4mo ago

All of Telegram's Lies About Privacy

donald.cat

56 comments

Nothing new here. E2E is only available in one on one chats and is disabled by default. Dont use Telegram if privacy is your main concern.
At least it has an open-source client. Very few messaging platforms can say that, and fewer have a decent UX.
It's not perfect, but it's got a good combination of features and multi-platform availability. None of the other messaging apps support all of my devices except Matrix, and ~~Matrix doesn't have stickers~~
Edit: Signal doesn't support all my devices but maybe someday! The network effect is also big. None of my family and friends are on Signal, but most have Telegram. A few have Matrix.
Also Signal is a US-based company.
Edit 2: Matrix does have stickers, i guess I'm switching
- Signal
  
  Yeah, the glaring problem of having to share your phone number is gone too:
  https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/6712070553754-Phone-Number-Privacy-and-Usernames
  
  They still don’t have backups on iOS which is a deal-breaker for me.
  
  I couldnt find a working Ubuntu touch app last i tried to use it
  
  After Signal's lie about dropping SMS support because of "engineering costs", I really can't believe anything else they say.
  Plus the app experience sucks, it's no better than SMS.
- A platform that values my privacy? Or stickers? Tough choice, I guess, except Signal has both.
  
  Doesn't have unlimited storage though. It's really nice being able to jump to any of the 15,000+ images shared with a single person dating back to like 2015 within a couple seconds. I know that's a privacy concern but nothing comes close to telegram's searchability and the unlimited storage.
  
  It's a messaging app, it's useless if there is nobody to message. I dont have any friends using signal yet.
  Also it doesnt work on my phone (Ubuntu touch). There used to be a community app but it's not currently working.
  I sincerely wish them success, but it's hard to have faith that a US-based company will actually protect your privacy. Not that Telegram does either. I dont know what information they do even collect.
- Matrix does have stickers
- Can you elaborate on your last sentence? Is the US more or less trustworthy than alternatives?
  
  Less than some. The US gov has a history of forcing US-based corporations to disclose private data regardless of their policies or the law.
  I can't give you a good alternative though. I'm sure the same thing happens in many countries
- I am enjoying SimpleX chat
  
  I tried it, and it looks decent, but there wasn't a single person I know around.
- Problem I have with matrix is that, afaik, does not currently support temporal or self destructing messages. Which is a big no-no for privacy conscious usage.
- Stickers are pointless if I have no one to send them to. So I stay in telegram.
- E2E is only available in one on one chats and is disabled by default.
  Considering that there's no technical problem with enabling it for all one-on-one chats, this tells a lot.
  Also no E2EE on desktops.
  I hate TG's UX. It's atrocious. WhatsApp is the closest to something normal, but imperfect too.
  At least it has an open-source client.
  Chromium is an open-source browser.
  OK, more specifically - what matters is that TG's protocol is a big ugly target moving fast. So its official client with released sources is in practice the only one. There are things like libpurple plugin and some python TUI client and an emacs one, but they are all lagging behind. And I think they are all using official tdlib.
  This tells something too, that their talk about possibility of alternative clients is of the same kind as their talk about privacy.
  About the network effect - bring your family and friends to Signal one by one. Of course it won't happen overnight.

Signal didn't work for some back in 2021/2020 and wasn't supported on old devices, now I'm stuck with Telegram.
At least I'm not part of FB's social graph and have some friends that now use something other than WhatsApp
- Who didn't it work for? I switched to Signal in about 2016 or so, and haven't had a problem with it. Admittedly I'm a software developer, and typically use high-end devices, so my knowledge is severely lacking.
  
  I used it on lower-end devices around that time, but not bottom-of-the-barrel (Motorola smartphones). I had a Moto x4 then Moto G Power, and Signal worked fine on them. When Signal stopped working for SMS, I stopped using it, but I think I got my SO on board, so I'm back to using it for messaging.

I wish people at least pretended to care about Catalan language and culture when they bought a .cat domain.
- ~~.cat is owned by an American company named Doughnuts. I like how Catalonia is using it but it's not a two letter country TLD~~
  
  It was sponsored by a foundation for this very specific purpose, and when you get a domain you agree to use it for content in Catalan or about Catalan culture and language but a lot of people just don't comply. It's not a 2-letter TLD because Spain won't let Catalonia have a country code.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat

Enshitification in action. During 2024, Telegram declared war on rooted Android alongside WhatsApp and Viber. This means you can't log in to your account if you have root access or if you don't have Google services.

56 comments