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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

#41
post #32
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.

> Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims My love for the word "dubious" cannot be overstated. While there's been a lot of solidly-seeming (I am not a security researcher) criticism of TG security infrastructure, I don't recall a single instance of chats or metadata being actually compromised so far. > Signal has a far superior user experience. Not in this Universe, unfortunately. Signal is borderline unusable,…

> The only feature that comes to mind is the absence of sync to other devices (which is kinda expected). Why is that expected? Just because things are encrypted does not mean that they shouldn't be syncable. Signal offers this.

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

#42
post #22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Signal and my main qualm with it is that messages don’t sync between platforms and also the phone app is nowhere as good as Telegram’s.

Well, if it would sync, it's not private. Unless the app allows you to sync the keys offline. Telegram doesn't sync either if you enable e2e encryption. But I agree that Telegram apps are great. Both Android ones, and the desktop ones as well. Small, fast, reliable, great UX.

iMessage is one of the few both E2E and cloud-synced messengers, but it's iOS only.

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

#43
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.

The user experience of Telegram is by far the best of all apps with the sleekest ui's and the native (electron) apps for all platforms. Moreover because of the lack of e2e encryption (on standard chat) all your messages are just there when you log in and are easily searchable. Telegram also has very nice channels and some excellent bots and a very nice feature to send yourself stuff you want accessible anywhere... But imo Signal is superior and has my preference due to its privacy focus. It also has a desktop app by the way and it works ok.

Of course Signal's server implementation is still closed but something like Matrix/Riot is too much to ask from "normal people" (like my mother and father who I got onto Singal with ease...).

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

#44
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.

Seriously, you have to realise this is about migrating from Messenger. Messenger, from Facebook. Any doubts about the "dubious claims" of Telegram are completely overshadowed by the definitive certainty that Messenger is extremely privacy invasive.

Also, the Telegram experience is simply stellar throughout, performing brilliantly even under harsh network conditions. Signal just offers an insanely bad user experience.

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

#45
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.

Please, please don't.

Open Whisper Systems is a company that uses "open-source" as a marketing term while bullying the people who choose to take advantage of it.

You can build your own client, but if you start to distribute it, they'll ban you from using their servers[1], with an explanation plain ridiculous for a company that took thousands of dollars from various open source foundations. The server is open source, but again, you have no guarantee that the official (and only) signal server is anything close to the software they published as open source.

Telegram at least publishes libraries that you can actually use with their official service [2]. You still have to „trust the company” to a certain degree: you'll never get proper security without something like Matrix or XMPP where you can be in control over both ends of the communication. Still, a company like OWS or Telegram can do more or less to put users more in control over their end: and I'd argue that OWS is doing way less for that than Telegram does.

[1] https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... [2] https://github.com/tdlib/td

EDIT: removed "dishonest" – I wish I had strikethrough to use :)

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

#46
post #32
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.

> Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims My love for the word "dubious" cannot be overstated. While there's been a lot of solidly-seeming (I am not a security researcher) criticism of TG security infrastructure, I don't recall a single instance of chats or metadata being actually compromised so far. > Signal has a far superior user experience. Not in this Universe, unfortunately. Signal is borderline unusable,…

Signal is borderline unusable? I've never used Telegram but if that's your assessment of Signal, Telegram must be great. Can you tell me about it?

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

#47
post #45
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.

Please, please don't. Open Whisper Systems is a company that uses "open-source" as a marketing term while bullying the people who choose to take advantage of it. You can build your own client, but if you start to distribute it, they'll ban you from using their servers[1], with an explanation plain ridiculous for a company that took thousands of dollars from various open source foundations. The server is open source,…

That's not dishonest. You might not like their policy (I'm not a fan of it either), but it's clearly stated, based on consistent logic and not at odds with the software being open-source.

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

#48
post #45
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.

Please, please don't. Open Whisper Systems is a company that uses "open-source" as a marketing term while bullying the people who choose to take advantage of it. You can build your own client, but if you start to distribute it, they'll ban you from using their servers[1], with an explanation plain ridiculous for a company that took thousands of dollars from various open source foundations. The server is open source,…

Signal is completely "open-source", but that doesn't mean their chat network is open. How can you even confuse those things?

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

#49
post #31
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't agree more. Have been using Telegram since I quit using Facebook, and it proved to be far more reliable then even whatsapp. The only problem is that most of people I know prefer and use whatsapp and it's been challenging fo me to maintain all the contacts in one app.

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

Since we're talking personal experience, Signal has never had an outage (that I was aware of).

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

#50
post #43
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.

The user experience of Telegram is by far the best of all apps with the sleekest ui's and the native (electron) apps for all platforms. Moreover because of the lack of e2e encryption (on standard chat) all your messages are just there when you log in and are easily searchable. Telegram also has very nice channels and some excellent bots and a very nice feature to send yourself stuff you want accessible anywhere... Bu…

It is Qt-based, not electron
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