We'll see. The long-term behavior is what's more important. Now those users have the app downloaded, have it set up, and many have tried it out in a real way. All of those are major barriers to adoption, and Telegram has now overcome those barriers. I see that as significant even if it does not result in immediate full adoption of Telegram.
Indeed. And don't forget how well Telegram works compared to the competition. If anything will draw them away on convenience grounds (rather than some moral high ground, which was apparently not convincing enough or these new users would have installed an alternative sooner) it will be Telegram.
Messaging systems "working well" primarily means "the people I want to talk to are using it". Operational failures are a level-zero hurdle to pass, and after that it's all network effect.
I would agree that it's mostly network effect, but I don't agree that it's all network effect. How the app or service works and feels does count, at least a bit.
Operational failures are honestly not a big factor unless they happen often. Facebook has had 2 such failures now in the past 3 years. Will this really cost them users? No. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and Apple's Messages have all had approximately that same level of reliability.
Indeed. One reason I don't use Element/Matrix much is that I barely know anyone with an account (on any homeserver). The other reason is that it's unstable and missing features, so I won't be recommending this to any but the greatest of nerds. A bad user experience does matter.
It didn't work on mobile for me in Ireland for about an hour or so -- couldn't get a call or messages out on WiFi or data, but it worked perfectly fine on my laptop.
I was sending a few short videos to several contacts (during the FB outage) and the upload speed was something like 20KB/s, whereas normally 2MB are uploaded before I blink.
I wonder if they meant longest idle accounts. It would make sense to throttle them if they're just running tmux with an idle shell or ten. Like a bigger renice that shuts off when the process stops being idle.
Not really, plenty of users were unable to connect for some time. Just about my whole friend group and I myself were unable to use Telegram for about an hour or so around the peak of the surge.
The same thing happen when Signal took off, followed by 3 days of outage that to date has had no explanation. All those people joined and promptly returned to WhatsApp
Signal did explain what happened.
I can’t remember but there was something about the initial auth that got screwed up on Android and kept retrying. And the retries kind of ddos’ed themselves
From my experience, many friends in Iran strongly prefer Telegram even though it is blocked there are WhatsApp (inexplicably, since they are nearly the same service) isn't. So there does seem to be some brand loyalty in the chat market besides for convenience.
I suspect in general their losses were far greater in chat than in Instagram. Most students in the US use both Insta and Snap already and just have some overlapping and some different content on each, so I don't think one being down for a day will seriously bug anyone enough to stop using it.
Are they competitors? As far as I can tell, Telegram focuses on non-E2EE messaging and is more of an alternative to Facebook Messenger, Google Talk, etc. for non-private messaging.
That's fine, but its support for E2EE is incredibly limited compared to Signal (or even WhatsApp), which includes multi-device support, a fairly-functional encrypted backup method especially in the case of Signal, etc.
Multi device yes.
The unlimited member functionality and seemless sync without having the phone turned on are the biggest pros. Also, in e2e the contents aren't revealed in notifications.
Assuming I'm interpreting your comment correctly, I'm not sure I understand. Telegram doesn't have the option to backup and restore E2EE chats, let alone sync between devices, unlike Signal and (beta) WhatsApp. It very much feels like an afterthought in Telegram with the focus remaining on usability, compared to the often privacy-first approach of Signal which can come at the cost of end-user functionality.
I am used to seeing these numbers when talking about social media but really… 70 mln is a huge number. It’s a total population of many countries.. combined!
Facebook has what, almost three billions users across its platforms? 70M is ~2% of that, so a small percentage. While I too doubt that 70M figure, WhatsApp is the de facto communications application in a lot of countries, with many businesses highly reliant on it. In a pinch, you download something, anything to try to continue messaging.
That would be a no-go for me too... if I had a phone number. These days, it's actually surprisingly hard to get a free email account without having to provide a phone number.
I've never had a phone. I suppose it's harder if I ever had one but since I never had to give up the conveniences, I don't really have a problem with it.
Without Subscriptions there is no scope for retention.
Telegram only directly competes with WhatsApp , not Instagram, FB platform or even Messenger. Social network is of limited value in pure play messaging platform, where everyone is just interested in 1:1 or private group messaging.
I don't think anyone cares what network they are on, they care only about where the people they want talk to are at.
Yes, it is hard to break the network effort of any social media platform, however once that critical mass is reached, people move very very rapidly.
