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Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

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

#281

Post by tgragnato »

mruts wrote: post #233
StyloBill wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ov…

EDIT: domain removed

It's unpleasant to know a bunch of people read your private stuff. TBH, the username is pretty similar

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

#282

Post by pnutjam »

botto wrote: post #56
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…

Keybase is very convenient, same features and is based on known standards and has arguably as good a UX as telegram. Why isn't that used more?

I use keybase too, but I don't know anyone else; even though I've invited them...

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

#283

Post by ubercow13 »

AtHeartEngineer wrote: post #213
tivert wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are they? That seems like an extraordinary claim. Do you have a source?

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

#284

Post by yes_man »

newscracker wrote: post #211
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?

What happens to Wikipedia every time the end of their runway is approaching? At least we can hope for a similar solution to appear for messaging.

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

#285

Post by dkrich »

alehul wrote: post #274
Krasnol wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If they had a lump sum donation of $100M, they could probably safely expect a return of 5% per year on average (many years could be worse). As long as their costs are less than $5M per year, they can effectively run forever, barring any long-lasting financial depressions (the likes of which we've never seen), or severe financial mismanagement. This is how many museums and universities operate, and what the above comm…

Okay but museums and universities also rely heavily on ongoing donations. A 5% annual yield is far from a guarantee. Not to mention that running a tech company is very different than running a museum or local symphony. A tech company has to attract and retain top talent that is very expensive and costs scale with adoption.

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

#286

Post by karlmcguire »

Krasnol wrote: post #238
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.

We should get Telegram to censor them too, that would definitely not make things worse.

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

#287

Post by karlmcguire »

dkrich wrote: post #183
ubercow13 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is a donation from a rich founder. It says clearly on their website: >Q: How are you going to make money out of this? >We believe in fast and secure messaging that is also 100% free. >Pavel Durov, who shares our vision, supplied Telegram with a generous donation, so we have quite enough money for the time being. If Telegram runs out, we will introduce non-essential paid options to support the infrastructure a…

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

Not only is Durov's net worth $2.7B, but Telegram just raised $1.7B in an ICO for their cryptocurrency they're launching off of Telegram.

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

#288

Post by aepc2 »

jumbopapa wrote: post #100
anotheryou wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly use it on desktop and the clients feels like 10 years ago. - Doesn't go in to system tray (unless you fiddle with command line arguments). - can't search messages - overall unpolished (e.g. saving a file has no "show in folder" option afterwards)

I'd also like to mention that you can't use the desktop client standalone and Signal requires a phone number to sign up. It would be nice if they got rid of these requirements. I use Signal and Telegram both - it's clear to me that Telegram provides the better user experience. I like Signal from the privacy standpoint though. If you're using Android then I think that Signal is kind of a no-brainer to use because it d…

Only problem: if a user (A) signs up for signal and then uninstalls, the phone number is still tied to the signal app. This means that a signal user (B) now can't get messages to user A. The messages gets delivered to a dead signal account. User A must manually deactivate her account, which she is not even informed about when deleting. Also: if user A has her number trabsferred too somebody else (which is often the case with e g work phones) her account is now owned by a random person.

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

#289

Post by rickycook »

ubercow13 wrote: post #283
AtHeartEngineer wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are they? That seems like an extraordinary claim. Do you have a source?

it’s not quite that brazen, but from what i remember the whatsapp server can push a new public key for your contact/chat to the device, which means that they can MITM you. the chat shows that the key changed, but most users wouldn’t know what that means and ignore it

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

#290

Post by rickycook »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #245
jhoechtl wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal all the way down. It's the only viable solution we have now on a compromise level between security, usability and user base.

or Wire if you don't want to use your phone number

but also you can remove your phone number after you sign up. unsure how that’s handled though, so could provide nothing extra if they still allow searching of it, or continue to store it?
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