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700M users and Premium

telegram.org

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Re: 700M users and Premium

#311

Post by kaba0 »

tcfhgj wrote: post #281
alexiaya wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it may not be the most secure, for many casual users the level of encryption provided in cloud chats is good enough for the convenience of smooth cloud sync, which generally doesn't work with E2E messengers and I frequently lose messages when I restore my phone or get a new one. At least they say the encryption keys for cloud chats are scattered across multiple jurdistictions so they wouldn't be able to hand ov…

> smooth cloud sync, which generally doesn't work with E2E messengers Wrong, see Element or Matrix generally

Smooth is not the word I would use for them. Though it may very well be only a “frontend” problem and the underlying tech/theory is probably good. But the current implementations are not yet there unfortunately.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#312

Post by kaba0 »

philliphaydon wrote: post #184
gruez wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They just decrypt analysis and reencypt and forward. Since communication is not peer to peer and goes via FB the key exchange is prob with Facebook not the users. Do you have any evidence for this, or is this your "better safe than sorry" assumption for every e2e messenger that doesn't allow you to verify keys?

After FB bought WhatsApp I’ve had multiple occasions where shortly after having conversations with people about products I haven’t searched for. The only place I’ve discussed it. Is in a whats app conversation. I got advertising in Facebook for those products. For example when looking for an apartment I told my agent (non business account) that I wanted safety catches on the windows. I immediately got advertising for…

The person you talked about may have searched for the term, and knowing that you are friends facebook can easily assume that you would be also interested in this thing. It may also operate based on metadata of you have talked recently.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#313

Post by kaba0 »

fartcannon wrote: post #151
jonathantf2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't value that, they value a good UX and the fact that all of their contacts have the app. Matrix has neither of these.

People do value that, and they also value a great UX, which Matrix also has. Additionally, matrix, doesn't forcefully associate your plaintext account with your phone number! People with a clue value that.

Which client has a good UX in your opinion?

Re: 700M users and Premium

#314

Post by kaba0 »

adfjalkfja wrote: post #209
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…

Discord is much, much better IMO and I've never enjoyed Telegram. Probably is better for the general public though

In browser or on mobile? I really don’t like either, but it is especially buggy/unintuitive on ios.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#315

Post by kaba0 »

19h wrote: post #289

I’ve been using telegram since 2013 every single day. I don’t want my chat app to drain my battery, I don’t want it to waste bandwidth and I want to be able to have so little latency that I feels real-time no matter where I am. Telegram feels like that group of people they warned you about. Sexual and political freedom. Be whatever you want others to see you like. Easy bot API, deep event based td-lib SDK, censorship…

Could you recommend some useful bots? I use telegram heavily for communication, but never really looked into bots before, not sure what I’m missing.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#316

Post by adfjalkfja »

kaba0 wrote: post #314
adfjalkfja wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is much, much better IMO and I've never enjoyed Telegram. Probably is better for the general public though

In browser or on mobile? I really don’t like either, but it is especially buggy/unintuitive on ios.

Both desktop app and android, also had issues signing up. It didn't like my number

Re: 700M users and Premium

#317

Post by fartcannon »

jonathantf2 wrote: post #301
fartcannon wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not years behind. That's a lie. In fact Id say it's ahead because you don't need to use a phone number (huge liability), you can choose to use e2e if you want and theyre not storing your data in plaintext! Oh and all of matrix is totally open source! Wow. That's how you know you can trust it. If they decide to pull a WhatsApp and move to Facebook, you can just fork and get on with your life. I like that the teleg…

Just because it's open source doesn't mean I can trust it, I don't have the time to audit the code myself. Being open source is not a feature.

Yes it is, because you can. Just because you personally wont doesn't remove it as a feature.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#318

Post by fartcannon »

kaba0 wrote: post #313
fartcannon wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do value that, and they also value a great UX, which Matrix also has. Additionally, matrix, doesn't forcefully associate your plaintext account with your phone number! People with a clue value that.

Which client has a good UX in your opinion?

I used to really like ICQ's floating usernames and email-like modal. A message came in and a little icon appear beside the username (which I used to float in the unused part of my menu bar) along with an audible notification "uh oh!" You double click it, a small chat window opened up with your conversation history and a place to type. You then typed and send your message and the window disappeared until they replied. It was great because you could see who the messages were from without having to use any screen real estate.

Then things like MSN Messenger got popular. Protocols got locked down and screen real estate got consumed. For some reason everyone wanted to use Google Talk (which was horrible but at least spoke XMPP so folks on Pidgin could still chat with their friends). BB messenger taught a few tricks to Apple. Then facebook messenger happened, whatsapp, wechat, etc.

In the background, there were programs like teamspeak and mumble that were trying to do voice chat for gaming reasons. In a way, these were the precursors to Discord who now, for some reason, dominates what people consider a good chat UI. I personally think it's a bloated mess. In my opinion, ICQ had the best chat UI. Because it stayed out of the way.

It's too bad it turned out to be spyware! Hah

Re: 700M users and Premium

#319

Post by nix23 »

DeathArrow wrote: post #293
nix23 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when is Switzerland a powerblock, however thank you!

Well, I am afraid Switzerland can read our messages and then jack up the prices on watches and chocolate!

??? CN is China (mainland), CH is Switzerland, but have fun with our watches...and chocolate...we jack the joe out of it.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#320

Post by 19h »

kaba0 wrote: post #315
19h wrote: post #289

I’ve been using telegram since 2013 every single day. I don’t want my chat app to drain my battery, I don’t want it to waste bandwidth and I want to be able to have so little latency that I feels real-time no matter where I am. Telegram feels like that group of people they warned you about. Sexual and political freedom. Be whatever you want others to see you like. Easy bot API, deep event based td-lib SDK, censorship…

Could you recommend some useful bots? I use telegram heavily for communication, but never really looked into bots before, not sure what I’m missing.

One example is a bot I wrote for PsychonautWiki that posts changes from Jira, MediaWiki via UDP and Paypal via IPN: https://github.com/psychonautwiki/eyeOfProvidence.

Another one I wrote recently is a bot that I ported to Telegram from its original IRC incarnation: https://github.com/19h/minuteman-bot.

A bot I wrote that, when seeing a voice message, transcribes it using AssemblyAI and finally uses OpenAI GPT3 to summarise it: https://github.com/19h/transcriptbot. (Needs an api key for both)

Finally, a bot that monitors a tcp / http endpoint configured via a yaml file, can be configured to send alerts via SMS (via AWS SNS), Slack or Telegram: https://github.com/19h/zuse.

There's a bunch more but most of them are very specific to my needs.

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