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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

#91

Post by kome »

nextstep wrote: 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.

Just saying: with Telegram you need a cellphone to open an account, but you don't need a cellphone to use Telegram.

With Signal you have to use a cellphone. And that's so unsafe and against any reasonable definition of privacy.

Cellphones are tightly closed, data hungry, tracking devices. A IM that force the user to use a cellphone is a BAD at privacy.

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

#92

Post by kome »

mat4magic wrote: post #83
AiaMD13 wrote: 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.

Telegram wins because it has a usable Desktop Client

So true. People still sit in front of desktop SO much. Why can't whatsapp come out with a client that is not total crap and linked to a phone?

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

#93

Post by simias »

emerongi wrote: post #77
simias wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never used Telegram but I do use Signal daily and if it really offers a "far superior experience" then Telegram must be akin to connecting to an IRC server with telnet as a client. Seriously though, Signal's UI is pretty terrible and they go out of their way to discourage third party clients. It's fine as a replacement for SMS (the way I use it) but if you're used to more fully featured web messengers it's a pre…

Which features are missing? I text and call through Signal and I've not felt like there is anything missing. For a while they didn't have support for front-facing cameras, but that was added some time in the last year. Only other problem I've had is that on some Android phones the "voicemail" feature (or w/e it's called) wasn't working well, but not sure if it's still a thing.

The desktop app is electron junk that lacks basic features like changing spellchecking language and there's no pure web client like Whatsapp for instance. I also think it lacks some features of the mobile client like creating new groups and adding new contacts (or at least I haven't figured out how to do it). When I install the client on a new computer I can't access the history of the messages from the phone for a reason that eludes me.

Frankly 90% of my frustrations with Signal come from this client, the experience on mobile is better, although still far from perfect. I'm not a fan of pure web clients but web.whatsapp.com is lightyears ahead of Signal's electron bloated and under-featured mess.

The Android client crops the image when I take a picture through the app. No other application does that so I don't really know why it does it. I suspect it's a bug or maybe a bad setting I flipped by mistake but I can't figure out what's going on.

As far as I can tell when you get a new phone the only way to synchronize message history is to create a local backup on one phone, write down the ~24 digit passphrase, transfer the backup by yourself on the new phone then load it from there. If there's a simpler way I haven't found it.

Also I don't think you can move your "secret key" to the new phone, so you have to re-validate your safety number with them. Maybe there's a way to do all that but if I as a technical user wasn't able to figure it out while actively looking for it I have little hope for the average Facebooker.

There's also no support for WhatsApp-style stickers, URL preview, Youtube embedding and all these bells and whistles that I personally don't care for but I'm sure would be missed by many WhatsApp/messenger users.

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

#94

Post by anotheryou »

roel_v wrote: post #33
lucideer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Signal has a far superior user experience No. It doesn't. If you're going to advocate for an open alternative, at least be intellectually honest about it's pros/cons. You might have gotten used to Signal, and be unfamiliar with Telegram (and sure, much of usability has an element of subjectivity to it), but... the above statement simply isn't true in the general sense. Personally, I tend to try and advocate for Rio…

Having just installed Signal yesterday, in what respect is it worse than Whatsapp (from a UI pov)? The only thing I found so far is the bad integration with contacts.

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)

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

#95

Post by kome »

h91wka wrote: post #75
nextstep wrote: 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.

Both Signal and Telegram use SMS for authN tokens, enough said. Being secure and censorship proof while relying on mobile networks just doesn't compute. Correction: or at least they used to? Now I realize that I am not completely sure.

Signal is way worse because it requires you to have the cellphone always on.

With Telegram you need a phone number to sign-in and then you can forget about it, and use it just on desktop/laptop. You can set a password as a 2 factor authentication (1st: sms or code to another telegram client 2nd: password).

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

#96

Post by _Microft »

franky47 wrote: post #18
nextstep wrote: 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.

Signal on Android relies upon Google Play Services for the microphone and camera permissions, which can't be turned off. It is open-source [1] so one could install it without going through the Google Play Store (it's not on F-Droid though), but it's another case of Google's ever-expanding grasp over "interesting" (read: competing) Android apps. [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android

Wasn't the real reason that Moxie Marlinspike considered hosting with Google less questionable than allowing installing apps from third party sites?

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

#97

Post by ta2223332221 »

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…

If you want security and privacy to become mainstream, simply make it a boring, invisible implementation detail of your messenging platform which is superior in convenience

I believe that is precisely Signal's philosophy. Which is why for example it uses/requires a phone number instead of a username - which then people also complain about on HN and elsewhere. That it's less convenient than other messengers (which I don't dispute) is not for the lack of trying.

So I suspect the answer is the loudest users/commenters will "never" learn this.

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

#99

Post by [deleted] »

nextstep wrote: 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.

[deleted]

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

#100

Post by jumbopapa »

anotheryou wrote: post #94
roel_v wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having just installed Signal yesterday, in what respect is it worse than Whatsapp (from a UI pov)? The only thing I found so far is the bad integration with contacts.

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 doubles as your SMS client, so if a contact is a Signal user you get the privacy you want, but if they aren't at least you can still text them.

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