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WhatsApp is blocking Telegram links

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Re: WhatsApp is blocking Telegram links

#181

Post by abc_lisper »

chc wrote: post #178
abc_lisper wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useless? I think it is a constructive criticism.

In what way is it constructive to suggest that stylistic problems with somebody's code indicate that the program is unfit for use? It seems to me about as constructive as walking into any software company and saying, "Ugh, these engineers are wearing t-shirts and their shoes are completely unshined! People, if these programmers care so little for their appearance, can you trust them to care about their code?"

I don't think you are getting the point. It is not just a stylistic issue! The code is hard to understand and reason about because it is written like a book.

Re: WhatsApp is blocking Telegram links

#182

Post by necessity »

izacus wrote: post #55
gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #35

According to the Telegram FAQ [1] the Telegram Facebook page [2] has been taken down as well. [1] https://telegram.org/faq#facebook [2] https://www.facebook.com/tlgrm

This is IMO one of the greatest dangers of leaving those huge corporations like Facebook, Google, Amazon etc. unchecked - they're starting to attack competition by leveraging their primary products (Amazon blocking Chromecasts, Facebook censoring links and pages about their lawsuits are two latest cases) and are working deliberately against interests of greater public (and capitalism itself if we can stretch that :)…

What's the problem with not helping your competitor? Telegram can use that ("censoring") as marketing if they know how to play it. People wanting to tell others what to do and how to operate their business calling themselves "capitalists" is hilarious.

Re: WhatsApp is blocking Telegram links

#183

Post by eveningcoffee »

mikek wrote: post #109

WhatsApp is not linkifying Telegram URLs, but Telegram is not even sending messages that are shared from WhatsApp. Telegram is open source, so you can see for yourself here. https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/74def22213846b1f90a26... On line 666: if (sendingText.contains("WhatsApp")) { //who needs this sent from ...? sendingText = null; }

I wish I could flag your message, but maybe you will delete your comment by yourself?

Base: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10657981

Edit: tone.

Re: WhatsApp is blocking Telegram links

#184

Post by ergl »

mikek wrote: post #109

WhatsApp is not linkifying Telegram URLs, but Telegram is not even sending messages that are shared from WhatsApp. Telegram is open source, so you can see for yourself here. https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/74def22213846b1f90a26... On line 666: if (sendingText.contains("WhatsApp")) { //who needs this sent from ...? sendingText = null; }

You can clearly see that condition is inside a block that deals with images and videos, so it's looking for the "Sent from WhatsApp" tagline.

Also the fact that you're a WhatsApp employee makes your comment a poor attempt at justifying your own censoring behaviour

Re: WhatsApp is blocking Telegram links

#186

Post by ibarreto »

sschueller wrote: post #92
an4rchy wrote: post #2

Wow, didn't expect this from WhatsApp. I wonder if we can hear it from their side to see if they have a specific reason. Also, are they blocking any other messenger links i.e WeChat, Line etc or just Telegram.

The current version of WhatsApp is clearly trying to make it difficult to leave the ecosystem. You can see that when you want to copy text in Android. If you copy it you can only send it to other WhatsApp users. In order to copy it somewhere else you need to use the share feature. In Telegram and others you can copy paste easily into other apps.

I just tried this on my Android phone (I have latest version of WhatsApp), and it allows me to copy text and paste it anywhere.

Re: WhatsApp is blocking Telegram links

#187

Post by xg15 »

necessity wrote: post #182
izacus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is IMO one of the greatest dangers of leaving those huge corporations like Facebook, Google, Amazon etc. unchecked - they're starting to attack competition by leveraging their primary products (Amazon blocking Chromecasts, Facebook censoring links and pages about their lawsuits are two latest cases) and are working deliberately against interests of greater public (and capitalism itself if we can stretch that :)…

What's the problem with not helping your competitor? Telegram can use that ("censoring") as marketing if they know how to play it. People wanting to tell others what to do and how to operate their business calling themselves "capitalists" is hilarious.

If nothing else, it's that the users get pulled into some braindead power struggle between two companies that they could care less about. Yet they are the ones who find that they cannot use the products anymore properly. Moves like this decrease the quality of both your product and your competitor's. Yet the whole sense of competition in capitalism is supposedly to increase quality.

Of course that's just the obvious consequences, ignoring the larger implications of allowing companies to place arbitrary restrictions on their services - when at the same time those services become more and more critical infrastructure.

Re: WhatsApp is blocking Telegram links

#188

Post by plusquamperfekt »

darklajid wrote: post #175
plusquamperfekt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the credibility attributed to Signal - f.x. by Bruce Schneier and Edward Snowden - I don't understand why it's not more popular than Telegram.

It's .. the same thing. Now, bear with me: I don't say that it doesn't offer something over Telegram (most probably: Far better privacy/security), but it's a centralized service, hosted by a single entity, using your phone number as 'identity'. Ignore the first points, but the latter is so broken, Signal could be the most usable and glorious app ("Everything just works") on the planet and I'd still hate that idea. Ri…

Signal uses asymmetrical encryption - your private key is very well able to prove your identity - I'm pretty sure the concept "identity" in Signal is built on that technology. But for contacting people - well - what else would you suggest?!

Re: WhatsApp is blocking Telegram links

#189

Post by newjersey »

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #179
cheez wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is some horrifying code...

Indeed, and unsurprisingly, this results in a bug. It's not that it strips out the text, it's that it sets that variable to null which is then used for flow control. So you will run in to issues (not sure how it would manifest itself) if you share photo or video that does have text, but just doesn't contain "WhatsApp" ("Sent from FooBar"). It looks like it'll send a text and then send the photo[0] but who knows what…

Would it be better they set it to string.empty or ""?

Re: WhatsApp is blocking Telegram links

#190

Post by HappyTypist »

venning wrote: post #75

Playing devil's advocate: WhatsApp is a $22B investment. It makes sense to try to prevent it from being canabalized from the inside. We've seen something like this before, when AIM allowed MSN Messenger to interoperate. I know this is a little different, but that was still how AIM lost. Here is a fantastic war story from one of the MSN engineers on the battle to subvert AIM [1]. [1] https://nplusonemag.com/issue-19/e…

Preventing interoperatibility is one thing. Rewriting user messages without their consent is another.
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