Search on Telegram is more powerful than in other messaging apps because it allows users to find public channels and bots. Unfortunately, this feature has been abused by people who violated our Terms of Service to sell illegal goods.
To further deter criminals from abusing Telegram Search, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, ensuring they are consistent across the world. We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.
For private messaging? Signal was always better. The way I use Telegram, and the way Telegram should be used, is like another public social media. I use it for following channels that give news about things I’m interested in.
I love the premise of Signal, but there are too many red flags. Some of my issues are:
That’s fair. I just use it because it’s what everyone’s on. When I used Briar only one other person I spoke to used it, and I just use Matrix for some more techy communities I’m in. For my friends and non-tech-savvy comrades, they’re all on Signal, and I imagine trying to move people to something more decentralised/more in the spirit of foss/etc would lead to my social circles becoming very split in terms of how I talk to them. But I get your point.
Why not Signal?
All completely irrelevant to most people. Nobody they know is on those platforms.
There are only two alternatives to the Big Tech messengers that are anywhere near critical mass: Signal and the shady one we’re talking about here.
Though I would love Matrix to go mainstream.
This is sadly the exact reason it will stay like this. People can’t reach me because i don’t use WhatsApp? Well bad luck. Use a better app or just don’t. I can’t reach them because they only use WA? What a bummer but so be it.
As long as people install WhatsCrapp because some distant aunt still uses it for the xmas-greetings, it will continue to be #1.
Doesn’t it get lonely though?
I remember the times where we didn’t have a tiny computer with us all day to be reachable. And if I’d be lonely because i don’t give a rats ass about WA, fb and the likes, that’d be indeed lonely but not due to that
I was talking about your attitude. Lol.
And what is it with my attitude? To have a strong opinion?
Ironically though Matrix has a Problem with metadata leaking out while signal doesn’t
Possibly unsolvable given its distributed nature. Seems like there will be at least some small cost to pay for that benefit.
I feel like there needs to be an incentive in mind for those apps to bring in ppl. People care about privacy but won’t even delete FB, let alone use a different messaging app
If they cared about privacy then they wouldn’t use a searchable public database like FB.
I think there’s misconceptions, trust being put in the wrong place, unawareness involved, or simply they don’t think it through, rather than not caring (anectodal/IMO). E.g. “I don’t have anything to hide, so what if they collect everything”.
If we could build a tool to gather such info, that’s easily accessible and for free, to show all the data available on you in the marketplace - that might make them uncomfortable. And then perhaps they’ll start to try and understand why they’re uncomfortable, and why this is bad.
Nobody is on Signal either.
I actually had notifications of many non-technical friends getting onto signal. It gained significant traction I think?
Compared to Telegram’s 1-billion user base, it’s still a roundoff error.
matrix is great but sadly not all my friends use it and i still use discord :(