Telegram Voice Chats(telegram.org)
telegram.org
Telegram Voice Chats
https://telegram.org/blog/voice-chats
125 comments
>I type a message on my phone - I see it on my PC the moment I press Send button
I use some telegram groups and sometimes i'd start typing in phone before the message gets too long and i'd prefer to carry on the message in my laptop instead. It is so useful to have this feature.
I use some telegram groups and sometimes i'd start typing in phone before the message gets too long and i'd prefer to carry on the message in my laptop instead. It is so useful to have this feature.
Yes, Slack copied that about two weeks ago, with glitches between versions. Hope they will copy other features someday.
I found Durov's plans to monetize Telegram most interesting.
https://t.me/durov/142
Team features (competing with Slack/Discord?), ad tools for telegram channels and premium stickers. Whilst keeping all the existing Telegram features.
https://t.me/durov/142
Team features (competing with Slack/Discord?), ad tools for telegram channels and premium stickers. Whilst keeping all the existing Telegram features.
I really wish Telegram would embrace open source, security audits, etc. It's one of, if not the, best UX chat message apps with so many features it's sort of mindblowing. I'd love to use them. But.. i avoid it, because something doesn't smell right.
Allowing me to pay would be yet another right direction for Telegram, but i just can't move past the audit (and to a lesser extent, FOSS)
Allowing me to pay would be yet another right direction for Telegram, but i just can't move past the audit (and to a lesser extent, FOSS)
> It's one of, if not the, best UX chat message apps with so many features it's sort of mindblowing.
I'd go as far as saying it's by far the best. I have used the word unnerving to describe the fact it's so beyond the rest of the competition, yet free and without a viable business model.
I use Signal with friends and Matrix with other nerds.
I'd go as far as saying it's by far the best. I have used the word unnerving to describe the fact it's so beyond the rest of the competition, yet free and without a viable business model.
I use Signal with friends and Matrix with other nerds.
> yet free and without a viable business model.
This has been bothering me as well but seems to be solved now.
All current messaging features will be free but new team features etc will be paid IIRC and AFAIK.
This has been bothering me as well but seems to be solved now.
All current messaging features will be free but new team features etc will be paid IIRC and AFAIK.
> seems to be solved now.
Well, we'll have to see how that pans out...
Well, we'll have to see how that pans out...
It’s mind blowing how the app has had millions of users and massive development for years and it was all paid for by one billionaire’s personal funds without a plan to make the money back. It’s only being monetised now because it costs too much.
I totally agree. And I can't understand why FB - a much wealthier corporation - can't fix numerous problems with its Messenger app. Sometimes the messages don't sync correctly, sometimes voice messages don't play, sometimes images are not loaded in high quality, the search sucks, removing a single message requires 3 taps!, etc. etc. None of these happened in tg for me, and yet, I don't know why more people aren't using it.
Given the open-source nature of tg, I would imagine someone would put together a Messenger client based on tg source code. I guess that would solve many problems with FB's own messenger.
Given the open-source nature of tg, I would imagine someone would put together a Messenger client based on tg source code. I guess that would solve many problems with FB's own messenger.
It goes too far for me. Every time I set it up I have to turn the background to white and turn off emojis that take up the entire window and wipe out all context. I actually prefer the simplicity of Signal's apps.
Telegram, the client, is fully FLOSS. You can even find it on f-droid¹, contrary to e.g. Signal, which is only available for installation via closed app stores.
Do you refer to the server-stack? How would that being Open Source help you when you cannot ever verify what a server actually runs?
¹ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.telegram.messenger/
Do you refer to the server-stack? How would that being Open Source help you when you cannot ever verify what a server actually runs?
¹ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.telegram.messenger/
> Do you refer to the server-stack? How would that being Open Source help you when you cannot ever verify what a server actually runs?
Primarily yes, and while true - that's an extreme and a bit pointless, imo. I can say the same about Linux, which i'm on now, as i've never verified what i'm _actually_ running. Or Matrix servers i'm connected to, and what they're _actually_ running.
Yet the idea remains that something some people have analyzed is better than something "no one" (outside Telegram lol) has analyzed.
Your question feels as if we may as well all be running entirely closed source. I'm unsure why the benefits and/or supporting arguments for FOSS need to be stated here. Is there a degree of your question i'm missing?
edit: Oh and, of course, the FOSS nature is even more important in the case where the majority of Telegram communication seems to lack security. If this was a zero knowledge platform i'd be far less concerned about their serverside implementation.