Offtopic, but "mln" really!? I swear I read "70 min new users", which is quite confusing. Is "70 Million" really too long? I can't say I've seen this one before so I'm reeling a bit. I saw "ml" used recently and almost had a heart attack, so perhaps I'm wondering why now?
SI clearly states "M" no? I'd have kept it short and sweet as "70M", just saying. Heh, or perhaps 70 mega-new-users, but I digress.
- The 'mln' abbreviation was probably used to shorten the title so that it would appear complete on search engine results.
- I have also seen "MM" used to shorten "million". I believe that "M" means "Molarity" in SI units, and only means millions when prepended to another SI unit abbreviation.
Without context '70M' should be assumed unitless, and therefor must be interpreted as a power suffix symbol. Better yet, it falls outside the hex range, making life even better for everyone.
Perhaps, if I'm really trying to be difficult, we could try to interpret 'M' as a modifier on 'new users', but that seems silly when there's no space between 70 and M.
>" - I do not understand how 'mln' is more SEO than 'M'"
There are limits to how many characters and pixels Google and Bing will display before cutting off a title and appending an ellipsis. I believe that mln was chosen for stylistic reasons, to differentiate from molarity...
>"[Wikipedia] states that it's 'mol', but what do I know, I'm not a chemist"
'M' is used for molarity (molar concentration), not moles.[1]
Some of my closest friends and I moved to Telegram a few months ago. It's actually quite good. I've to be on WhatsApp as it'd be a pain to teach parents how to use a new app!
It's much more convenient indeed, just be aware (I kinda trust that you, being on HN, already are) that it's all encrypted-to-the-server, so any sysadmin can read or hand over your messages. Choosing between known metadata gathering on WhatsApp and a potential Telegram data breach (intentional or unintentional), it's really a devil's dilemma for me.
Since a few months (now that Telegram has failed to deliver on the encryption promise and profit model for many years, making it a bit too shady) I've been moving more and more to Signal (after also trying Keybase, Threema, Wire, Riot/Element, Jami/Ring, and evaluating others), but man usability and features really take a hit with any of them. Enjoy Telegram, but be aware of the trade-off!
Yes, thank you. I wasn't aware of Telegram's shady models. I'll read about it. But its UI is far better than Signal. I don't use FB and their other products, except for WhatsApp. I've disabled all tracking features on IOS just to be safe! :)
Why, in conversations about chat apps, does telegram get brought up so frequently as a private alternative? Is it not also mostly proprietary the same as whatsapp/messenger whatever?
Very good point. There's a free-ish client on F-Droid (probably even official), but it's still a proprietary and centralized service. I would not really consider it better than the other proprietary options, but for whatever reason some tech people are into telegram.
Back in high school when I started using telegram (2010ish?), I started using it because it wasn’t Whatsapp, it wasn’t owned by Facebook, and it had a really great UI. And I didn’t really understand the encryption implications.
Today I really wish it had full encryption. It says something about the developers that they’ve avoided default E2E for a full decade or more now. I’m trying to use signal more. But I also have years and years of telegram group chats to migrate…
Yeah it's here, but it doesn't sync between devices, there is no group chat support, etc. While marketing trying to sell Telegram as good privacy by default.
Some people use secrets chats if you want to hide something, they have the auto destruction of messages and chat way before it was implemented on WhatsApp.
And that it uses a proprietary encryption protocol, "MTProto", which has been repeatedly found to have vulnerabilities, like every other self-made encryption scheme.
I don't know why you keep saying that. They have servers and offices distributed in different countries, but IIRC most of the team including the founder and CEO are Russian. They say the distribution is so that no single jurisdiction can force them to do too much.
- If you have at least one alternative to Facebook installed, you lessen their network effect. People now have a choice how to talk to you. (I have another five messaging systems installed myself, but I will settle for everyone picking just their one favorite alternative to avoid a complete monopoly.)
- If you install a Facebook messenger, you know what they're going to do with your metadata. If you install Telegram, you have to be afraid that your data contents might somehow leak in the future. What's better: a definite moderate privacy invasion or a potential worse one? I have trouble answering that for myself, let alone advise others (when it's only between these two and only about privacy).
- Telegram has by far the best UX of any messenger I've ever used. Of course, this is helped by being unencumbered by any and all encryption problems by not having proper encryption, but it sure draws users.
Apparently not, what should I have learned that you think I didn't? Because I'm not understanding what you're referring to (of course I know of the CA thing and that it used Facebook data, but that would mean we agree I think?).
