Blocking a large messaging platform because a minority of people are using it for piracy, of all things, seems extremely disproportionate
And it is pointless too as there are countless other messaging apps that can be used and countless others ways that can be created to circumvent. Law makers clearly do not get tech.
I mean Telegram has been blocked in Russia before and it didn’t stop their operations for too long. At best now some engineer at telegram has one more ticket and things will be back to normal.
and it didn’t stop their operations for too long
You had to change proxies regularly, so it did. With some ISPs, at least.
I think it wasn’t for really blocking it, just to test whether they can block it if they need it, during some big events.
Good luck ban it, Telegram runs everywhere without playstore and with proxy.
Honestly, Telegram sucks. Use Signal for private communications and Matrix for groups/communities.
Telegram is great for nothing related to privacy.
It’s not great if security is your main goal for organizing, but it has a better user experience than most chat apps. Especially if cross platform chatting is important to you.
I don’t understand why people like it so much, I tried it and found the experience pretty bad. Signal is a million times better and easier to use, and Matrix isn’t that hard to figure out either.
Telegram is miles better in user experience than Signal.
Hell no
I’ll accept your opinion, regardless of how bad it is.
Matrix is good for personal communications too The us companies made you to use phone numbers for chatting Id’s are convenient
I mean, sure, you can use Matrix for personal chats. It’s perfectly secure, but it’s not as easy to use as Signal. For example, if I told my grandma to install Element and send me her Matrix ID, she would be really confused. Signal is very easy to use, and the user experience is basically the same as on mainstream platforms like WhatsApp. I also don’t think that the phone number requirement is a US thing, as Telegram also has it. Signal only requires phone numbers to prevent spam, but they recently introduced usernames, so you don’t have to give people your phone number in order for them to message you.
It’s the best app when it comes to functionality. It has it all.
Can you name a feature that other apps are missing?
- You can schedule messages
- Have supergroups, subgroups, broadcasts, admin roles in groups,…
- Channels can be configured in various ways. For example, you can post messages and choose the type of previews links render.
- You can add voting options to posts
- Members of the channel can only reply in threads so the replies are bundled.
- You can decide wheter new group members can view chat history or not.
- Members can be muted.
- Bots can be built withing the app
- Chats can be arranged in folders *…
I could go on.
Also Telegram Mini Apps.
Ok, I see. Telegram tries to combine Discord, WhatsApp and WeChat, but it isn’t a great replacement for either of them.
Discord has groups, chanels, threaded conversations, allows you to mute people, great support for bots, folders, etc. Signal is much better for private chats though, it has a very secure encryption protocol and enables E2EE by default and is very focused on privacy in general. Btw Signal also allows scheduling messages. I tried Telegram for both groups/chanels and private chats and I found it really annoying to have my groups and channels in the same app as my normal conversations. Just use Signal and Discord/Matrix/Revolt.
I get it. That’s why I use Plus messenger. It’s a better, more customisable UI. Private chats, groups and channels are on a different page, if you want it.
Unfortunately I use Discord, WhatsApp, Signal, Element (Matrix) and SimpleX all combined because my contacts are spread out. Looking forward to secure interoperability.
Plus Messenger looks proprietary. You might be interested in Beeper once it’s released, it let’s you use all your messaging platforms in one app. And it’s supposed to be secure and open-source.
I’m on the waiting list. I hope they get e2ee sorted out.
Why Signal is a bad idea
This is BS, half of it is pure speculation, the other half consists of conspiracy theories.
Spain? Really? I thought they had a pretty left government?
It’s a monarchy
They do, but this is coming from a right-dominated tribunal known to be extremely conservative and reactionary in nature.
What is the relationship between the government ideology and the court system? Both are independent from each other.
Lol.
You know Telegram is secure when every government in the world is trying to ban it.
The CEO is a Russian, the company is based out of Dubai, and messages aren’t encrypted by default. In fact, only private messages can be encrypted, group messages cannot. Telegram is not a trustworthy platform and a champion for user privacy like most people think, Signal is what you’re looking for.
All of that is more reliable then an entity based in the US.
Just use Signal if you want an easy, relatively privacy friendly and secure messenger.
Telegram hands over data to goverments, is infested with spammers and scammers and its encryption is not end to end for group chat which lets Telegram access those chats.
Edit: Telegram is great for lots of things like big groups, communities, piracy, drugs etc but its just not the place where you should expect secure communication.
I’m not using Signal as long as Signal Foundation is based in the US. Also Signal is not on FDroid, so I can’t use it anyway.
This might not be relevant because you have other reasons not to use Signal, but you can get android signal directly from their website and via aurora store (on fdroid)
It’s more the attitude that bothers me. Signal’s refusal to support alternative appstores and clients is very disturbing. It gives the impression that Signal is a honeypot.
The official version of Telegram isn’t available on F-Droid either, and it doesn’t use end-to-end encryption by default, so it’s much more likely that it is a honeypot
That is not the official Telegram app. It is a fork called “Telegram-FOSS”. If you go to the F-Droid page and click on ‘Source code’, you will see that it links to this repo: https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS
This is the description of that GitHub repository:
Unofficial, FOSS-friendly fork of the original Telegram client for Android
I installed Signal via Obtanium. Just use this URL when searching/adding the app
Why would you need to use obtanium to get the Signal apk file from that link?
You can just download the apk from that website and install it. The app can update itself.
The app doesn’t auto update for me.
Huh, that’s strange. On my 3 Android devices, I downloaded the APK from the website, and it always auto-updates.
It existed ever since they added the APK to their website as a compromise for people who don’t want to get Signal from the Play Store.
But Russian/UAE-based Telegram is fine? 😂
Also, it really doesn’t matter where Signal is based, as long as it’s client code is open source and it uses E2EE by default. Telegram doesn’t encrypt chats by default, and even if you enable ‘secret chats’ it uses a pretty weak encryption protocol.
Btw the official version of Telegram isn’t available on F-Droid either, only a fork called Telegram-FOSS. You can get the exact same thing for Signal from a 3rd-party repo: https://www.twinhelix.com/apps/signal-foss/, or use Molly.
WTF is this ignorant “I know what they want but I’m smarter” crap, if you don’t know how it works you know nothing, and “what they want” you get from news.
I know of a few governments not trying to really. Like the Russian one.
Read something about its internals before saying something as stupid.
XMPP with OMEMO is secure (not for targeted attacks, in that case you’ll just get a trojan on your Android device via some unclosed vulnerability and finita la comedia, or rubber hose cryptanalysis will be applied).
Does Telegram have anything that torrents and usenet don’t?
Lots and lots of sticker packs.
Actually, yes, there are a few groups with unique niche content that isn’t available anywhere else.
It indeed empowers common people by distributing full seasons of series all in one place in a somewhat user friendly way without “10 chicks in 10mt” popups.
A bunch of my friends, who don’t even know how to install an adblocker, have a very rich catalog of things there.
Also, it is more difficult for a telegram channel to be banned than a website.
