this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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WhatsApp head confirms ads in the messaging app are still in the works (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by fer0n@lemm.ee to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] Nath@aussie.zone 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For as long as Telegram has existed (a little over 10 years now), there has been a concerted effort to discredit it. Because of a game I played 10 years ago, I was on Telegram from its first month. A quick walk through that history:

  1. The guy who started Telegram was born in Russia, but he hasn't lived there in almost a decade.
  2. He made his initial fortune making Russia's Facebook. The Russian Government wanted backdoors into VK, and details on users. He refused to comply and was basically pushed out.
  3. He went to UAE, where he has lived ever since. It is here that he focussed on Telegram.
  4. Again, he refused to hand user details to the Russian Government, and the disinformation campaign began. The Russian Government has tried to block Telegram but has not been successful.
  5. There have been several posts over the years criticising Telegram, saying that it isn't Open Source and that its encryption algorithm is prone to vulnerabilities, yet nobody has ever succeeded in breaking its encryption.
  6. Telegram is now more popular than Facebook Messenger.

As to the criticisms around End-to-End encryption:

  • Chats don't have E2E by default, but you can turn it on.
  • Telegram is the most feature rich messenger app - bar none. It is very easy to use, and I have a family chat going with over 1,000 photos in it and no hint of it costing money.
  • Telegram still tells governments to pound sand. They step in on the really bad stuff, but for channels that are bad/spammers, but for the most part, they leave the users be.

I'd be quick to leave if Telegram gave me reason to, but it doesn't. Its status as not-quite a big player keeps them innovating, and its founder's attitudes leave me tentatively trusting that he's going to do the right thing.

[–] fer0n@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I’ll take back the the "Russian" comment, then. I already mentioned the larger feature set of telegram and it’s totally fine to switch because of that.

I’m also aware of the optionally encrypted chats, but them not being the default, as well as being more cumbersome to use and without a notification preview means that basically no one uses it (at least in my experience).

As I understand it the feature set wasn’t the reason for switching so I’m curious in what areas telegram might be considered the better choice compared to Signal/Matrix or even WhatsApp. As I see it it’s missing e2e encryption and isn’t as wide spread as WhatsApp.

Telegram has also some big issues with misinformation and conspiracy stuff due to its "hidden communities" and social media aspect with broadcasting and gigantic groups. I personally know people that have been sucked into this and it makes me quite sad.

So I’d be working hard to convince people to switch (which I’ve actually done already with telegram when it first came out) with no real upside and mostly downsides.

[–] flora_explora@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

I use all three apps, WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal, because others use them. And yes, none of my chats on telegram is encrypted because I'm mostly only in groups anyways.

What I've discovered is that especially groups show a certain inertness. For example, I observed that people from a certain context in one city all use signal but people from the same context in a neighboring city all use telegram. So all my groups from city A are in one messenger and groups from city B are in the other. This is weird, right? And these are really the same circles of people and I share many contacts between all groups. But I think it is just important what they started using and now they create more and more subsequent groups in the same messenger. None of them gives a reason to really switch to the other, so they don't.

Oh, and WhatsApp is only for the few people in my life that are quite unpolitical and uninformed, i.e. 'ordinary people'. Like people I meet at a language course or something work related etc.

[–] fushuan@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Well, when telegram alucnhed whatsapp did not have e2e encryption so it was more secure than WhatsApp. Then whatsapp implemented it while telegram pushed tons of new features. It's been some time.

[–] dan@upvote.au 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Chats don't have E2E by default, but you can turn it on.

This is only for 1:1 chats. Telegram doesn't offer E2EE for group chats at all.

Telegram is now more popular than Facebook Messenger.

Do you have data to back that up? From what I can see, Telegram has 700 million monthly active users (from https://telegram.org/faq) whereas Messenger easily has over a billion. It hit 1.3 billion in 2017 (https://www.adweek.com/performance-marketing/1-3-billion-facebook-messenger/) and the number of Facebook users has been going up since then. As far as I know, they don't break out Messenger vs Facebook users in their data, but the number of Facebook users is shown in the slides for the earnings reports: https://investor.fb.com/investor-events/