I'm actually quite thrilled that end users found a way to communicate in spite of "the everyday solution" being down. That gives me some hope that smaller vendors do stand a chance against incumbents, even in Facebook's space.
I'm not particularly thrilled, given Telegram is based in the United Arab Emirates, its client-server encryption is almost purposefully garbage (they basically rolled their own TLS, and predictably researchers keep finding vulnerabilities in "MTProto"), they don't enable e2ee chats by default, and they don't e2ee group chats at all.
Exactly. I have found the phone number requirement idiotic from day one. I recognize the decision was made as a trade off between usability and security (enabling discovering friends via phone etc), but they seem unwilling to admit that this does compromise security.
Is that really a problem though? Most people would just add their friends via username and bypass the whole user discovery process. Discord has demonstrated that this works perfectly fine, even with anonymous accounts not tied to emails.
that problem was solved like 25 years ago, just ignore everyone who you didn't seek out yourself by default. Basically, make liberate use of the block functionality.
99.999% of people simply don't care about e2e, and even if they may have some concern about privacy (most don't), they'll prioritize a top-notch UI that let's them talk with friends and family over anything else.
For the remaining people who are concerned about privacy there are plenty of options.
Telegram is miles ahead in terms of scalability and features that makes it fun to use and work with their API. Kudos to the engineering team for creating such a great product. Imagine you can have groups up to 200 000 people, post files up to 2GB, have options to share your screen with unlimited amount of users - both desktop and mobile. Its really good. Yes if you need secrecy you may look elsewhere.
One thing I know is that it was possible in mtproto 1.0 to append something to a packet and have a client still accept it. This didn't allow anyone to modify the contents of the packet or see its plaintext. This was possible because the plaintext hash (the one in header, used to verify packet integrity after decryption) didn't include the padding. In mtproto 2.0, the hash is sha256 instead of sha1, and it does include the padding.
That was the MTProto. The newer one is MTProto 2.0 but they are still on the older method. Also they have servers distributed across regions so there's no single point of failure.
Perhaps they are considering e2e for smaller groups.
Handwavy rants about shoddy cryptography tend to be just that, handwavy. Repeating that Telegram does not enable end-to-end encryption by default does not make it more of a reason not to use Telegram. Here's what you can do to live comfortably on the net, having conversations with the world and its dog while still being able to plot the overthrow of the government without inviting prying eyes: use Telegram for the former, use your private XMPP server with OMEMO for the latter. There, done, problem solved. No need for angry righteous rants about MTProto or the Emirates - and why exactly would that be the reason not to use Telegram by the way, would it have been less of an issue had they been located in Jakarta or Ouagadougou or Silly Valley - and all the bragging rights of using trusted cryptography for your local knitting club meetings where you plan to overthrow the government.
Source: this is what I do, except for the knitting. Telegram for talking to the family, XMPP standby on the server-under-the-stairs for when the going gets tough, with Conversation (which supports OMEMO) installed on target devices.
To quote a popular movie from my youth; I dunno, man; that sounds like a lot of work.
I don't want to have to decide if every message I send is sensitive or not, then if it is, swap to a totally different app. Even worse: convincing friends and family to do the same!
> I don't want to have to decide if every message I send is sensitive or not, then if it is, swap to a totally different app
Only those messages which are sensitive enough should be sent over the secure channel, the rest goes over Telegram. Assuming that you're not a full-time professional anarchist of the comic-book type (picture man in cloak with a lit bomb in hand) you won't have all that many messages which are so sensitive that you don't want to run the risk of the enemy getting hold of them so don't worry, you'll be fine. As said, there is always the end-to-end encrypted 'private chat' function in Telegram for exchanging passwords and such, those have not caught the ire of the handwave-brigade (yet).
> Even worse: convincing friends and family to do the same!
Unless they're all wearing black cloaks while holding lit bombs in their hands (see above) the same goes for them. It is not the knitting patterns the enemy is interested in. Even more, the enemy might become suspicious if you all of a sudden stop sharing them in such a way that it might be theoretically feasible to decrypt them. What are you planning on knitting next, they'll wonder, sweaters with subversive messages on them? Before you know it they'll be hiding bugs in your cereal, and I don't mean weevils.
I think this says more about the significant amount of control Facebook has with its messaging platforms and the implications of them losing that control for even a few hours, rather than who happens to benefit when Facebook's users are forced to find alternatives. What happens to Facebook can now have ramifications for the entire Web.
