The other thing it's got going for it is that its protocol is designed to work in low-bandwidth environments. Yeah, the protocol looks crazy - but it really does work. Imagine being on an underground train and only occasionally getting a few seconds of internet while passing a stop: Most messengers will at most start showing you a "Connecting ..." status, Telegram will do a full state sync (minus media files, of course) in the same time.
You just register callbacks for message lists / chat messages and notifications and you're all set.
This allows people to easily build full-featured clients for pretty much any platform and it makes it easy for everyone to keep up. Very smart platform design.
I'm very disappointed that something made to be more open like Signal completely failed in this aspect and has ended being a walled garden with poor quality clients.
https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
Of course, it could be reversed, and if you find any more-recent official welcomes from Signal for third-party clients to use its servers, I'd love references.
He explicitly says he doesn't want other clients to use their infra.
And there is an actual demand for features not provided by the official client, as stated by the amount of PRs contributed by non-Signal developers waiting in their GitHub repo, so people will continue to come with their own changes.
There are plenty of technical ways of detecting and blocking 3rd party clients (using both in-channel and side-channel, uh, signals); the only challenge is that it becomes a never-ending arms-race
0: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commits/master
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.
And I have actually experienced this, fairly frequently.
T-Mobile international roaming, at least on my provided corporate plan, is throttled to 128kbps. And Telegram works. Messages come through quickly, and it seems fairly smart about deferring media loading.
It depends on your needs.
I use Telegram like an IRC client, primarily participating in medium/large (20-200 user) group chats. In that sense, I don't really care about encryption because the channels are semi-public anyway. I just want whatever client gives me the best experience.
(On the other hand, if I were discussing sensitive topics, I'd probably pick something else.)
It's about the right UX choices. Speed is a first-tier feature.
…yes, I am aware Telegram does not use the absolute best practices, and at the very least, I imagine it can be cracked wide open by a nation-state intelligence agency.
Which is why, for my occasional super-secret must-be-hush-hush chats, I use other clients. For my day-to-day chats? Telegram. Because, to be privileged, to be flippant: the NSA is welcome to read my texts about what I’m buying at Target this afternoon.
I personally would trust Telegram way more than even Signal for encryption.
Armchair sneering doesnt count for me
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!
And is the story about from Jan about vulnerabilities in Signal that are absent in Telegram also planted by him? Want to see more incidents like that?
Many of Telegram's official clients do not support Secret Chat, an issue which has been open for at least five years now. Their community picks up the slack.
Whatsapp messages pass through their servers, but do not remain there. They are effectively sent from the sending device to the receiving device. This means that your messages reside on your device. When you use the desktop or web client, it's basically remote operating your phone.
This famously allowed Whatsapp to achieve massive scale with relatively few resources. [1]
Telegram messages reside on their servers. This allows for features such as those discussed above - multiple synchronized clients etc. The downside (aside from potential privacy concerns) is that it requires much larger amount of infrastructure, which presumably is one of the reasons they need $700 million.
[1] http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/3/31/how-whatsapp-grew-...
Telegram is not E2E encrypted, WhatsApp is.
Telegram has the option of E2E encrypted messages, but that then works only from one phone/PC.
I have never used backup for WhatsApp but just the other day, out of the blue, every conversation from late 2017 to now that I had deleted popped back into my inbox.
Can’t explain that one easily
And now they've had a decade to address the issue.
Signal actively discourages third-party clients and doesn't accept community contributions in most cases(not that you'd actually want to, because their codebases are trash.) We can do better.
Matrix with bridges and your own server is quite a nice experience. Have a look at beeper: https://www.beeper.com/
Telegram now has 550 million users according to the article. Facebook Messenger has 1.3 billion users - more twice as many, but I won't call that a "much wider adoption".
A large part of the world can't afford sending images (and even videos) via SMS.
And no, Facebook Messenger is not fluid, it's laggy as fuck.
I'm thinking this may be a messaging issue rather than a technical bug in some cases - `Unable to decrypt: The sender's device has not sent us the keys for this message` isn't very helpful.
I think while this isn't ideal, it's important to note (for those following along) that neither Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp support end-to-end encryption across desktop and mobile, history syncing to new devices, and a self hosted OSS server with multiple client apps.
- 100x more people use it (I joined Signal years ago and I still have 1 actual conversation)
- The speed and the level of polish is unmatched
Of course for any serious Signal user it isn't an alternative but for many of us we only use it for postcard level anyway.
They have the opportunity and a need for profit from a smaller advertising base.
I'd bet on it actually: in a few years we'll get a big fuss when Telegram reveals their new targeted advertising functionality...
For now Durov has kept his word for 7 years which is a whole lot longer than most. He was also clear from the start that he would, if necessary, find a non intrusive way to fund it and I feel he might be onto it.
WhatsApp was great too right up till Facebook bought it.
Anyone who buys Telegram is buying those servers and any messages you have stored on them.
If I was alright with Telegram's non-E2EE conversations, I would prefer WhatsApp for its wider adoption among my contact base.
Telegram's native Mac app (https://macos.telegram.org/) supports E2E-encrypted secret chats. Their cross platform Qt-based app (https://desktop.telegram.org/) does not support this feature.
Notably, the experience in a Telegram secret chat behaves differently then regular chats. A secret chat is tied to one device; you can't start a secret chat on your phone and pick it up on your tablet/desktop. There's also no server-side message history. Regular (non-secret) chats don't have these limitations.
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.
> when avoiding Telegram's non-private conversations
It's so bizarre indeed that it actually looks suspicious.
Just because most Americans or even most people in the world think the vileness of R-rated stuff is inevitable and harmless doesn’t make them right. It absolutely warps your view of humanity and imho many ppl today suffer from PTSD and don’t even realize it, just thinking their altered brain chemistry is a normal part of life. The trauma that a constant diet of porn and violence does to your brain is significant and damaging, whether consumed in a pub in 1700s Germany or a random website today.
There will be ads in channels that opt in (but those already have sponsored posts in some form already often, only manually inserted.)
So, some will say: how long before they change their terms again and the ui is plastered with ads?
We'll see. So far Durov has kept his words to a degree that few others have.
Edit: I also think Telegram has dropped the cryptocurrency-idea now.
There are no secret chats though.
Telegram’s desktop client for Mac is great—it’s fast, it has feature parity with mobile clients, and it works. Messages get delivered and stay in sync, and I don’t need to somehow link my phone to my main machine via QR code to act as a gateway.
And if they introduced ads, with an option to pay a subscription to remove them? Here’s my…well, it’s Telegram, so here’s my cryptocurrency, I guess…but here’s my money.