Primarily yes, and while true - that's an extreme and a bit pointless, imo. I can say the same about Linux, which i'm on now, as i've never verified what i'm _actually_ running. Or Matrix servers i'm connected to, and what they're _actually_ running.
Yet the idea remains that something some people have analyzed is better than something "no one" (outside Telegram lol) has analyzed.
Your question feels as if we may as well all be running entirely closed source. I'm unsure why the benefits and/or supporting arguments for FOSS need to be stated here. Is there a degree of your question i'm missing?
edit: Oh and, of course, the FOSS nature is even more important in the case where the majority of Telegram communication seems to lack security. If this was a zero knowledge platform i'd be far less concerned about their serverside implementation.
> that's an extreme and a bit pointless, imo.
I understand the confusion. I was talking about the current situation where you cannot run your own server or even choose amongst servers.
It is pointless if you can view the source-code of that server, but have no way to check if the one server that you can ever use, runs that code at all.
It makes sense in a federated or decentralised setup, where you can run your own servers, choose instances, or even build your own version of the client with other backend-urls baked in. For Telegram all it offers is validation that the code is good, or not good. Without any power to do anything about that.
I understand the confusion. I was talking about the current situation where you cannot run your own server or even choose amongst servers.
It is pointless if you can view the source-code of that server, but have no way to check if the one server that you can ever use, runs that code at all.
It makes sense in a federated or decentralised setup, where you can run your own servers, choose instances, or even build your own version of the client with other backend-urls baked in. For Telegram all it offers is validation that the code is good, or not good. Without any power to do anything about that.
There's a big difference between something that's possible with some effort (i.e. compile the Linux kernel from source, compare the binaries with what ships with your distro), and it doesn't need to be you personally that does it. If a distro has 100k users, only 1 of them has to discover and make a scandal out of it. Projects like Debian take it even further and make a promise that it should be easy to reproduce the builds of their packages.
That's literally impossible with any closed-source server-side software. You can't even inspect the binary as you can with a client.
That's literally impossible with any closed-source server-side software. You can't even inspect the binary as you can with a client.
Signal is available from their website and the build on their website includes a self update feature.
That's totally false. Here's the client you can download, compile, and side-load yourself: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android
And here's the server implementation you can also run yourself: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
Telegram has also been exploited multiple times, while signal has held up against a US federal subpoena.
https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/4/13161026/signal-subpoena-...
And here's the server implementation you can also run yourself: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
Telegram has also been exploited multiple times, while signal has held up against a US federal subpoena.
https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/4/13161026/signal-subpoena-...
I did not say, nor wanted to imply that Signal is not FLOSS.
Just that Signal is not on F-Droid. Which has a bit of a history and some drama. It was there, log ago. Still textsecure back then.
Sure, you can build it yourself. And from there, with some hoops to jump, install it on your phone over adb (it's what I did). But that is far from fdroid or some other app store. E.g. there are no updates, which is a crucial feature in a security-critical app.
Just that Signal is not on F-Droid. Which has a bit of a history and some drama. It was there, log ago. Still textsecure back then.
Sure, you can build it yourself. And from there, with some hoops to jump, install it on your phone over adb (it's what I did). But that is far from fdroid or some other app store. E.g. there are no updates, which is a crucial feature in a security-critical app.
There is also fdroid repos such as [1] that contain signal. Fdroid policy requires approval from the author to be included, which is a bit weird take at FLOSS.
[1] https://calyxos.gitlab.io/calyx-fdroid-repo/fdroid/repo?fing...
[1] https://calyxos.gitlab.io/calyx-fdroid-repo/fdroid/repo?fing...
> Telegram has also been exploited multiple times
Source?
Source?
This had nothing to do with code vulnerabilities let alone open-source in general. It was a social engineering hack relying on default voicemail passwords.
Despite the potential security issues, I still use Telegram.
Where possible, I prefer to type on my proper desktop keyboard, because I am a stubborn old man and you kids with your phones, and Telegram is just so nice in that context. It uses no resources, the UI largely gets out of the way, and message sync and delivery is 99.9% reliable in my experience. (Looking at you, Messages app.)
