Telegram is just actually superior in terms of features I don’t get it.
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Riddle me this - Some people’s argument against using telegram is that it is not as secure as WhatsApp(which on face value is true because WhatsApp is E2E encrypted while telegram is not E2E encrypted). Other people claim that only hackers and terrorists use telegram and that is why they don’t use telegram. My question is why are people like hackers and terrorists using telegram in the first place if it has worse security while having no upsides for these kinds of individuals.
Telegram is not E2E encrypted per default, I think it offers the feature if you start secret chat ?
Thank you. Forget to type that out when I was writing the comment.
Why do not more people choose a matrix server and use a decentralized way of communication instead of committing themselves to this or that app/company?
Because most people they know use WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram.
If I were clever enough to host my own matrix server I would in a heartbeat. Bridges to WhatsApp, insta, fb, etc. are game changers.
I found a server in the list I posted that was hosted by people in my area and funded by donations. I got in touch with them and they even implemented some bridges with that server. Now I am using it with a WhatsApp bridge, feels pretty seamless.
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I’m not sure but I’m going to take a look. Thanks
Lol I’ve tried matrix before. It’s really bad. And it’s more of a IRC/discord alternative than instant messaging apps.
Not sure when you tried it or with which app but you can use it just like an instant messenger. It can do more like discord but this can easily very ignored.
I have heard that once it was a pain to use as a client but since I started using it half a year ago it felt pretty smooth.
If most people used Telegram, Meta would have bought it instead of WhatsApp.
People don’t care what’s better. Most people won’t try anything new if the existing stuff is not severely broken.
- Whatsapp is more popular.
- It has a lot of scammers. Especially crypto scammers.
- A little bit more difficult to use. There are so many features and it can kind lf get overwhelming.
- Messages are not end to end encrypted by default.
I have been using whatsapp for a long time. No onle has tried to scam me. Only received some spam or promotional materials.
Telegram is full of spammers. More than whatsapp. I
Number 1 is what my question is about
Whatsapp also has scammers
It’s just as easy as Whatsapp if you don’t want/need to look into more features.
The popularity of WhatsApp is /why/ WhatsApp is popular. That’s just kind of how it works with messaging apps. The only reason anyone has WhatsApp is because someone they wanted or needed to talk to was using WhatsApp.
the phrase you’re looking for is “positive network effects.” The large network is a killer feature.
Why does anyone choose Telegram or WhatsApp over Signal which is encrypted and audited? (Probably features I don’t care about, but they do)
Signal is based in the US. Better to use something that is not based in the.US.
As long as your messages are end-to-end encrypted, I don’t know why you would care about that. It’s proven that they do not collect any metadata that could harm your privacy and most of their stuff is open source. The signal protocol is a pretty solid protocol supporting E2EE. There are not even cloud backup options, so your messages can never be read from someone other than you and the receiver, unlike something like iMessage that has cloud backup option that backups your messages stored locally on your device probably in plain text to iCloud.
It takes just one FISA court order to compromise Signal.
I’ve been using Signal for a long time now, it was great until they ended SMS text support, then they started trying to turn Signal into a social media thing, I just want end to end encryption without having to worry about somebody like Zuckerberg having access to my texts.
I agree, and their reasoning to do it was insulting. The crypto bullshit and the stories bullshit along with the SMS decision was enough for me. I’ve uninstalled it, and haven’t missed it. It’s not a good app if you care about privacy anyway, there are better apps that don’t require a phone number to use them.
Was going to post this :3
I agree that signal is superior in terms of privacy but a lot of people don’t care about that. And most people using WhatsApp DEFINITELY don’t care about that.
Oh so we should only care about good and secure design when end users care about it!
Because you clearly can’t read the room that was sarcasm.
I never said you shouldn’t care though??
This undermines your whole original post.
WhatsApp uses the same encryption schema as signal.
Right?
does signal have multi device synchronization? on telegram you can start to write a message on one device and continue on another.
one of the feature i use most on telegram is saved messages to send stuff between phone and pc.
this is pretty much the only thing that is keeping me on telegram.
