The worst part is, they’re partnering with Tencent.
Telegram is dead.
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
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)
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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.
Looks nice but https://github.com/nikitasius/Telegraher/issues/27
I fear that Telegram may ban user accounts…
Telegram is a suprisingly good app.
- Open source clients
- Decent Linux client on the laptop (whatsapp desktop is just terrible)
- It can be downloaded without Google’s appstore.
I wish other apps were half as good as Telegram.
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Owned by the Russians
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Partnered with the
CCPTencent
a yes, the ceo that isn’t on russia and is viewd as a criminal for being against the war?
If that’s the definition of trustworthy Prigozhin was a saint
Hasn’t the founder been a vocal critic of Russia for years, including the Ukraine war? I don’t really see why that would be a concern, especially since Telegram is supposedly owned by a US LLC
Russia has an army of “vocal critics” who play an important role in the pantomime, you see them on RT regularly. It doesn’t prove anything.
Better than being owned by Americans.
Why does it need to be owned by anyone? There are chat protocols that are public knownleage.
“the russians” is the new “the jews” but for liberals, right?
Nah more “the Nazis” vibes to it really.
Russians didn’t invade Iraq, Americans did.
America has invaded a lot of places and I’d not recommend people use services from there either if you value privacy.
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- More importantly, non-electron app.
Telegram has the best clients ever. But those clients need to connect to something and this is where we encounter a big problem.
But isn’t that the whole point of a messaging service? Connect to something else that’s not local and have your messages exchanged?
I think smileyhead is alluding to the fact that Telegram servers are not open source, just the clients are.
Not open source, centralized servers that store messages mostly without E2EE. By using Telegram we are locking ourself in situation where they can turn the knobs as they like, while we can’t do anything about it.
Why would it matter if the servers are open source? How would you ever verify they are running the exact build they claim they are?
For whatsapp nothing is opensource
That’s kind of an apples an oranges comparison, WhatsApp doesn’t even try to present a facade of being open source. Telegram does, betting that the distinction between server and client code will go over most peoples heads, which it probably does to be honest.
Well, thats also easy since telegram clients dont do much more than displaying messages stored on a server. Its more a viewer than a full client.
And that compromises hard on privacy and security, which Signal and Whatsapp dont do, they have proper Clients that have to really handle and store incoming messages. And the E2EE makes it harder, developing an independent desktop client, like Signal always had and Whatsapp recently got. But both are mediocre at best, sure.
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.
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.
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.
How do I do this?
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.
Please use decentralized chat apps and not Telegram
Why there is always the guy that tell others what to do? People should use what’s best for them, be it IM apps, browser, OS, whatever.
These people also don’t live in the real world. “Hey buddy, I know all your friends are using this chat service, but just stop using it and move to this barebones, extensively complex to setup service and everyone will follow suit, trust me”
Guessing Signal doesn’t count?
Session is the only one that comes to mind but they did such an overkill when it comes to privacy and security application is downright unusable.
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!
Telegram is rarely used in my country anyway.