I do worry on some level that, by not paying, I am the product in some sense. And I wish they had a full security audit. But, I have so many other potentially insecure ways for people to get my info, and really I’m too boring to stalk anyways, so I just can’t make myself too bothered.
Where possible, I prefer to type on my proper desktop keyboard, because I am a stubborn old man and you kids with your phones, and Telegram is just so nice in that context. It uses no resources, the UI largely gets out of the way, and message sync and delivery is 99.9% reliable in my experience. (Looking at you, Messages app.)
I do worry on some level that, by not paying, I am the product in some sense. And I wish they had a full security audit. But, I have so many other potentially insecure ways for people to get my info, and really I’m too boring to stalk anyways, so I just can’t make myself too bothered.
It's not your info that people can get, it's your chats, which makes "info" sound like the understatement of the year. Less so the past year that we've been in the same house at all times, but I generally chat with my SO all day long about everything on my messaging app. It's _not_ okay to have years of that history stored on a Russian app server based in Dubai. A security audit doesn't matter. I'll take for granted that the chats get to the server securely before being stored in plain text forever. Even if I could trust the current company to be 100% altruistic, I can't trust that data to be safe with them forever. Through state-sponsored attacks, company sales, new CEOs, new boards, etc.
I joined this, replied to the post, and now I'm being sent lots of creepy messages and dick pics from the men of the internet :/
Telegram has no option for "Only allow contacts to message me", it turns out.
After lots of messages, they eventually offer to auto archive and mute people not on your contacts, but it's still fairly visible on the app.
Perhaps Telegram should work on better abuse management before adding voice chat! I used to love the app but now I am considering uninstalling.
Telegram has no option for "Only allow contacts to message me", it turns out.
After lots of messages, they eventually offer to auto archive and mute people not on your contacts, but it's still fairly visible on the app.
Perhaps Telegram should work on better abuse management before adding voice chat! I used to love the app but now I am considering uninstalling.
That's bizarre. I just looked at the app and they support contacts-only limits for everything (voice, presence, profile photo, forwarded messages) _except_ for regular messages.
You can't reject images from non-contacts either. It's either images from everyone or nobody.
Does your chats list get filled up with these unsolicited messages from randos?
It seems like they should at the very least offer a mechanism to accept a contact request before any messages can be sent.
It's also an interesting example in the vastly different experience that different demographics can have in an app - say, women, or minorities often the recipients of abuse - and how blind an app maker can be to that experience if it's not intentionally studied.
You can't reject images from non-contacts either. It's either images from everyone or nobody.
Does your chats list get filled up with these unsolicited messages from randos?
It seems like they should at the very least offer a mechanism to accept a contact request before any messages can be sent.
It's also an interesting example in the vastly different experience that different demographics can have in an app - say, women, or minorities often the recipients of abuse - and how blind an app maker can be to that experience if it's not intentionally studied.
> Does your chats list get filled up with these unsolicited messages from randos?
It was, then telegram desktop popped up with "it appears you are getting a lot of messages, would you like to automatically mute + archive those not in your contacts" or somesuch. Still, the archived folder is at the top
The only thing that stopped it was deleting my message from the community. Guess I won't be participating again :(
It certainly is an interesting example - I know nothing of their team, however things like this are also another reason as to why a diverse team is important!
It was, then telegram desktop popped up with "it appears you are getting a lot of messages, would you like to automatically mute + archive those not in your contacts" or somesuch. Still, the archived folder is at the top
The only thing that stopped it was deleting my message from the community. Guess I won't be participating again :(
It certainly is an interesting example - I know nothing of their team, however things like this are also another reason as to why a diverse team is important!
In Settings / Privacy and Security / Blocked Users there's a "+ Block User" option. Clicking this brings up a list of all chats and people who have messaged your directly. Selecting a name blocks a user.
Maybe even easier is pressing and long holding the name of someone who has sent you a message. In the vertical dots menu is then an option to block the user.
I'm running v7.1.3 from F-Droid.
I do agree though that an option to block direct messages from those not in my Contacts, or at least some kind of review process to allow a specific message from someone not in Contacts, could be a nice addition.
Maybe even easier is pressing and long holding the name of someone who has sent you a message. In the vertical dots menu is then an option to block the user.
I'm running v7.1.3 from F-Droid.
I do agree though that an option to block direct messages from those not in my Contacts, or at least some kind of review process to allow a specific message from someone not in Contacts, could be a nice addition.
