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700M users and Premium

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Re: 700M users and Premium

#201

Post by philliphaydon »

gruez wrote: post #197
philliphaydon wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why advertising shows only in facebook, for keywords only used inside an apparently private conversation? Unless WhatsApp is audited completely, not just looking at some source code but also how all information passes through facebook and back to a receiver. Then we can only assume the e2ee is just marketing fluff and not something that is done in favour of privacy.

> Can you explain why advertising shows only in facebook, for keywords only used inside an apparently private conversation? obvious explanations: 1. coincidence/luck + confirmation bias. this can also be aided by demographic/interest factors. For instance, suppose there are 10,000 "interests" that facebook tracks. You'd think that for a given conversation that contained such a topic, the chance that you'd see ads for…

1. So it's coincidence luck that I get advertising for 'window safty latch for children', as an 'interest' for '18-35'? They knew that I was looking for an apartment and had a kid that was 1yo and thought 'oh you know what that guy needs, window safty latch for his kid'

2. So facebook leaked information that a conversation happened between me and a friend and they thought, oh you know what, Phillip had a conversation with X, and X just search for 'cat toys' so Phillip must want cat toys right now!

No, neither of those are 'obvious' explanations.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#202

Post by RyanShook »

stereoradonc wrote: post #199

I went through the entire thread of conversations here, and I am surprised that anything related to Telegram is downvoted and the familiar trope of "security" is added. It's got best-in-class applications with lovely animations. The server now governs reactions to specific messages. Stickers are fun, with premium stickers having additional animations. From a technical perspective, they occupy least space; is "fast" a…

I don’t hav strong feelings about Telegram but the fact that they have 700m installs without any paid advertising is just incredible.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#203

Post by acchow »

d0mine wrote: post #193
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Say what you want about their security; they have the absolute best UX of any (primarily 1-on-1) messaging app, bar none. That is precisely because they don't give a shit about security. While others like Whatsapp bother with e2ee and resulting device sync problems and inability to do server-side search, Telegram just stores everything on a server without (meaningful) encryption and boldly claims that 'it is the mo…

I see this opinion often on HN but it is BS. If I were a dissident then given the choice between whatsapp and telegram, telegram wins "Secret chats use end-to-end encryption, thanks to which we don't have any data to disclose. To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are contro…

Btw, only 1:1 chats can be used for Secret Chats in Telegram. It does not support group chats.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#204

Post by d0mine »

tootie wrote: post #181
ufmace wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it for something like 90% of all my social interactions with real-life friends. IMO, Telegram has by far the best UI/UX of any internet chat app. In terms of stuff like group management, working perfectly on any type of device with any OS, including maintaining accounts on multiple devices and keeping everything synced between them, organizing large numbers of chats in the UI, managing notifications, etc. Video…

For me, the value of messaging comes 99.99% from availability of people I'm messaging. For work, it's all Slack. For personal it's SMS. I haven't seen a compelling feature in a chat app since 1997.

Sometimes you want to talk to people without giving them your phone number. Imagine IRC but much more convenient.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#205

Post by hackernewds »

zamadatix wrote: post #141

After Hangouts died (yeah it's still Google Chat now but it's not the multi-function tool it used to be before they chopped it up to announce a piece is migrating to Chat) I switched to Signal. If I were to do that transition all over again I would do Telegram instead. Signal sounds nice but it's a bit overbearing - backups are somewhere between difficult to impossible depending on the device, there is no web client,…

Most of this is expected for Signal, since they're the founders of Whatsapp after all.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#206

Post by fartcannon »

pizza234 wrote: post #156
fartcannon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The login screen was too complicated for you, eh?

I was asked to login concurrently from two different browsers, every time I wanted to login. It was a very puzzling experience, and took me a while to figure it out, because it was something I've never experienced before in chat systems, and it wasn't spelled clearly, like "you must login from two browsers", in order to compensate for the unusualness. The UX of communicating with other users was problematic as well.…

Did you file a bug? That doesn't happen. Normally you log in. And that's it. On a new device, you can (optionally) verify your account to see previous encrypted comversations. But you don't have to do that.

As for the chat rooms, they work exactly like Discord, which is exactly like every chat client with chat rooms has since the dawn of IRC. You can send a message to one person, or you can join a room and message everyone at the same time.

Easy peasy!

Re: 700M users and Premium

#207

Post by fartcannon »

seizethegdgap wrote: post #196
fartcannon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The login screen was too complicated for you, eh?

Do you remember using Riot pre-cross signing? If you don't, then you have no idea how bad it used to be.

I do and it wasn't bad. And for literally years now its been great.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#208

Post by fartcannon »

scrollaway wrote: post #158
fartcannon wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do value that, and they also value a great UX, which Matrix also has. Additionally, matrix, doesn't forcefully associate your plaintext account with your phone number! People with a clue value that.

700,000,000 users disagree with your statements. You can’t make something true by just saying it’s true. Also your attitude is super toxic. You’re calling people who don’t value the same things you do, “clueless”. You don’t really get to bullshit people on HN — you can be super smart and skilled in your field, you’ll far too often come across people with vastly more experience than you. I invite you to think about th…

Its not years behind. That's a lie. In fact Id say it's ahead because you don't need to use a phone number (huge liability), you can choose to use e2e if you want and theyre not storing your data in plaintext!

Oh and all of matrix is totally open source! Wow. That's how you know you can trust it. If they decide to pull a WhatsApp and move to Facebook, you can just fork and get on with your life.

I like that the telegram client is open, but the sever isn't. Which means I don't really trust them. Same problem as Signal.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#209

Post by adfjalkfja »

scrollaway wrote: post #14

Telegram blows my mind. Say what you want about their security; they have the absolute best UX of any (primarily 1-on-1) messaging app, bar none. Discord is a close second. But the quality and polish of telegram blows me away to this day. And it’s lots of small features and details such as built in translation for messages in a foreign language, all the smooth animations, quick look and summaries of channels with agg…

Discord is much, much better IMO and I've never enjoyed Telegram. Probably is better for the general public though

Re: 700M users and Premium

#210

Post by fartcannon »

tiagod wrote: post #175
fartcannon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it’s the only popular messenger that is actually easy to programmatically interact with." Let me introduce you to Matrix SDKs https://matrix.org/sdks/

Telegram is on another level, honestly. You can do anything from a bash script with curl.

That is cool. I love FOSS with good APIs. It's too bad the sever is closed. Makes it hard for me to trust.
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