“Telegram is not a private messenger. There’s nothing private about it. It’s the opposite. It’s a cloud messenger where every message you’ve ever sent or received is in plain text in a database that Telegram the organization controls and has access to it”

“It’s like a Russian oligarch starting an unencrypted version of WhatsApp, a pixel for pixel clone of WhatsApp. That should be kind of a difficult brand to operate. Somehow, they’ve done a really amazing job of convincing the whole world that this is an encrypted messaging app and that the founder is some kind of Russian dissident, even though he goes there once a month, the whole team lives in Russia, and their families are there.”

" What happened in France is they just chose not to respond to the subpoena. So that’s in violation of the law. And, he gets arrested in France, right? And everyone’s like, oh, France. But I think the key point is they have the data, like they can respond to the subpoenas where as Signal, for instance, doesn’t have access to the data and couldn’t respond to that same request.  To me it’s very obvious that Russia would’ve had a much less polite version of that conversation with Pavel Durov and the telegram team before this moment"

  • Kailn@lemmy.myserv.one
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    58 minutes ago

    As much as I’d like to favor foss and federated messenger apps, telegram isn’t as much garbage as whatsapp:

    1.The client is somewhat open source and have forks like Forkgram, Materialgram and unoffical clients like Telegrand.
    2. Telegram isn’t E2EE by default but at least it doesn’t lie about it and have E2EE secret chat when nessesary, that means crucial chats stay on your device and the rest stay on their database recoverable and syncable across devices.
    (Yes, whatsapp supposedly is E2EE but we can’t know for sure, it’s closed-source.)
    3. You can use telegram as a cloud service with only 2GB per file limit, unlike whatsapp.
    (There’s even a third-party app that utilise this as a cloud gallery.)
    4. Even tho telegram has ads in large channels, telegram isn’t funded by a greedy big-corp and it doesn’t datamine you, ads are based on the channel’s topic.

    Yes, in terms of privacy, telegram isn’t the best option, Signal, Session, XMPP, Matrix, or SimpleX have better privacy features, less linkability and E2EE by default but telegram is very mainstream and got more publicity, making it the whatsapp alternative it advertises itself as-is.
    Publicity doesn’t make a better messenger app, but for what it tries to do, it’s adoptable for simple users, doubles as cloud storage and is more secure than the garbage being whatsapp.

    Immigrating users to different apps is a headache on it’s own, but if they know of telegram and it’s not privacy invasive, that’s not bad.

  • IratePirate@feddit.org
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    1 hour ago

    Where I am, Telegram is mainly used by alt- und far right figures close to Russia. Facts don’t matter in these circles any more. Feelings do. And Durov knows how to manage those.

  • brownsugga@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    His NAME is MARLINSPIKE?? Like the ancestral home of Captain Haddock from Tintin?! We really are living in a simulation

  • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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    3 hours ago

    I don’t think, at this point, people who use Telegram do it for their privacy. I still use it, but I don’t trust it one bit more than I trust WhatsApp.

      • untorquer@quokk.au
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        4 hours ago

        No, both. The interviewer seems extra comfortable at the start but by the end they both seem on the same level. I think in a good way, not sure it’s a good method to get a read on either of them if i know my friends 😆

  • egrets@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    They’ve done a really amazing job of convincing the world that this is an encrypted messaging app.

    This is a play on people’s naivety. It is an encrypted messaging app in as much as regular messages are encrypted between the client and the server. It’s just that this achieves nothing for the user in terms of privacy unless you can both completely trust the provider (you shouldn’t) and be confident that the back-end can’t be compromised (you can’t).

    They do also have “secret chats” that are apparently E2E encrypted, but you’d be mad at this point to give them the benefit of the doubt without at least looking at independent security audits of the client.

  • T (they/she)@beehaw.org
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    4 hours ago

    I stopped using Telegram as soon as I learned their chats aren’t E2E encrypted unless you create a secret chat. Their advertising is so misleading. Even WhatsApp is more private than Telegram.

  • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    When you build a backdoor into your “encrypted messenger” its just a surveillance app

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    8 hours ago

    All these apps owned by corporations are just black boxes where you send information and nobody knows for certain what they do with it.

    Best case, they parse it, cross it with other data and make it profitable (for them, not for you).

    Worst case… Who knows…

  • sleepy@lazysoci.al
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    8 hours ago

    SimpleX is the most private of the big three. No phone number or account needed. Able to self host.

      • Saapas@piefed.zip
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        8 hours ago

        How I hate that saunas are associated with porn and sex. It’s not supposed to be sexual and more importantly it’s an awful, just terrible place to have sex

        • Markus29@lemmy.today
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          8 hours ago

          I don’t know man, those benches are nice for a variety of positions. Plus, you are already naked…

          • Saapas@piefed.zip
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            7 hours ago

            Just trust me on this one, 80’C+ room just isn’t the place for that sort of exercise. And it’s not like your heart rate isn’t up already lol. It’s a terrible experience

  • BilSabab@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    well, duh. it is also deeply annoying to navigate. It is like even shittier and less engaging reddit

  • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    8 hours ago

    fedposting “Don’t use those other chat apps, where the barbarous Russians or sneaky Arabs could compel your data. Use my app instead: FedChat: Built For Feds, By Feds” - Feddy McFedderson, founder of Signal

    • quantumcrop@lemmy.today
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      6 hours ago

      I mean I’m not a huge Signal fan but I certainly trust them far more than either telegram or whatsapp. I would at least be ok installing telegram if I had to; if someone told me I needed to download a meta product to save my own life I’d tell them I’m ready to die.