Yup, the former works! Took me a while to find it haha.
The hold + three dots thing isn't there on iOS sadly.
Even something like Instagram's message requests would be a welcome addition!
The hold + three dots thing isn't there on iOS sadly.
Even something like Instagram's message requests would be a welcome addition!
It does. If you block people sending spam, they won't be able to contact new people. They will have to wait people to contact them to engage the conversation.
Go to `Settings -> Privacy and Security`. For each option (calls / groups / etc) change "Everybody" to "Contacts".
Look again: none of the available options are for restricting incoming messages to contacts (at least on iOS).
After you strip out corporate BS from this announcement (taking stabs at whatsapp, for selling to ads company), themselves they're going to become one more ads supported business.
Basically "Ads companies are horrible and not to be trusted. Btw, welcome to our new business model - ads"
Basically "Ads companies are horrible and not to be trusted. Btw, welcome to our new business model - ads"
here is a copy for those not using tgram
--
As Telegram approaches 500 million active users, many of you are asking the question – who is going to pay to support this growth? After all, more users mean more expenses for traffic and servers. A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million dollars per year to keep going.
For most of Telegram’s history, I paid for the expenses of the company from my personal savings. However, with its current growth Telegram is on track to reach billions of users and to require appropriate funding. When a tech project reaches this scale, typically there are two options – start earning money to cover the costs, or sell the company.
Hence the question – which path will Telegram take? I’d like to make a few points to clarify our plan:
1. We are not going to sell the company like the founders of Whatsapp. The world needs Telegram to stay independent as a place where users are respected and high-quality service is ensured. Telegram must continue to serve the world as an example of a tech company that strives for perfection and integrity. And, as the sad examples of our predecessors show, that is impossible if you become part of a corporation.
2. Telegram is here to stay for a long time. We began developing our apps for our personal use over 8 years ago and have come a long way since then. In the process, Telegram changed the way people communicate in several aspects – encryption, functionality, simplicity, design, speed. This journey has just started. There’s much more we can – and will – bring to the world.
3. In order to make points 1 and 2 possible, Telegram will begin to generate revenue, starting next year. We will do it in accordance with our values and the pledges we have made over the last 7 years. Thanks to our current scale, we will be able to do it in a non-intrusive way. Most users will hardly notice any change.
4. All the features that are currently free will stay free. We will add some new features for business teams or power users. Some of these features will require more resources and will be paid for by these premium users. Regular users will be able to keep enjoying Telegram – for free, forever.
5. All parts of Telegram devoted to messaging will remain ad-free. We think that displaying ads in private 1-to-1 chats or group chats is a bad idea. Communication between people should be free of advertising of any sort.
6. In addition to its messaging component, Telegram has a social networking dimension. Our massive public one-to-many channels can have millions of subscribers each and are more like Twitter feeds. In many markets the owners of such channels display ads to earn money, sometimes using third-party ad platforms. The ads they post look like regular messages, and are often intrusive. We will fix this by introducing our own Ad Platform for public one-to-many channels – one that is user-friendly, respects privacy and allows us to cover the costs of servers and traffic.
7. If Telegram starts earning money, the community should also benefit. For example, If we monetize large public one-to-many channels via the Ad Platform, the owners of these channels will receive free traffic in proportion to their size. Or, if Telegram introduces premium stickers with additional expressive features, the artists who make stickers of this new type will also get a part of the profit. We want millions of Telegram-based creators and small businesses to thrive, enriching the experience of all our users.
This is the Telegram way.
It will allow us to keep innovating and keep growing for decades to come. We will be able to launch countless new features and welcome billions of new users. While doing that, we will remain independent and stay true to our values, redefining how a tech company should operate.
--
As Telegram approaches 500 million active users, many of you are asking the question – who is going to pay to support this growth? After all, more users mean more expenses for traffic and servers. A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million dollars per year to keep going.
For most of Telegram’s history, I paid for the expenses of the company from my personal savings. However, with its current growth Telegram is on track to reach billions of users and to require appropriate funding. When a tech project reaches this scale, typically there are two options – start earning money to cover the costs, or sell the company.
Hence the question – which path will Telegram take? I’d like to make a few points to clarify our plan:
1. We are not going to sell the company like the founders of Whatsapp. The world needs Telegram to stay independent as a place where users are respected and high-quality service is ensured. Telegram must continue to serve the world as an example of a tech company that strives for perfection and integrity. And, as the sad examples of our predecessors show, that is impossible if you become part of a corporation.