It's gotten to the point where Facebook's userbase can act as a massive DDoS network not out of malice, as what the term usually implies, but because of the sheer number of people in the billions who willingly chose to use Facebook.
So, maybe <5% of WhatsApp users. Bit less headline grabbing when put that way. Not saying that its completely insignificant number, but considering that most likely all of them will not be leaving WA, or even staying on Telegram, it doesn't sound like major thing either.
It is WhatsApp and Messenger users who were moving, if you need to talk to someone right now and the platform both of you were using is not working for hours, then it is not surprising people moved to another platform quickly, especially if phone calls/sms are not feasible (expensive/international/no video etc)
Few people have that much brand loyalty to delay communication with all their friends and family when a platform is down for so long and there is viable alternative available.
It is not because they ideologically cared either way, they just want a platform that is easy to use and other person is ready use as well.
My problem with telegram is, 60% of my friends joined when whatsapp changed terms. After that I got no messages. Essentially most of them are dormant. It would be great to find out the percentage of active users in Telegram vs Whatsapp.
I don't think so, personally. Everyone on here is going off on how great of a UI experience Telegram is, so I just downloaded it and signed in to my old account. Seems fine. No complaints. But Signal has message reactions and E2E at all times. What are people fawning over Telegram for?
I guess a benefit is that Telegram store messages on the server, so if you sign in with a new device you get all your messages, not just the new ones. But that's why I use Matrix now; security of Signal with the UI features of Telegram.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadOperational failures are honestly not a big factor unless they happen often. Facebook has had 2 such failures now in the past 3 years. Will this really cost them users? No. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and Apple's Messages have all had approximately that same level of reliability.
I actually think it's genius if they throttled old accounts just to let new people see how good telegram is.
I have an account as old as you can get, and had no problems, so I'd be interested in proof of a disproportionate impact on older accounts.
Specifically happened to US users.
My account is from 2016, if not 2015 even.
On my laptop instead it was slow until I enabled traffic over ipv6, then it went mostly okay.
The same thing happen when Signal took off, followed by 3 days of outage that to date has had no explanation. All those people joined and promptly returned to WhatsApp
Wasn't it that Signal effectively DDoS'd themselves? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25803010
I suspect in general their losses were far greater in chat than in Instagram. Most students in the US use both Insta and Snap already and just have some overlapping and some different content on each, so I don't think one being down for a day will seriously bug anyone enough to stop using it.
I would love to use Signal, but I can't really stand it.
That's fine, but its support for E2EE is incredibly limited compared to Signal (or even WhatsApp), which includes multi-device support, a fairly-functional encrypted backup method especially in the case of Signal, etc.
https://tsf.telegram.org/manuals/e2ee-simple
Retention will be much smaller of course.
That just feels like a honeypot/dataleak waiting to happen.
Use Signal or Element/Matrix.
Retentions are more important than subscriptions.
Telegram only directly competes with WhatsApp , not Instagram, FB platform or even Messenger. Social network is of limited value in pure play messaging platform, where everyone is just interested in 1:1 or private group messaging.
I don't think anyone cares what network they are on, they care only about where the people they want talk to are at.
Yes, it is hard to break the network effort of any social media platform, however once that critical mass is reached, people move very very rapidly.
SI clearly states "M" no? I'd have kept it short and sweet as "70M", just saying. Heh, or perhaps 70 mega-new-users, but I digress.
- The 'mln' abbreviation was probably used to shorten the title so that it would appear complete on search engine results.
- I have also seen "MM" used to shorten "million". I believe that "M" means "Molarity" in SI units, and only means millions when prepended to another SI unit abbreviation.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_(unit) states that it's 'mol', but what do I know, I'm not a chemist
Without context '70M' should be assumed unitless, and therefor must be interpreted as a power suffix symbol. Better yet, it falls outside the hex range, making life even better for everyone.
Perhaps, if I'm really trying to be difficult, we could try to interpret 'M' as a modifier on 'new users', but that seems silly when there's no space between 70 and M.
</rambling>
There are limits to how many characters and pixels Google and Bing will display before cutting off a title and appending an ellipsis. I believe that mln was chosen for stylistic reasons, to differentiate from molarity...
>"[Wikipedia] states that it's 'mol', but what do I know, I'm not a chemist"
'M' is used for molarity (molar concentration), not moles.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molar_concentration
Since a few months (now that Telegram has failed to deliver on the encryption promise and profit model for many years, making it a bit too shady) I've been moving more and more to Signal (after also trying Keybase, Threema, Wire, Riot/Element, Jami/Ring, and evaluating others), but man usability and features really take a hit with any of them. Enjoy Telegram, but be aware of the trade-off!
https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1445164521102979080?s=2...
Is it just a matter of a dislike for facebook?
Today I really wish it had full encryption. It says something about the developers that they’ve avoided default E2E for a full decade or more now. I’m trying to use signal more. But I also have years and years of telegram group chats to migrate…
It's by design: https://telegra.ph/Why-Isnt-Telegram-End-to-End-Encrypted-by...
Now add in the fact that it's a UAE company...
Telegram's protocol might be custom, but it's well described and there are open source client implementations.
Whatsapp is totally closed and non-interoperable.
And whatsapp is made by an US company, that's an assurance for data collection and massive surveillance.
No, it has not. Recent research by seasoned encryption experts found minor bugs in realization, mostly around messages order. @see https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2021/07/fou...
I don't know why you keep saying that. They have servers and offices distributed in different countries, but IIRC most of the team including the founder and CEO are Russian. They say the distribution is so that no single jurisdiction can force them to do too much.
Telegram actually do have ecosystem of open source clients, but on other side E2EE is opt-in that no one uses.
- If you have at least one alternative to Facebook installed, you lessen their network effect. People now have a choice how to talk to you. (I have another five messaging systems installed myself, but I will settle for everyone picking just their one favorite alternative to avoid a complete monopoly.)
- If you install a Facebook messenger, you know what they're going to do with your metadata. If you install Telegram, you have to be afraid that your data contents might somehow leak in the future. What's better: a definite moderate privacy invasion or a potential worse one? I have trouble answering that for myself, let alone advise others (when it's only between these two and only about privacy).
- Telegram has by far the best UX of any messenger I've ever used. Of course, this is helped by being unencumbered by any and all encryption problems by not having proper encryption, but it sure draws users.
No that's false. Didn't you learn anything from the Cambridge Analytica scandal?
Do. Not. Use. Telegram.
I think Telegram is a good trade off for group chats, personally. It's feature rich compared to others.
Telegram was good enough for people to use during actual protests in authoritarian regimes (Iran: https://dayan.org/content/demonstrations-islamic-republic-te... and Belarus: https://dayan.org/content/demonstrations-islamic-republic-te...).
Meanwhile Signal adds some bullshit cryptocoin to their app, no thank you.
For the remaining people who are concerned about privacy there are plenty of options.
Source: this is what I do, except for the knitting. Telegram for talking to the family, XMPP standby on the server-under-the-stairs for when the going gets tough, with Conversation (which supports OMEMO) installed on target devices.
I don't want to have to decide if every message I send is sensitive or not, then if it is, swap to a totally different app. Even worse: convincing friends and family to do the same!
Only those messages which are sensitive enough should be sent over the secure channel, the rest goes over Telegram. Assuming that you're not a full-time professional anarchist of the comic-book type (picture man in cloak with a lit bomb in hand) you won't have all that many messages which are so sensitive that you don't want to run the risk of the enemy getting hold of them so don't worry, you'll be fine. As said, there is always the end-to-end encrypted 'private chat' function in Telegram for exchanging passwords and such, those have not caught the ire of the handwave-brigade (yet).
> Even worse: convincing friends and family to do the same!
Unless they're all wearing black cloaks while holding lit bombs in their hands (see above) the same goes for them. It is not the knitting patterns the enemy is interested in. Even more, the enemy might become suspicious if you all of a sudden stop sharing them in such a way that it might be theoretically feasible to decrypt them. What are you planning on knitting next, they'll wonder, sweaters with subversive messages on them? Before you know it they'll be hiding bugs in your cereal, and I don't mean weevils.
People don't realize how big Telegram already is.
It's gotten to the point where Facebook's userbase can act as a massive DDoS network not out of malice, as what the term usually implies, but because of the sheer number of people in the billions who willingly chose to use Facebook.
Few people have that much brand loyalty to delay communication with all their friends and family when a platform is down for so long and there is viable alternative available.
It is not because they ideologically cared either way, they just want a platform that is easy to use and other person is ready use as well.
I guess a benefit is that Telegram store messages on the server, so if you sign in with a new device you get all your messages, not just the new ones. But that's why I use Matrix now; security of Signal with the UI features of Telegram.