I’m from Mexico, and the most used chat application is WhatsApp. It’s used for EVERYTHING. I use Telegram only for contacting my family members (both my parents and my brother). They also use it only for this family chat. All my (and their) contacts use WhatsApp instead.
Now with the news that Telegram will collaborate with Twitter, I feel that I should delete it. Not that Zuck is any better than Musk, but still…
Also I don’t think it’s worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
Switch to Signal. It’s not like there’s anything to learn, the UI isn’t all that different from WhatsApp
there’s no learning curve with Signal, it’s almost exactly like whatsapp.
but how to find groups?
Unlike the other two, there are no servers that run discoverable group chats.
exactly that’s why it will always lag behind
Its what makes it more secure. Why do you need a chat app that allows your parents to accidentally stumble into a group of con artists or kids to stumble into things they shouldn’t be exposed to? It’s a messaging app, not gamer group chat.
This is what puts is way ahead of the others.
Also, making it harder for pedophiles to find each other and groups where they can share their shit is a good way to defeat all the shitty “think about the children” laws that European countries are constantly trying to pass to make encryption illegal
For public groups you probably want something like Matrix.org instead. Also open source, also supports E2E encryption
There’s a search bar which will filter your conversations, and you can create a new group with new message (pen icon) ->new group
Here’s another comment endorsing Signal.
I’d take Telegram over WhatsApp as I find Telegram, ignoring privacy concerns, is an excellent messenger. Much better than WhatsApp
But, Signal’s pretty great.
I hate Facebook but isn’t WhatsApp end to end encrypted by default? I know telegram is not.
Yes, but it’s not open source and it’s Meta so I don’t have a lot of trust there. Plus you can always just activate the Secret Chat feature on Telegram for E2E encryption that I’d just more than WhatsApp’s.
facebook bought it for billions, they gotta recover the money somehow?
End to end encrypted doesn’t mean they don’t potentially store a copy of the keys somewhere. With proprietary software, you never know what it’s actually doing since you can’t verify the code does what it says on the tin.
Telegram was developed by Russians and HQ is in United Arab Emirates. They have always been sketchy af.
Telegram’s owners are at odds with the Russian government though, hence the move to another country.
There’s plenty of problems with Telegram without having to resort to Russophobia already.For example their chats aren’t even E2E-encrypted by default and afaik there’s no way to have encrypted group chats either.
I’ve heard good things about Signal, maybe try that?
Also I don’t think it’s worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
My friend, just set up Signal on their phones, put it in place of the Telegram app and watch them not even notice anything changed.
Not if they’re the kind of users my parents are. An update moves a button from the bottom-left to the bottom-right and suddenly “the app you gave me is broken again”.
Also, don’t sneak-change things on other people’s phones.
I really distrust telegram. There are some many dark patterns around it and the server is closed source so I’d say the distrust is very well deserved.
has there been cases where telegram chat been leaked/compromised?
Many. One particularly awful case is how at the beginning of ruzi invasion of Ukraine a lot several Russian resistance figures were compromised through Telegram due to it using phone numbers for security which are incredibly insecure and needless to say in control of the government.
I personally avoid telegram for anything sensitive or personal. Because there is no end to end encryption. You should move to Signal.
Threema. And don’t forget, real privacy and security, with centralized services, is never free. The app is tested by third party and is open source. And, you don’t have to share your phone number, unlike with Signal.
You no longer have to share your phone number in signal. They added a unique user identifier a while ago that you can share to add new contacts. This is not permanent by the way, you can change this user identifier anytime.
If you care about these things best would be to use a chat application like Jami which won’t end up like WhatsApp.
Unless you wrote it yourself, never assume that an app won’t inevitably enshittify itself. People thought that about Firefox, too.
In what way do you consider Firefox to have enshittified itself?
They’ve been adding AI chatbot integrations into the browser lately.
Ah yes. Very much a feature “no one” asked for, I imagine. At least not I.
But luckily, I’ve been largely unaffected by that addition. It’s been easy to ignore so far.
SimpleX is another alternative. There are so many popping up that I can’t keep track anymore.
Element is ideal but no one uses it, Signal is still good and mostly similar to WhatsApp so easy to adopt. Telegram is utter garbage, bin it immediately in favour of one of the two above. Even if you swap it for WhatsApp it would be better than keeping Telegram.
why telegram is bad?
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No default end-to-end encryption (only in Secret Chats)
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Messages stored on Telegram servers, not fully private
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Uses custom, less-proven encryption protocol (MTProto)
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Server-side code is not open source, reducing transparency
what is the case of encrypted secret chats? are they stored in server, or in devices.
Should just be on device
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If you’re familiar in any capacity with self hosted tech. Id suggest checking out matrix servers. I setup one for family and friends a few months back. Currently it’s only running on a 2 core 8 gig ram vps with around 15 regular users, and ticks over fine. It’s routinely used as a phone chat client like WhatsApp, as well as for voice channels instead of discord.
You can utilise multiple different clients; but I would suggest element, as they’re the closest to WhatsApp, and therefore the easiest for people to adopt. (Afaik, it’s the only matrix client with voice & video call support too).
Matrix servers run on the concept of decentralised federated servers, with the idea that as the technology expands, admins can federate with other matrix servers and allow cross communication (in much the same way the fediverse works).
I downloaded telegram about a year ago when I first heard about it. There is a feature to find and talk to people in the same area as me. It was all just escorts with nudes as their profile pics. I’m honestly surprised Google and Apple allowed it on their stores.
You could use Delta Chat if you wanted…
the email binder?
It has a large Spanish speaking community too
