perspective having it on-by-default would be pretty seamless at the moment.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#174

Post by WA » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

I guess nobody knows Threema (threema.ch) outside of Central Europe. The UI isn't as perfect as Whatsapp's, but close enough.

I tried to use iMessage the other day and I'm extremely surprised that a product that is used that broadly in the US is that shitty. Downsides around sending voice messages (which I do frequently):

- You must hold the stupid button to record

- If you record and turn your phone, the recording button gets obviously relocated away from your thumb and the entire message is just discarded. Gone. How such a bug could escape Apple is beyond me.

- There is no way to scroll through a voice message. I send and receive 10 minute messages occasionally and if you interrupt the listening, you have to start all over again.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#175

Post by kuhhk » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

p2detar wrote: post #171

kuhhk wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy. I recall the anger is not about any trade off. It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto. There’s no convenience factor or trade off here, they just literally did the thing the textbooks tell you not to do, and have ignored the industry’s calls to use strong…

> It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto. I come across this a lot about Telegram and while I do agree, I think there have been no reports so far about hacks in Telegram's service, and it's online since 2013 or so.

6 years is a short time in cryptography. That isn't battle-tested.

"Even worse, security doesn't provide immediate feedback. A dead patient on the operating table tells the doctor that maybe he doesn't understand brain surgery just because he read a book, but an insecure cryptosystem works just fine. It's not until someone takes the time to break it that the engineer might realize that he didn't do as good a job as he thought. Remember: Anyone can design a security system that he himself cannot break. Even the experts regularly get it wrong." -- Bruce Schneier

Source: https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2009/0915.html

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#176

Post by throwaway9d0291 » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

teekert wrote: post #43

nextstep wrote: post #8

Please, please, please use Signal instead. And tell your friends! Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims, but even if you trust the company, Signal has a far superior user experience. Telegram’s private messages are not enabled by default, and when you are using private messaging, numerous other features are disabled defeating the point.

The user experience of Telegram is by far the best of all apps with the sleekest ui's and the native (electron) apps for all platforms. Moreover because of the lack of e2e encryption (on standard chat) all your messages are just there when you log in and are easily searchable. Telegram also has very nice channels and some excellent bots and a very nice feature to send yourself stuff you want accessible anywhere... Bu…

> something like Matrix/Riot is too much to ask from "normal people"

I disagree. It's no harder to grasp than email:

- You go to a website and create an account

- Your share your address with others and they can send mail to you

- Given someone's address, you can send mail to them

I have my (quite technologically challenged) wife using it on mobile and desktop quite happily.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#177

Post by newscracker » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #93

emerongi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which features are missing? I text and call through Signal and I've not felt like there is anything missing. For a while they didn't have support for front-facing cameras, but that was added some time in the last year. Only other problem I've had is that on some Android phones the "voicemail" feature (or w/e it's called) wasn't working well, but not sure if it's still a thing.

The desktop app is electron junk that lacks basic features like changing spellchecking language and there's no pure web client like Whatsapp for instance. I also think it lacks some features of the mobile client like creating new groups and adding new contacts (or at least I haven't figured out how to do it). When I install the client on a new computer I can't access the history of the messages from the phone for a r…

> As far as I can tell when you get a new phone the only way to synchronize message history is to create a local backup on one phone, write down the ~24 digit passphrase, transfer the backup by yourself on the new phone then load it from there. If there's a simpler way I haven't found it.

You're lucky in this case to be on Android. On iOS, Signal blocks any kind of data backups (both on iTunes or on iCloud). [1] So a new iPhone means starting with no chat histories at all. This was requested a long, long time ago (late 2015) and denied stating security as the reason. [2]

[1]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/wiki/FAQ

[2]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/905

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#178

Post by gsich » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #150

dnate wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is literally no downside to end-to-end encrypting text messages. So it should be default. It is just harder to implement technically.

That's not a very good use of "literally", because searching through encrypted messages will certainly be slower, and on mobile devices, this will have a bigger impact on responsiveness and battery life. That is a big downside on mobile (not desktop). Create similar chats that are long (like tens of thousands of messages) on different apps and compare Telegram's search speed with others'.

You can search on your device. One could implement filters like "last week, last month ..." to make searching faster. If that is even relevant.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#179

Post by ubercow13 » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

dkrich wrote: post #167

Serious question as someone who has never used Telegram and don't know anyone who uses it: what's the plan for sustainability from a financial perspective? Running the infrastructure for a scalable secure and reliable service like this for hundreds of millions of users has to be extremely expensive. Yet on Telegram's website it says that it will be free forever and will never sell advertisements or charge subscriptio…

Yes, it is a donation from a rich founder. It says clearly on their website:

>Q: How are you going to make money out of this?

>We believe in fast and secure messaging that is also 100% free.

>Pavel Durov, who shares our vision, supplied Telegram with a generous donation, so we have quite enough money for the time being. If Telegram runs out, we will introduce non-essential paid options to support the infrastructure and finance developer salaries. But making profits will never be an end-goal for Telegram.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#180

Post by gsich » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

nextstep wrote: post #8

Please, please, please use Signal instead. And tell your friends! Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims, but even if you trust the company, Signal has a far superior user experience. Telegram’s private messages are not enabled by default, and when you are using private messaging, numerous other features are disabled defeating the point.

>Signal has a far superior user experience

Signal has no bots. [0] is terrible to use, since you need a new phone number for every new bot you make. (Of course you could all cram it into a single number)

0 https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli