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

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

#231

Post by Krasnol » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:36 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.

Its funny how much drama you can stir up with that.

It seems it's more important to kids today to have stickers and all kind of fancy useless crap. So yeah, it is "borderline unusable" for them. I get this and I don't care.

I guess we have a way to filter out a certain audience with Signal ;)

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

#232

Post by Frondo » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

unimpressive wrote: post #208

Frondo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State actors have a much more direct route to killing secure chats like Telegram and Signal: they firewall the servers at the national level. There've been several state actors that have done this to both Telegram and Signal already -- both of these apps employ different ways of avoiding it but this is already one of the arms races in the world of secure chats. FWIW, my problems with Signal losing/delaying messages a…

Yes but that's very obvious, the route just discussed is subtle and difficult to detect.

I just don't think state actors need to go that far. They can shut it down more easily than slowly trying to sink it through attrition.

And besides, if I were a state actor and I wanted to sink a program like Signal through such subversive means, I'd probably have someone start contributing to the project, and then start arguing in favor of bad UX choices; make it harder to use, not just unreliable, in favor of "security". Push it out of the realm of what a normal user could conceivably make use of.

That's the kind of long con I'd play -- play on techies' love of doing things on principle and for theoretical purposes, and general disinterest in UX.

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

#233

Post by mruts » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:38 PM UTC

StyloBill wrote: post #226

mruts wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'd love to know more about this story! Care to elaborate?

Fortunately my name isn't associated with this HN account. So I suppose I can comment about the situation.

Me and a bunch of other people met online and talked about programming, hacking, etc. All of us were teenagers at the time. One of the people, who I considered a good friend, turned out to be this guy:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-id...

They found the logs of our IRC conversations over a period of 5 years and found a bunch of incriminating stuff (just teenagers shooting the shit, trashing people, and talking about hacking and stuff)

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

#234

Post by Krasnol » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

rvanmil wrote: post #52

When will HN learn that convenience beats security every single time? All posts that mention Telegram get the same tiring comments about security and they're all utterly pointless and preaching to the choir. Yes, we know there are more secure messenger apps out there, thanks. But unless they offer at least the same convenience as Telegram does, no one will use them except you and some of your tech friends. If you wan…

> no one will use them except you and some of your tech friends.

This goes the other way around just as well.

No one will use them except you and some of your edgy young friends.

I mean...seriously...I don't see my mother using "custom made stickers" nor my wife or my co-workers who are not "tech". They are just older and need to send text and a picture from time to time.

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

#235

Post by martin_a » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

AiaMD13 wrote: post #53

fvjft wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience Telegram has an outage every couple of months, while WhatsApp only drops dead once a year or so.

I wasn't really implying that whatsapp is in any way better. I personally enjoy using Telegram. I just expressed my frustration, because I'd really like to have only one app in my phone with all the contacts in it instead of 3 or 4.

Same for me. I want end-to-end-encryption by default, bot integration and all people in one place. Would even pay monthly for that.

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

#236

Post by Krasnol » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

jonlucc wrote: post #223

dkrich wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, thanks. So the answer is that it's not sustainable. Got it.

Not necessarily. Would you say that a museum or university isn't sustainable because its revenue from goods and services is less money than it spends? If they have an endowment or similar vehicle set up, they can use interest to pay salaries, and other expenses. That's the kind of thing that could be enabled by a single large donation and should be considered sustainable despite a lack of other recurring revenue.

> Would you say that a museum or university isn't sustainable because its revenue from goods and services is less money than it spends?

Yes?

That's why it's being usually run by tax money. A regular flow of funds. Something you can plan and work with.

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

#237

Post by kadendogthing » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

mgw wrote: post #15

I understand Telegram's appeal because of its high quality apps and big feature list, but articles such as this one really should be more nuanced when pushing Telegram's marketing message of "We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone.". Their default mode is not end-to-end encrypted [1] and as such the product is less private than WhatsApp. Even tech-savvy users in my social circles are not aware of this…

And they rolled their own encryption. It's a false sense of security.

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

#238

Post by Krasnol » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

diego_moita wrote: post #134

Telegram user here. For me, by far the best use case for it are the bots. I live in Brazil and can't stand my relatives barfing bullshit about that idiotic Bolsonaro on WhatsApp. A simple bot on Telegram is the perfect antidote against political stupidity. Bye, bye WhatsApp... Give me bots on Signal/WhatsApp and I'll begin paying attention. Before that, no thanks.

> A simple bot on Telegram is the perfect antidote against political stupidity.

It's a perfect vehicle for political stupidity too.

Here in Germany Telegram has a history of being the preferred nest for all kinds of fascist hate groups that have been banned on Facebook. Actually this is the only times I've heard/read about Telegram in the media here.

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

#239

Post by antihero » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

WA wrote: post #174

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 b…

Hard to get people to switch if it's £3 though :(

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

#240

Post by r3bl » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

p2detar wrote: post #187

kuhhk wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Yep, I'm familiar with Schneier's comments. I still find the whole thing funny though. For example, services like Viber seem to have 260 mil. active monthly users [1] which is a tad more than Telegram's 200 mil. on monthly basis, however, I don't hear people bashing Viber that much even though it practices security through obscurity [2]. Hats off to Telegram for at least publishing their stuff and I remain curious as…

It's a simple problem of where the market is.

India, Russia, and Brazil isn't the target market for people like Schneier. If you narrow the market to the US, Statista reports that Telegram has twice as many users in the US as Viber.

I'm from one of those countries where Viber is hugely popular (by far more popular than WhatsApp and Telegram), and I hate it with passion. Kind of like Telegram, its end-to-end encryption was also home-made last time I've checked, but at least it's turned on by default.