Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 330 posts

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

#211

Post by newscracker »

yes_man wrote: post #19

Telegram's end goal is to create value for shareholders. Eventually they will profit from user privacy violations. Not to parrot other comments, but we should all use Signal. Its' existence isn't based on investment dollars that expect returns in more dollars.

> Not to parrot other comments, but we should all use Signal. Its' existence isn't based on investment dollars that expect returns in more dollars.

Your argument doesn't make much sense on the Signal side either. How long will the $50 million that the Signal Foundation has really last for? And what happens after that runs out?

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

#212

Post by mruts »

dvdgsng wrote: post #194
codedokode wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping a long history is almost always a bad idea because something you have written a year ago and have forgotten can be used against you. Keeping messages for just about a week is much better idea.

Reading old IRC or ICQ logs from 2001 can be quite fun though, brings back some memories.

Mine got me interviewed by the FBI. So there are some downsides :p

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

#213

Post by AtHeartEngineer »

tivert wrote: post #210
newscracker wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When talking about privacy these articles should at least mention Signal. I hope they will use their recent funding [2] to polish their apps and increase the speed of innovation. I keep repeating this often, but Signal is not a user friendly platform for average users. It is good for ephemeral chats and conversations that one wouldn't care about later. Signal actively blocks chats from being backed up (and restored…

> I keep repeating this often, but Signal is not a user friendly platform for average users. That's not really true. Signal and WhatsApp are basically the same, and WhatsApp's massive popularity gives strong evidence for their user friendliness.

Whatsapps keys are stored on their servers, which Facebook owns. I don't consider WhatsApp anymore secure than Twitter DMs.

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

#214

Post by newscracker »

alphadelphi wrote: post #3
secfirstmd wrote: post #2

Really wish Signal would get the bounce that occurs when this stuff happens instead.

I came here to write the very same sentence. Signal is so underrated.

IMO, Signal is actually overrated way too much. I don't want to repeat things too many times. My other comments here have a lot to say on this.

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

#215

Post by arendtio »

bovermyer wrote: post #165
arendtio wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to throw in another alternative: Some might know XMPP [1] for being the IETF standardized instant messaging protocol and Conversations [2] as one of the modern XMPP clients. Recently, the main author of Conversations created a new version of his app called 'Quicksy'. Quicksy is still an XMPP client but with the ease of use other messangers deliver. For example, you don't have to choose a provider. Yet you still…

I just bought the Conversations app a couple days ago. It looks like, from the Quicksy.im site, that Quicksy is meant to eventually funnel users into Conversations. I'm a little confused by this path. What would make Quicksy users go to Conversations?

Well, I think this is more like a newcomer vs. power user scenario. If you are new to XMPP, Quicksy gives you a decent messenger without requiring you to know how everything works. After a while though, you might learn that you can host your own server or use your own domain and want to do that. At that point, however, you would have to switch to Conversations as Quicksy allows only Accounts on Quicksy servers (AFAIK).

Actually, I don't think the primary reason for Quicksy is to increase the sales of the Conversations app. I think it is more about to get more people in contact with the XMPP ecosystem, without asking them to pay for an app like Conversations up front. After all, the ones who are doing XMPP nowadays are fighting for the cause and not for the cash.

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

#216

Post by AtHeartEngineer »

aclsid wrote: post #130
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.

Let's see, Signal is based in the US. Wechat is a Chinese system with a great UX that is based in China. Telegram used to be based in Russia. Whatsapp is owned by Facebook. I think it is pretty self-explanatory that in all these countries, governments haven't been exactly subtle when it comes to their efforts to intercept communications. In my mind, Telegram is the only software that resisted such interference in an…

Signal is in no way tied to the US government though, just because the developers are here doesn't mean anything. And if you are talking about the servers being here, everything is end to end encrypted, even if the government was to try to get useful data off signal servers, there is nothing to get.

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

#217

Post by newscracker »

codedokode wrote: post #163
newscracker wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

Keeping a long history is almost always a bad idea because something you have written a year ago and have forgotten can be used against you. Keeping messages for just about a week is much better idea.

I partially agree with you on the point that we should be cautious with not storing any and all communications "forever", but messages among friends, relatives, etc., and on groups focused on specific topics can be very nice to look back on (or even get inspired by). The same goes for photos shared in the past too.

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

#220

Post by SilasX »

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'.

Oh, it's okay, you can use it as a generic intensifier now, even though it's confusing and there are much better ones.
Post reply on HN