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700M users and Premium

telegram.org

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Re: 700M users and Premium

#211

Post by alfongj »

RyanShook wrote: post #202
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.

WhatsApp got there faster with no ads either

Re: 700M users and Premium

#212

Post by alfongj »

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…

> 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.

User experience is, well, subjective to the user. For tech savvy, primarily desktop users, Telegram and Discord can be great choices.

This is however probably not true for the majority of the population.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#213

Post by gruez »

philliphaydon wrote: post #201
gruez wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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'

It seems doubtful that you can hide the fact that you had a 1 year old kid from facebook, unless you're a very sporadic/careful user. Besides, it's not too hard to imagine one of your friends outed you to facebook (eg. posted photo of you with a baby, or mentioning the fact that you have a baby on a post/comment somewhere). From there it doesn't seem too implausible that "had 1 year old kid" was a targeting factor for "window safty latch for children". As for the "looking for an apartment" part, I don't really think that's necessary for sending you ads for safety latches. Even if you live in a house you'd need latches to secure room windows that are on the second floor.

>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!

e2e provides zero assurances about metadata/social graph. that's been the case since PGP days.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#214

Post by eastern »

rg111 wrote: post #70

Many people are asking what are in Telegram that aren’t anywhere else? I can provide some answers. Telegram is my primary chat app. - It offers you to simply share an alphanumeric handle and you can connect with anyone in the world. I can do a voice chat or normal chat really quickly and easily. It is the only famous truly Instant Messenger there is. And I can do it without sharing my name (unlike FB), email address,…

Good list. I would only add 'Send without sound' and 'Schedule send'

Re: 700M users and Premium

#215

Post by oaththrowaway »

Nextgrid wrote: post #159
oaththrowaway wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on Telegram, but I've had some eeirie ads shown on Facebook after conversations I've had.

Facebook stalks your friends and knows your social graph thanks to enough people leaking their contacts list (you're still exposed even if you don't share your own list). It could very well be that one of your friends looked up the product being discussed and FB (correctly) guessed based on other data they had that you're the one most likely to be interested in it (or alternatively just shown this ad to everyone in y…

The first one was we were talking about getting pizza for dinner after my in laws showed up. 10 minutes later a Papa John's ad showed up. We don't eat pizza normally.

Second one was talking to one of my neighbors about their dog. For a few days I kept getting ads about dog leashes. I don't have a dog.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#216

Post by zaik »

f1refly wrote: post #127
the_third_wave wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using it to communicate with family members and to follow some development-related channels. Why Telegram? - Telegram vs. Whatsapp is clear, Whatsapp is off-limits due to it being owned by Zuckerberg & Co. - Telegram vs. Signal is a bit less clear but the user experience offered by Telegram is superior to that of Signal which made it easy to get some of my more computer-averse family members to accept it. The fac…

I'd love to like xmpp, but every xmpp experience apart from dino (which isn't available on windows) is pure garbage from a ux perspective. For some reason conversations chose to not adhere to any design standards in use on the android platform and instead do it's own thing, which subjectively looks really bad (and cannot be customized). It's also missing stuff like the photo editor, daniel said he's not planning to i…

I really like the simplicity of Conversations. It's unclear to me why every app must implement it's own image editor. This really should be solved on the Android level of things and I think Daniel is right not to include it. Do one thing and do it well, after all.

Also all the other messengers like WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram don't seem to care about interoperability or internet standards and are not XMPP compliant.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#217

Post by enraged_camel »

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,…

Signal not having a web client annoys me to no end.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#218

Post by up6w6 »

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,…

> and it's only open source in that you can audit source or run your own independent chat network (3rd party clients on the official server are treated as hostile) not as in it's an open community

Do you happen to know why there is no Telegram client fork using Matrix protocol? it seems a pretty obvious thing to try given their advantage with UI and Matrix ecosystem's slow progress with friendly clients.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#219

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

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…

You must have missed all the very suspicious information about Durov's close ties with Russian authorities, and that Telegram developers worked from the same office with VK in Saint-Petersburg when he claimed that they are in Germany. [1]

Good choice for a dissident! (No)

[1]: https://medium.com/@anton.rozenberg/friendship-betrayal-clai...

Re: 700M users and Premium

#220

Post by philliphaydon »

gruez wrote: post #213
philliphaydon wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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' It seems doubtful that you can hide the fact that you had a 1 year old kid from facebook, unless you're a very sporadic/careful user. Besides, it's…

1. I was never hiding that fact. But if those ads showed without any pre-discussion on whats app, i wouldn't care. The point is. Those ad's did not show until shortly after the whats app conversation. That suggests that Facebook is aware of the conversations that occur on whats app that are not business accounts. So e2ee is false.

2. Again, those ad's never showed until shortly after the conversation occurred. I'm talking within ~30m of the discussion.

That's too soon to be a coincidence.

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