Telegram let’s you send 2gb files, and stores them forever. Signal has a 100mb limit.
It also used to be easier to set up on multiple devices at the same time, but I believe that Whatsapp and Signal have improved that by now too.
Why switch platforms if all your data is still being collected? This just provides another business with your data to sell and possibly have hacked. Sure, Telegram offers encryption, but it’s not enabled by default even though they advertise it thoroughly. This demonstrates they’re taking advantage of peoples desire for privacy simply to increase their user base while making the users + contacts do all the work.
As far as file sharing, with ProtonDrive I can use any messaging service and send a 500GB file if I wanted, fully encrypted with password protection and an expiration date. Telegram keeping the files forever doesn’t seem like a benefit either.
I’m not sure the file limitations are much of a factor when 100mb covers most files that would need to be sent through a messaging service. There are plenty of dedicated services for sharing larger files.
Piracy tho. I can go to my telegram, search a movie title and click play and it just works.
If the file size is under 2GB I guess, which is ehhh
4GB if the sender was premium, which they will be.
I don’t care if its 720p if it just works.
Tbh I’ll want it to be decent 1080p
It often is.
That’s the point tho, it negates the need for dedicated services for sharing larger files
Why not use an encrypted service to send files though?
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It’s encrypted, just not E2E encrypted
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A lot of the time the files i’m sending are game clips or parts of Youtube videos. i want good quality above privacy
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I mentioned it because it was an annoying limitation for me. 100mb is not a lot for media and zip files nowadays. And I don’t know any good free services that will work more conveniently than simply sending with Telegram, suggestions welcome.
https://toffeeshare.com/ is what I usually use for big files. But both sender and receiver need to be online for the whole transfer. It doesn’t store anything you send on their servers, but that’s a feature for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
people use the messaging app that their friends are on
doesn’t matter if it’s objectively terribleMost people don’t care that it’s owned by Meta. They just want to be on the platform everyone else is on.
What I’m asking is why is everyone on that platform already when they have better alternatives
Because whatsapp came first.
Yes, everyone I know outside the US uses it. If I understand correctly years ago in a lot of countries SMS was either very costly or unavailable, while WhatsApp was free.
Also, WhatsApp allowed people to send pictures and stuff. Effectively, it has replaced SMS, MMS, and MSN Messenger. There was a brief period where people would still communicate via Facebook chat on PC, but once smarphones became prevalent WhatsApp won the battle (except in the US, which is something I’ve never been able to understand)
Yeah I think I was paying €0.09 throughout a lot of the 2000s. I switched to WhatsApp in 2010 I think, when I got an iPhone.
Was WhatsApp ever on those late 2000s Nokia s Symbian phones?
people have explained a dozen reasons why a. telegram is not better and b. nobody cares which is better anyway.
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Messaging apps are tricky, you can’t just pick what’s the “best” because it’s primary function is to message people, so the best app is what can do that.
If nobody you want to message uses telegram, or signal, or matrix, than they aren’t very good messaging apps FOR YOU.
You have to start using the app, then start convincing everyone else to use it, and that’s quite a hurdle, when most people you know use the “good enough” Whatsapp, or even just SMS, or iMessage.
Telegram is owned by Russians and the server is proprietary closed-source. I prefer Signal.
Yeah, I’m with you. Plus no end to end encryption. Go ahead and let Russia see all your messages.
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Most people don’t care about privacy anyways so in this case I’d argue features are more important for the average user, which telegram has.
Well if that’s your angle, then the main reason for choosing WhatsApp over telegram is the first-mover advantage. WhatsApp came out years before telegram and is a very popular app in many markets.
I’d argue that not many people care about sending 2gb files either. In my experience, more people care about privacy when prompted than about sending 2gb files.
Fair enough
Session is another good alternative that doesn’t require a phone number
Telegram was banned in Russia.
Stop spreading misinformation troll.
Telegram’s official components are open source, with the exception of the server which is closed-sourced and proprietary.
Telegram was launched in 2013 by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov. Previously, the pair founded the Russian social network VK, which they left in 2014, saying it had been taken over by the government. Pavel Durov sold his remaining stake in VK and left Russia after resisting government pressure.
