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

Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 333 posts

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#281

Post by qwerty456127 »

elastolin wrote: post #241
qwerty456127 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today ads never come without tracking. This is the problem. And even without tracking ads are a kind of garbage I don't want anyway. So, the day I get ads in Telegram I'm leaving. At the same time I wouldn't mind a reasonable (~1$/month, I don't do anything heavy, text messaging only) subscription.

> ~1$/month, I don't do anything heavy, text messaging only Won't work. The vast majority people don't pay for messaging service, and without people, there's no messaging app. Ads are the only way forward. Will they offer an optional ad-free subscription? Maybe, but I wouldn't count on that, and it's likely to be higher than $1/month. > So, the day I get ads in Telegram I'm leaving Nobody cares.

> Nobody cares

I have stimulated many people to switch to Telegram because it is the best and all you have is to try it, realize that and motivate your friends to switch with you. Obviously many of these people will go with me once I find a better alternative. The situation probably is the same for many other people.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#283

Post by EGreg »

7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote: post #278
EGreg wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So weird I personally would trust Telegram way more than even Signal for encryption. Armchair sneering doesnt count for me

Why do you trust Telegram more than Signal?

It is built by an anarchist person who always refused to give out personal info of people to the point where his company was taken from him, and he ran away to France. He and his brother hired a ton of PhDs and made lots of paid challenges that no one could break their encryption. Their software is open sourced. The encryption Moxie Marlinspike uses was conveniently funded by the very US government agencies interested in breaking encryption.

https://surveillancevalley.com/blog/government-backed-privac...

https://twitter.com/durov/status/872891017418113024?s=21

Or if you want just a track record of the most RECENT bugs and backdoors that were exploited, look two months ago:

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/01/21/bugs-video-chat-a...

Find me the same for Telegram!

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#284

Post by austhrow743 »

vinay427 wrote: post #214
eptcyka wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean, no desktop client support? There's a fully featured desktop client for Telegram, and I've never had my desktop clients have their sqlite database corrupt itself.

I was trying to emphasize this further which is why I (ninja) edited in the second paragraph, but unfortunately it still isn't very obvious: > when avoiding Telegram's non-private conversations

Kind of reads like "not sure what I'm missing by avoiding Telegram's non-private conversations" rather than the intended "taking a need for e2e as a given, I don't understand..."

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#285

Post by mercacona »

sim_card_map wrote: post #222
mercacona wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue was branding, not bandwidth. There’re 3rd party clients: https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android

No, not just branding. Read the message I linked to. He explicitly says he doesn't want other clients to use their infra.

Your link is a comment in 2016, but it’s 2021 now and there’re alternative clients using their infrastructure.

That’s my point, I’m sorry if you consider some wording five years ago is more relevant than what’s going on in present time.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#286

Post by mercacona »

gojomo wrote: post #224
mercacona wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue was branding, not bandwidth. There’re 3rd party clients: https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android

Marlinspike in the linked comment is clearly also disapproving of the use of Signal's servers, so it's more than branding. Unless he's blessed 'MollyIM' explicitly since, there remains some risk it could be locked out at any time.

Yes, certainly, but Telegram states officially in their FAQ, that Durov’s fortune pays for their servers and now it seems there’re creditors too. Risk are everywhere, but an unofficial opinion doesn’t alters the fact that there’re third party clients that are promoted in the official community forums.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#287

Post by elastolin »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #281
elastolin wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ~1$/month, I don't do anything heavy, text messaging only Won't work. The vast majority people don't pay for messaging service, and without people, there's no messaging app. Ads are the only way forward. Will they offer an optional ad-free subscription? Maybe, but I wouldn't count on that, and it's likely to be higher than $1/month. > So, the day I get ads in Telegram I'm leaving Nobody cares.

> Nobody cares I have stimulated many people to switch to Telegram because it is the best and all you have is to try it, realize that and motivate your friends to switch with you. Obviously many of these people will go with me once I find a better alternative. The situation probably is the same for many other people.

> Obviously many of these people will go with me once I find a better alternative.

People will go only if there's another service that's good enough and has enough user density. You may find the best privacy-oriented, ad-free messaging app, but if it's empty or if it's hard to use, it's essentially useless.

By this point, it's hard to compete with the behemoths like WhatsApp or Telegram and people will not care about this nearly as much as you do. So, no, it's not 'obvious' at all.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#288

Post by Tiberium »

jyrkesh wrote: post #246
eptcyka wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean, no desktop client support? There's a fully featured desktop client for Telegram, and I've never had my desktop clients have their sqlite database corrupt itself.

Windows user here: secret chats are not supported on the desktop client at all. That's my only gripe. The rest of the app is incredible, and absolutely the most delightful app I use every day. I cite it often as an example of a native app that beats the pants off of anything Electron-based, it's just so damn fast.

Just FYI - they're not supported in the official tdesktop client, but they are supposed in some third party ones, e.g. Unigram (if you're on Windows 10).

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#289

Post by ash »

skinkestek wrote: post #251
ash wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange to see people switch from end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp to non-encrypted (by default) Telegram. What do I miss?

1. why do everyone insist E2E-encryption is necessary for IM but not for email and letters ( the alternatives)? Because that is mostly what I use Telegram for. 2. I could have a hard time choosing between Signal and Telegram some days. With WhatsApp I know Facebook will do metadata analysis on my contacts and my conversations (possible even with E2E-encryption). They'll also upload some or all my messages unencrypted…

E2E encryption is necessary for all communication. Email is unfortunately not encrypted, but it doesn't explain why would you choose non-E22 tech when there are perfectly good E2E alternatives.

E2E is an insurance against:

* bugs

* rogue employee

* server vulnerabilities

* acquisitions (imagine Telegram being acquired by Facebook)

As for metadata analysis, I still fail to understand how is it comparable to Telegram having access to all messages.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#290

Post by ash »

newscracker wrote: post #264
ash wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, WhatsApp can go rogue at any time. Signal app is obviously better. However, at least we have a possibility to find out if WhatsApp goes evil - decompilation, protocol analysis are still available. I wouldn't also discount fear of reputation losses if E2E vanishes from WhatsApp. Compared to maybe-evil-in-the-future WhatsApp, default Telegram is already evil, because they have access to all communication right no…

I think you missed my point, which is that WhatsApp is already rogue by way of metadata collection (which is as valuable as content), and that there’s no way anyone can claim with certainty that it’s not gobbling up more data on the server. Even Signal has stopped publishing its server source code for nearly a year, and if we are playing the game of what Telegram is doing with the data, we can say the same about Sign…

We don't need to play any games to point out that Telegram can see everything, including messages.
Post reply on HN