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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

#321

Post by newscracker »

tivert wrote: post #297
newscracker wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason given is “security”, or to copy paste from the link I have given: “iTunes backups are disabled to prevent plaintext leakage to iCloud or insecure systems.” I have a negative opinion of Signal because they have not dealt with this for years and have been stubborn on that point. Please read the comments on the link I have given and also look at issues they have closed on the same topic. Their responses on th…

> I have a negative opinion of Signal because they have not dealt with this for years and have been stubborn on that point. Why? It's their time and I doubt you're their boss. > But this particular issue, introduced and imposed by the Signal team, is a deal breaker. It seems like you just fundamentally disagree with their priorities, which is kind of a poor reason for having a negative opinion of them. It seems like…

I’m not their boss, but who says I can’t criticize it if it doesn’t meet my and others’ needs? If you observe all the discussions here on HN, you’d see that most of the criticisms and disagreements that people have with someone or some company relates to priorities not matching. Signal is not getting some special mistreatment here. In my other comments I have mentioned (that I have been) focusing on selling Signal to the average user. That doesn’t work well because of such issues (I have also listed other issues with Signal in some other comments here).

If Signal wants to become more popular, then it should also look at what average users need right now (the deal breakers) when prioritizing requirements and features. As I said in another comment, Signal seems focused on investigative journalists, dissidents and activists. Nothing wrong with that at all, but it reflects poorly on people who comment on HN recommending that everybody should use Signal.

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

#322

Post by detaro »

Markoff wrote: post #300
eitland wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved WhatsApp when I had to pay for it. I'd respect Telegram more if I had to pay for it from the start. 3.50€? Seriously, people use more on coffee. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin Seriously, at least for westerners, if we cannot pay the same for a secure messaging app as for a coffee then we don't deserve…

I never get coffee argument, if I can choose between coffee for 3.5€ or coffee for free in cup plastered with ads I ain't spending the money plus I don't really spend money on unnecessary things or pleasures, at least not regularly as your typical daily coffee drinker

The argument is that it's an amount many people can and do trivially spend on a whim.

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

#323

Post by acct1771 »

ubercow13 wrote: post #304
rickycook wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't that how Signal works too? What else would it do, disallow you from continuing the chat if the key changes?

Until reverification? Sure.

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

#324

Post by acct1771 »

jhoechtl wrote: post #243
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…

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

www.riot.im

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

#325

Post by ubercow13 »

acct1771 wrote: post #323
ubercow13 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that how Signal works too? What else would it do, disallow you from continuing the chat if the key changes?

Until reverification? Sure.

In that case most users similarly won't know what reverification means and will just click through without verifying anything. It's not reasonable to say that that makes Whatsapp only as secure as Twitter DMs.

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

#326

Post by fnord123 »

saagarjha wrote: post #311
fnord123 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they are native only in that they run native code so... native. I'm glad everyone agrees then.

> so... native. No. You're missing the bit where "native" means different things in different contexts; for code it means that the code ends up being compiled for the architecture it's running on, but for UI it means that you're using the platform APIs and following system conventions, which Telegram does not.

I'm not missing it, I just don't care. The only think of interest to me is whether its a shitty memory hog like Teams or other electron programs or not. I don't think I use a single program that uses Cocoa aside from Activiy Monitor.

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

#327

Post by Krasnol »

jonlucc wrote: post #318
Krasnol wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this applicable to what I wrote? Here is the relevant part again: > because its revenue from goods and services is less money than it spends

You're saying that a company can't be sustainable if its spending exceeds revenue, but there are plenty of institutions that do exactly that and are based on the same premise as what we know about Telegram's funding. A single (or multiple) large donor(s) can potentially donate enough money to make a thing sustainable without relying on much if any revenue. There are examples of that in the real world.

How many of them did you gave your private secrets?

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

#328

Post by ardy42 »

newscracker wrote: post #321
tivert wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a negative opinion of Signal because they have not dealt with this for years and have been stubborn on that point. Why? It's their time and I doubt you're their boss. > But this particular issue, introduced and imposed by the Signal team, is a deal breaker. It seems like you just fundamentally disagree with their priorities, which is kind of a poor reason for having a negative opinion of them. It seems like…

I’m not their boss, but who says I can’t criticize it if it doesn’t meet my and others’ needs? If you observe all the discussions here on HN, you’d see that most of the criticisms and disagreements that people have with someone or some company relates to priorities not matching. Signal is not getting some special mistreatment here. In my other comments I have mentioned (that I have been) focusing on selling Signal to…

> I’m not their boss, but who says I can’t criticize it if it doesn’t meet my and others’ needs?

Yeah, because doing that is kinda toxic. It's the kind of behavior that makes open-source project maintainers burn out and quit their former labor-of-love, because they're sick being dragged down by all of the negativity from the internet peanut gallery.

This is especially true since it appears they may actually be addressing your iOS backup concerns, just not with the urgency you demand.

> As I said in another comment, Signal seems focused on investigative journalists, dissidents and activists. Nothing wrong with that at all, but it reflects poorly on people who comment on HN recommending that everybody should use Signal.

No, it doesn't reflect poorly on them at all.

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

#329

Post by cfrs »

p2detar wrote: post #171
kuhhk wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy. I recall the anger is not about any trade off. It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto. There’s no convenience factor or trade off here, they just literally did the thing the textbooks tell you not to do, and have ignored the industry’s calls to use strong…

> It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto. I come across this a lot about Telegram and while I do agree, I think there have been no reports so far about hacks in Telegram's service, and it's online since 2013 or so.

I recalled leaking phone number for user's handle or vice versa, and while searching for the source found few more security issues.

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

#330

Post by cfrs »

ta2223332221 wrote: post #86
tadzik_ wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is: but how do you know if it really is the source code of Signal ? For all we know, both the Signal network and its client are a half-baked "secure" and "private" chat, and the source code they publish is an elaborate decoy (though probably a subset of the real underlying code, for obvious reasons).

but how do you know if it really is the source code of Signal? That's a valid question which used to bug me about open source projects. But apparently they finally figured out that the output of the source needs to be deterministic and match the binaries they ship. This property is called "reproducible builds". Signal claims to have them (modulo some third party libraries), though I haven't personally verified it: ht…

Interesting whether apple's bitcode and app thinning breaks "reproducible builds". Also I'm not sure you still can get IPA file (app binary) from appstore/iphone.
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