The worst part is, they're partnering with Tencent.
Telegram is dead.
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Telegram_in_Russia
"On 18 June 2020 Roskomnadzor lifted its ban on Telegram after it 'agrees to help with extremism investigations'."
That should be enough information. I'm on Signal, waiting for Matrix to perhaps stop sucking before I die of old age.
Am also gonna stick with signal, eyeing up matrix. But what issues? The only reason i haven't tested it out yet is none of my friends seem too keen on trying it.
For a lack of a better term: jank. Too much jank. For one instance, I have never seen in Whatsapp or Signal the phrase "unable to decrypt message". I can deal with that personally, but >90% of the people I need to communicate to with messengers will drop a service and never look back if they see that.
I use it with many friends and it is super buggy. Calls work only ok on browser version of Element, bugs in encryption are common where you cannot read a message, Synapse server is bloating the database and not clean after itself, etc.
It's getting better month by month, but still can't recommend for your friends that are not technical people into open source. Better wait to not discourage them now.
This week, TON Foundation announced that it’s forged a partnership with Tencent Cloud, which has “already successfully supported TON validators and plans to expand its services further to help meet TON’s high compute intensity and network bandwidth needs.” Validators, in web3 lingo, are participants that help authenticate transactions in a blockchain network.
It looks like the partnership with Tencent only extends to their Web3 blockchain thing, and there doesn't seem to be any partnership in the main app so it's not the end of the world - at least, for now.
Also, what even is this TON blockchain? I never knew Telegram had anything to do with crypto :/
Yeah, nah. Anything the CCP can slip it’s slimy festering little dick into, it will.
There’s no way in hell that Telegram is secure.
I guess, but I don't see how much they can really influence Telegram without any stake in the app itself. They only seem to have a deal for cloud-hosting with the TON Foundation, a non-critical part of the app, and even that appears to be non-exclusive. So if Tencent tries to force a bad decision onto Telegram, what's stopping them from severing ties and moving everything over to another provider?
Of course, we don't know what the situation will be like in the future, but at this present moment, I don't think Telegram's security has been breached by this. (Also I think you triple-posted this comment)
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Telegram is partnering with tencent??
They are renting server space off a big company, not much different than AWS or Azure.
Except that it is
You are just used to aws. They are a shit company too.
Tencent is a CCP front. No way they are just letting Telegram operate on their hardware without snooping some. No guarantees about data security when you're operating on someone else's switches.
Yeah, sure. Totally different from having backdoors to the NSA or collecting massive amounts of personal data for targeted ads.
EDIT: You can't trust ANY company if your concern is privacy; your data is just too profitable (for them) to sit there untouched.
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The entire point of E2EE is that it doesn't matter who the host is.
@photonic_sorcerer What do you suggest as an alternative?
We have chat standard called XMPP created by literially the same org that makes standards for Internet and Email.
And there are other public protocols to choose from.
Unfortunately XMPP died roughly when the mobile devices became a mainstay. The way Google de facto took over the protocol didn't help either, but even without it XMPP isn't fit for the mobile-first world. The client needs to maintain an active connection at all times and there is nothing akin to push messaging, causing quite a significant battery drain. I might be unaware of some progress in this regard but this is how I remember it.
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Signal
Signal for private conversations and for larger groups Matrix. Matrix can also be bridged to telegram effortlessly.
The shitty forced "stories" did me question seriously this once wonderful app. If I'd want to look at crappy TikTok-like shorts from other people, I'd be on TikTok.
I had the same worry when it happened to signal
Signal has stories as well?
Inexplicably, yes. It does
Yes, but the can be disabled, which I do automatically.
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Once I saw the stories I was like ok wtf. How do I turn this off?
Maybe revanced manager can do it.
I'm using Nekogram, that at least allows to automatically hide (archive) them.
Forkgram
https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/org.forkgram.messenger/
Seems to be doing the trick for me but the icon sucks and I had to rename it in the android UI cause it uses its package name for its display name lol. How's nekogram compare?
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Telegram has open source their client code. Not their server code. It's even on f Droid.
But it's starting to get worse. Now they won't send you an SMS code for registration unless you are using official build of the app. Even chat app under libre licence must connect with something...
This actually is not a bad thing. If an unofficial client MITM the whole registration process, it's much harder for the true account owner to prove that he/she is the legit one.
Also, it doesn't really require a client to register; Telegram can be accessed from a browser.
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I might be misunderstanding you, but I believe telegram requires SMS verification for all accounts, regardless of client.
What I mean is that they always require SMS code, but if you use app from F-Droid they won't send you this code.
it costs them too much to send code as sms, also some client abuse that in some way, it also may help them to increase the download count of their official app which is not bad imo.
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Thank you. Installed fork client and now that stupid story crap is gone and there's new stuff I can do to fine tune things.
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I was under impression that Google Play and Apple App Store don't allow apps that can do practically everything (super apps). Is it really allowed? If a completely new company submit a chat app that somehow includes taxy hailing, food delivery, nfc/qr wallet and micro-loan features all at once instead of adding those features gradually in future updates, would Apple and Google accept the app?
WeChat and other composite apps are already on the stores, so I don’t see why others also wouldn’t be allowed.
And Grab.
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Everyone complaining about both telegram and signal here should, idk, just start dead dropping handwritten notes to people inside of dead rats, like the true privacy experts.
Privacy is important, yes. But if all of my friends use telegram, I'm going to use it too. Not only that, I'm going to be happy about it, because the telegram app is 1000x better than pretty much any other messaging app.
braces for angry downvotes
You don't understand, when it's only you in that platform, it's the ultimate privacy.
Receive my angry upvote.
It does have a ton of functions tbh. I use it to access bots and keep notes. Even repositories for apps - Revanced Extended uses it for e.g. !
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Telegram, the popular messenger with 800 million monthly active users worldwide, is inching closer to adopting an ecosystem strategy that is reminiscent of WeChat’s super app approach.
To build out this super app platform, Telegram relies on a network of infrastructure partners both from the established tech world and the crypto space.
WeChat has pioneered the mini app model in China and now powers millions of them serving functions from payments, food delivery, e-commerce, ride-hailing, to driver’s license renewal, just to name a few.
The developers would also need to learn the programming languages of blockchain apps, which might actually be an easier barrier to overcome than the process of understanding the economic incentives that facilitate decentralized applications.
Importantly, payment functionality played a critical role in WeChat’s early rise as it instilled a habit among users to make daily transactions through the chat app.
It will be fascinating to witness what lessons Telegram and TON take from WeChat and how a mini app platform with a decentralized twist unfolds.
The original article contains 678 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Uninstalled and moved to signal. But no one I know is on signal 🤡
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