Telegram is registered as a company in the British Virgin Islands and as an LLC in Dubai. It does not disclose where it rents offices or which legal entities it uses to rent them, citing the need to “shelter the team from unnecessary influence” and protect users from governmental data requests. After Pavel Durov left Russia in 2014, he was said to be moving from country to country with a small group of computer programmers consisting of 15 core members. While a former employee of VK claimed that Telegram had employees in Saint Petersburg, Pavel Durov said that the Telegram team made Berlin, Germany, its headquarters in 2014, but failed to obtain German residence permits for everyone on the team and moved to other jurisdictions in early 2015. Since 2017, the company has been based in Dubai.
Smart, put your headquarters somewhere that takes freedom of speech seriously, just like…. wait, where did you say they were headquartered again?
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the guy who created it was born in russia… but pissed off russian authorities and i don’t think he can set foot in russia anymore without being arrested
Think the wiki needs to be updated. It said Telegram is used by the Kremlin.
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Signal is much better than Telegram in terms of privacy. Do people find Telegram more convenient?
I don’t consider privacy a primary reason for someone to choose one service over another because most don’t care. What I mean is that telegram has more features in general.
What do you say to all of the people who use Whatsapp instead of Telegram because its default privacy is better? Privacy is one of the main selling points of WhatsApp, even though Signal has better privacy.
I’d say that why not just use signal if you actually care about privacy lol…
WhatsApp is more convenient than Signal and more people are on WhatsApp
Telegram has no end-to-end encryption for normal messages
I think you mean Signal.
I mean telegram
Wooosh
Bring that back over to reddit.
Brotha it wasn’t a joke
It was a joke, but you appear not to have gotten it. Hence the wooosh sound.
Makes a post about messaging superiority by advocating for inferior app. Lol. Gotta read the room better buddy.
Why are you taking such a confrontational approach?
Original commenter and you give no information on what makes Signal better. Signal is outside of the topic scope anyway, but would be a fair extension of it. Instead you use an insulting tone and completely dismiss their approach.
And this shit gets more up than downvotes. Makes it clear this platform has group-think toxicity issues too, moreso than promoting fair and good-intention discussion.
It’s probably no more or less confrontational than OP’s question
The tone makes a huge difference.
OP tone is mainly confusion with an open question. They disclose their belief/understanding which they acknowledge either contradicts or puts into question the evident state of things they see.
I don’t see how that’s confrontational similar to the commenter dismissing their whole approach as a definite statement without points you could argue. It’s a closed dismissal and in an insulting tone.
What makes you think they are similar? Or to what degree?
I don’t know about you, but the tone of the original question come across very dismissively to me. OP isn’t asking what they missed, why WhatsApp might be as good as Telegram. They’ve flat out declared the winner and are asking why nobody else is agreeing with them.
I can see your point, and agree with it for the most part. But they’re still posting on Asklemmy implying it is a question or interest of reason. It also doesn’t dismiss a person directly/specifically, nor is the tone insulting.
Seriously?
Telegram is just actually superior in terms of features I don’t get it.
vs
… Lol. Gotta read the room better buddy.
We’re not even in the same ballpark in terms of tone.
In regards to Whatsapp. If I were talking about signal vs telegram then this comment would be relevant but I’m not am i
I mean, Telegram is the worst of the bunch, but putting that aside, the point is that people aren’t comparing telegram and whatsapp, they’re comparing telegram, whatsapp, signal, matrix, sms, imessage, facebook messenger, instagram messenger, session, wire, wechat, the crypto ones, kik, and a dozen other chat clients you’ve never heard of. And most people are not actually making those comparisons, most people just use the one their friends use, or the one that their phone came with. Nobody, anywhere, is pretending there are only two options and picking one of them.
Pretty much one of the last messaging platforms I’d try to use.
Currently using signal but have been intrigued by some of the no phone number alternatives like SimpleX
Nope! Telegram because you know what they say in cryptography circles: always roll your own! Oh wait…
