To me Telegram feels like the red corner district of a city. I simply don't feel like I can trust it, there's something very shady about it. I wouldn't be surprised if Telegram reads those exclusive Bitcoin whale groups and uses that insider info. Group chats are not end to end encrypted.

That being said, WhatsApp is like the authorized garage where you know that you'll get the service which is officially recognized (by the government) and will keep your car's value "at its best", but which screws you over in so many ways.

Everything else is somewhere in between these two platforms.

I'm amazed by the pace at which Telegram ships features, and with what finesse.

This is one of the best feature sets, and I waited for over two years; ever since WhatsApp had got it. I find that stance of the community strange here - no "e2ee". Privacy is important, but your chat history hardly reflects that. There are other ways to get your history or track your digital trails.

200,000 users for group chat. Unlimited users for voice chat (like clubhouse). 30 users for group video calling. That limit will be increased later. Flawless sync across platforms. Secret chats - the e2ee chats self-destruct between users and stay on the device where it has been initiated. Robust third party clients-that add more functionality to the official app. (I use Utyagram; Plus is another popular mod, but is closed source). Unlimited users for channels - that work as broadcast lists. The lists goes on and on.

Telegram has absolutely amazing UX on all platforms I've used it on, I hope they can roll out encryption for group chats soon and show somehow that we can trust that encryption.

Telegram is getting so many cool features that I really wonder how long can it sustain being ad-free and user-centric.

I’m back to WhatsApp after many months of full time Signal usage. People started leaving Signal one by one. Some of them really tried. Not many had joined anyway. For most remaining contacts Signal was and for more it remained installed just for me.

A medical emergency in the family and I was back on WhatsApp in a second.

Signal kept crashing, remained full of UI bugs (the kind I just couldn’t believe is there has been there for months and years; yeah the simple and silly ones), functionality bugs, slightly better than barely useable calling, delayed messages, broken notifications, extremely frustrating and broken encryption key update even when there was no such actual update — while the foundation kept giving us new emojis/stickers and worked on crypto. Nice gesture I reckon. And yeah, still a closed garden.

No opinion really. It’s just how it is. I use Apple’s phone and computer which is proprietary and closed garden by design, effort, and lobbying. Who am I kidding.

So no, I’m not going to say Telegram is shady. Maybe it is but so are others. Maybe not Signal (or is it?). It’s just that Telegram is far from being the personal messaging/communication app, at least around me. It’s an extension of other online communities like subreddits. Discord is eating into that share anyway. It’s used for apartment groups. COVID update channels (especially in India where very high up offices still have public Gmail IDs) and all that. Oh, they do have literally the best mobile and desktop apps among its peers. By many miles.

Telegram does not have group voice nor video calls. It has voice (and now video) chats.

// Unless I am not aware of any recent change, I tested this last month and don't see any related update ever since.

Which is not the same, and actually, for me is not useful at all. The main difference is that a "chat" does not ring the other participants' phones, which is a must for me to "call" my family either voice or video. You must first tell them through chat that you will create a voice or video room/chat. For 1-on-1 it does have calls, as it rings. For groups, it does not.

Is any of this end-to-end encrypted?

Telegrams devs are next level

Telegram is not E2EE. Avoid.

ICYMI https://t.me/RealVincentJames/8892

I like the psychedelic inspired animated backgrounds

Lots of oppressive governments and controlling entities are not happy about it.

Kudos to Telegram team!

I have long predicted that Telegram is the next facebook, but far better. Telegram is yet another centralized social network that is rolling out payments, video, etc.

It's not open source backend or customizable. But it's probably the most libertarian/freest one from the closed source solutions, that won't kick you off, and the software is very good.

We could consider integrating with them (for example, instead of connecting your mobile via sms, you could connect your telegram and then receive notifications there from some FTL bot).

PROBLEM

Still, of course, keep in mind it's a closed source and proprietary backend:

https://yalantis.com/blog/whats-wrong-telegram-open-api/

If you want an open source network to power "Web 2.0" communities, there aren't many good solutions. Diaspora, Matrix, Mastodon, Inrupt, etc. are just not on the same level as Telegram for regular users.

For Web 1.0 we have Wordpress, which powers 40% of all websites in the world now. But somehow for Web 2.0 there are no good alternatives, so all our public discourse is taking place on privately owned platforms, and now the US government has put out bills seeking to break up big tech. How about trying a more libertarian solution first: open source.

SOLUTION

We've been building something for the last 10 years, and giving it away as open source: https://github.com/Qbix

Here is a demo that we did for Yang's campaign two years ago, and kept it around as a demo, it has payments, video, etc. also but it uses open Web standards like WebRTC and WebPayments to do so, and it's completely open source: https://yang2020.app

PS

Web 3.0 is value transfer and programmable smart contracts, e.g. Ethereum web3 l9brary, etc. That happens to be radically open source (just like Web 1.0) because (for now) these blockhains and the code they run are all public, and you are encouraged to verify your smart contracts on EtherScan, etc.

What nobody talks about is how beautiful and unique their illustrations are in every release notes and blog posts.

It's refreshing to see original thoughts in illustration.

Am I missing something here? This just looks like Zoom or Teams or any of the other video calling apps that have been running the world for the past year. What's so special about it?