[pathless]

Telegram is genuinely the best general communication platform I have ever used, by far. I really hope he has a good lawyer and this doesn't end up getting essentially murdered for creating it. When you create something that is objectively great, everyone will use it - including bad actors.

[mpeg]

I use telegram for some group chats, but I'm not sure why tech-savvy people would like it so much – messages are not end-to-end encrypted which makes it an inferior choice compared to even whatsapp

[4bpp]

For one, it's the only major messenger that has an actually lightweight, well-written and full-featured desktop client rather than yet another boxed-up web browser. I might be more enthusiastic about using the alternatives if I could use the Telegram client.

[NayamAmarshe]

> which makes it an inferior choice compared to even whatsapp

I'd rather have a good privacy policy with a good enough server-side encryption than some closed-source implementation of E2EE, that we can never audit.

WhatsApp actually disallows you from reverse-engineering the app and looking into the algorithm. That begs the question, what percentage of E2EE is it really? 20%? 50%? 100%? Because there's still no way to confirm their claims of E2EE. All we have is a company with a really good track record in lying publicly, telling you that it's safe.

Looking at WhatsApp's privacy policy, I really wonder why people even support it compared to Telegram: https://privacyspy.org/product/whatsapp/

https://privacyspy.org/product/telegram/

[firesteelrain]

I prefer Signal and it provides encryption.

[whatsuphotdog]

Why are you assuming tech savy people care primarily about end-to-end encryption?

[usrnm]

Same reson people choose macbooks for work over running Linux, it's just a nicer product

[_trampeltier]

At least on the beginning, when I looked into it, it had a very simple and well documented API. I guess it was the only messenger you could send a message with one line of code (of course not e2e encrypted). So it's very simple to send you a message from your home project.

[guigar]

I think it is because Telegram is a communications platform, not just another chat app. For example, it has good APIs to build apps on top of it.

[golergka]

WhatsApp doesn't save my history. And secret services of governments of certain counties are not a realistic adversary that I'm trying to defend myself against. The usual scammers which are going to steal my identity are not the people Durov will sell admin access to his server to.

[whimsicalism]

because telegram just works really well tbh.

it is lightweight, pretty much never goes down, has reasonable features.

[forinti]

I prefer it because of the bot API.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Hot take: E2EE is overrated!

Almost all conversations that most people have are benign. I used telegram to follow journalists (essentially as a twitter replacement), how would E2EE benefit my use case?

[bangaroo]

i gotta agree, i basically live out of telegram.

even with the recent trend towards adding incremental bloat to the client, it’s managed to stay a simple, straightforward tool for communicating with minimal advertising and enough of the features that i need front and center.

[sailingparrot]

The fact bad actors are also using it is not the problem. His unwillingness to moderate content and cooperate with authorities is. Great UX doesn’t suddenly put you above the law.

[BoredPositron]

Video and Audio calls are hit and miss. The history and search are not reliable. The interface is not really suited for big group chats... I could go on and on.

[aldanor]

How big is a "big group chat" in your definition?

It's perfectly fine for a few thousand people

[whimsicalism]

i find history and search very reliable in my experience but agree about the calls compared to e.g. messenger

[loceng]

And tactics exist outside of control of communications, to capture these bad actors, to infiltrate their ranks; why are these alternatives to fighting the production of child exploitation and abuse content not brought up in conversation ever?

[mihaaly]

The masses do not care much if ones do not do agains bad actors what are in their power just their pretty platform shall keep running, they will keep this one alive too and argue for it to the death, don't worry, the masses could argue for any malicious thing that they find pretty or nice or like for some reason. Can organize some protest or even riot too in a - unencrypted by nature - group channel, there will be scores to participate, as recent example show in other precious matters, maybe can loot some good scores too on the side of the big party about a dear matter for the heart! Paris deserve the revenge! : /

[EasyMark]

Good lawyers won’t make much difference for him as the French government is tired of not being able to look at all our conversations. They want to start scaring people into compliance and verifying all their actions with the government or at least scaring the companies providing a (semi) private experience. This is mostly like just phase 1 of getting the keys that open up telegram servers to 5 eyes by getting Durov under their thumbscrews.

[aquova]

I actually despise it. I'm not sure if this has changed, but after being forced to make an account under my phone number, it proceeded to send a message that I had joined to everyone who had my number in their contacts and was foolish enough to share them with Telegram. This included a rather vile woman whose number I apparently inherited from a deceased relative some years before. She didn't understand this and accused me of stealing his identity. While it was simple enough for me to brush it off, I couldn't believe they would allow and even encourage such a thing, so I almost immediately deleted my account and instead tried out one that wasn't so eager to lap up my personal details.

[darthrupert]

Signal is much better, even if the UX is not quite as good as telegram's.

[jacooper]

It's also the least private one (compared to whatsapp and signal.)

[majani]

They were great until they put fast downloads behind a paywall. It's like they're going out of their way to throttle download speeds nowadays

[Mistletoe]

You like it better than Signal? The only thing I know Telegram for is several of my girlfriend’s relatives being exposed to crazy scams and right-wing conspiracy theories and misinformation on it.

[rpgbr]

Signal has better governance, plus e2ee mandatory, while on Telegram is optional and rarely used. Telegram also has a “social media” aspect with huge groups and channels, which attracts many people, but is a depart from the whole secure chat messaging it’s still known for.

IMHO, Signal is way better.

[whimsicalism]

frankly signal is a lot buggier than telegram and people like having their chat history.

[14]

This is exactly my experience as well. I have never actually used telegram as I was early a signal user and never needed it but my ex used it. All she ever used it for was conspiracy garbage she would follow. Anti covid vaccine doctors and groups mainly. The amount of misinformation she tried to show me and every time I would show her how it was fake she still would not believe me. Then she was even scammed out of $10k from telegram when she fell for a romance crypto scam. The conspiracy stuff is a main reason we broke up it was every single one from flat earth to fake moon landing to all the covid world economic forum world take over and on and on. Most of these came from telegram.

[lfmunoz4]

I don't understand why anyone uses Telegram if it there is no proof that it is secure. Their code isn't open source?

[mmis1000]

There is no random hassle that get your account/group/channel deleted(unless you are doing real CP, which is a giant red line of telegram) or random limit for size of the group. And easy to use. That's it.

Also the apis are almost completely free, so you can do lots of creative projects for fun.

[HDThoreaun]

Most people dont give a shit about security. Telegram is easier to use than signal and has more features because auto encryption makes stuff like public chats difficult.