I would sincerely rather pay for Telegram or let them launch unobtrusive ads in channels than have Telegram go the way of WhatsApp and be owned by a large tech company. Telegram is the only messaging app I use that routinely gets tangible and useful feature updates and consistently works fast across all devices. Of course it costs money to maintain, and I’m happy to help keep it going.

I concur with you

If they actually go through with this, most likely I’ll just switch to only using Signal rather than both. Most of my friends use both anyway and the remainder won’t be too hard to convince, and I think we’re not unique in that we already share other apps apart from Telegram (like Discord for example).

This will be the worst decision they’ve made in the history of the product.

You may know, but to be clear: ads will only appear on large public groups, and will be “targeted” based on the groups’s topic. This is the most privacy-respecting way to introduce ads, without taking away (imo) anything from the great platform.

Private chats are not (and promised to be never) affected.

They’ve broken their “no ads ever” promise by implementing this change, so clearly their promises are useless.

That aside, this is terrible product strategy, because everything any normal user will hear is “Telegram has ads now”.

Personally I think they are vastly overestimating their position, but we’ll see. I’m not impressed and will probably stop using it.

Instagram is used by millions and literally every fourth post is an ad (I have counted).

Ok, but Telegram isn't Instagram. It's not even a social network, it's an IM. And while you can talk about lock-in effects with IM applications, I honestly think there's only one where it makes sense, and that's WhatsApp. In many parts of the world WhatsApp is completely synonymous with sending a message or making a call, so not having it cripples you. They enjoy market leadership on account of being the first player in a market that screamed for a solution way back when SMS and call pricing was horrible compared to data (and I guess in some places it still is). I strongly doubt Telegram enjoys any kind of similar effect, the percentage of users that can (and may) drop the app like a hat seems to me to be a lot higher.

Of course, I might be wrong, but the difference I'm trying to get across here is that unless every hair salon and restaurant you go to has Telegram stickers in the window (they don't), it's not comparable to Instagram, because switching to a new IM is for a lot of people like switching channels on a radio, the FOMO of losing all your friends is not as prevalent because people are already using multiple IMs and are much more open to trying new ones than they are trying new social networks, because IMs are "light". They don't want their IMs to be social networks, and the reason some of them are becoming social networks is pretty clear: it helps with user retention and lock-in. It's one of many reasons why Signal deserves praise, they don't bother with that.

It’s heavily country dependent, eg. where I live (Hungary) whatsapp is hardly known and messenger is the norm.

As fas as I know telegram is very popular in arab countries for example, so they do have real network effect there at least.

How do you think Signal could be funded in the long run? It is clear that optional donation doesn't work in actually getting to a non loss state, let alone being a company who could hire top engineers and invest in some innovation.

I don’t know what you’re implying and your question isn’t asked in good faith. What is your definition of “the long run”? Because apparently seven years is not what you consider long enough. It’s apparently also “clear” that optional donation doesn’t work, but you don’t feel any need to elaborate on why that is clear, or what examples you have that Signal is failing to hire competent engineers or to “innovate”, whatever that means.

You know Signal has raised 50 million dollars when it started, right? And people don't give millions without any expectation of return. Whatsapp had been ad free for longer, but that doesn't mean its plan is just to not earn any revenue.

> people don't give millions without any expectation of return

Perhaps you're not aware but Signal is developed by the Signal Technology Foundation, which is an American non-profit organization. So yes, people do "give millions without any expectation of return".

If the $50M USD you're referring to is the money donated by WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, it was definitely not given with the expectation of returns, as donations rarely are.

Elon Musk has also confirmed publically that he has donated to Signal:

https://bird.trom.tf/elonmusk/status/1348506592518438914 (mirror)

https://nitter.kavin.rocks/elonmusk/status/13485065925184389... (mirror)

Is there any major feature in telegram which Signal doesn't provide?

Tons, and tons. Telegram has a better user experience as well, both in the quality of the apps, and the way features work. Of course, in some cases, signal is a little hamstrung due to their aggressive security model.

Although, I think most of those telegram features are cute little addons and aren't really core to the purpose of the app (messaging).

Personally, I use signal for everything and have gotten my friends on it as well.

Telegram works EVERYWHERE esp with its web browser support. Signal for some reason tends to ignore Android tablets and ARM on ChromeOS & Windows.

Signal doesn't have the benefit of resources that telegram does. Also, they have to build their platform out "correctly" the first time, which makes life much harder.

It's a noble goal

> Signal doesn't have the benefit of resources that telegram does

which resources does tg have that signal don’t?

Telegram has investors and revenue streams that far surpass anything Signal has (even with Acton/Marlinspike's generous endowment).

This means they can hire more employees. In fact, telegram has more than 10 times the employees and 25 times the funding than signal has.

Pavel Durov is a dollar billionaire, so that’s something.

his money is not unlimited though

Telegram is burning at least $100m a year

That's a luxury that signal does not have.

Maybe instead of focusing on mobilecoin integration they should work on some of these important things. Their credibility already took a dent because of that

Cool stickers. I love the stickers in Telegram. Signal stickers are boring in comparison. I'm sure they can improve it but at the moment Telegram seems to have the best ones.

Now the feature is there for stickers, it is just that the implementation isn't as good.

Do you know you can download more packs / create your own?

https://signalstickers.com/

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360031836512-St...

I did not. I just checked them and I was underwhelmed to be honest. But I'm sure they can get better over time, but at the moment the quality of them isn't up to the level of Telegram's stickers in my opinion.

Copy pasting stuff from TG doesn't bode well for Signal.

Signal merely replicated TG features - Secret chats and made it mainstream. It uses AWS for cloud hosting, and I don't trust AWS as an intermediary for routing chats. There are red flags all over!! There's nothing new in Signal, AT all!

Remind me, when did Telegram add secret chats?

Signals secret chat implementation is very far "merely replicated TG features".

A desktop client. Signal only has remote control for the app, i.e. you can't use it without a phone (or emulator).

That's not true. On Mac, Signal does have a client. I believe it's made in Electron but it works fine for me. Not sure about Windows though.

Signal desktop client is not just remote control for the app (Whatsapp's web client works like that as far as I know).