2. Telegram is here to stay for a long time. We began developing our apps for our personal use over 8 years ago and have come a long way since then. In the process, Telegram changed the way people communicate in several aspects – encryption, functionality, simplicity, design, speed. This journey has just started. There’s much more we can – and will – bring to the world.
3. In order to make points 1 and 2 possible, Telegram will begin to generate revenue, starting next year. We will do it in accordance with our values and the pledges we have made over the last 7 years. Thanks to our current scale, we will be able to do it in a non-intrusive way. Most users will hardly notice any change.
4. All the features that are currently free will stay free. We will add some new features for business teams or power users. Some of these features will require more resources and will be paid for by these premium users. Regular users will be able to keep enjoying Telegram – for free, forever.
5. All parts of Telegram devoted to messaging will remain ad-free. We think that displaying ads in private 1-to-1 chats or group chats is a bad idea. Communication between people should be free of advertising of any sort.
6. In addition to its messaging component, Telegram has a social networking dimension. Our massive public one-to-many channels can have millions of subscribers each and are more like Twitter feeds. In many markets the owners of such channels display ads to earn money, sometimes using third-party ad platforms. The ads they post look like regular messages, and are often intrusive. We will fix this by introducing our own Ad Platform for public one-to-many channels – one that is user-friendly, respects privacy and allows us to cover the costs of servers and traffic.
7. If Telegram starts earning money, the community should also benefit. For example, If we monetize large public one-to-many channels via the Ad Platform, the owners of these channels will receive free traffic in proportion to their size. Or, if Telegram introduces premium stickers with additional expressive features, the artists who make stickers of this new type will also get a part of the profit. We want millions of Telegram-based creators and small businesses to thrive, enriching the experience of all our users.
This is the Telegram way.
It will allow us to keep innovating and keep growing for decades to come. We will be able to launch countless new features and welcome billions of new users. While doing that, we will remain independent and stay true to our values, redefining how a tech company should operate.
You can read the whole thing without an account, it is a public channel and the entire message is displayed on the t.me link. It's a bit jarring on a desktop browser because it looks like the post is cut off, but it's just a really really weird overflow with scrolling
When I reached the page, I only saw a ,,view in telegram,, button.
it loads the page content with js for some reason
They should integrate direct payments/donations.
Technically already exists through payment bot api
But who knows that? It's poorly documented, obviously, as I'm a big Telegram fan, and this is the first I've heard of it.
Telegram's documentation is fantastic. Everything is updated, and their API allows building your own app. It's that open
https://core.telegram.org/bots/payments
^ first result for telegram bot payments
https://core.telegram.org/bots/payments
^ first result for telegram bot payments
Nice, I hadn't seen this before. Thanks!
As comment below noted they do have payments integrated which nobody uses, however, two main issues are that: from Durov's vocal libertarian leaning stems their attempt to launch TON blockchain network (that was stopped by SEC) and also a sizable userbase proportion uses it for shady stuff (e.g., lotta Russians buy drugs with Bitcoin bought via exchange bots). Had they succeeded at this it would've brought together two sides of not only drug markets but like all kinds of shit (think everything not deemed appropriate by Visa/MasterCard) on a convenient platform with plenty of features.
Sad to see those plans gone but what else there is to expect from authorities if you're about to make their jobs 10x harder.
Sad to see those plans gone but what else there is to expect from authorities if you're about to make their jobs 10x harder.
I used to mainly use Telegram but their broken notifications on Android turned me off. If a chat app can't get notifications right, it's not worth using.
Whatsapp, facebook, messenger, twitter enjoy unfair advantage from device manufacturers.
They whitelist the above apps from their battery management systems and indiscriminately terminate everything else.
Summary - figure out how to whitelist telegram on ur phone and you should be fine.
They whitelist the above apps from their battery management systems and indiscriminately terminate everything else.
Summary - figure out how to whitelist telegram on ur phone and you should be fine.
See also: this long page in Signal's documentation with device-specific instructions on how to avoid it being throttled [1].
[1] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007318711-Tr...
[1] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007318711-Tr...
Huh? That sounds wrong to me. Do you have a source for this?
There is literally a website for this specifically (https://dontkillmyapp.com/) created by the Urbandroid team (creators of Sleep as Android). Rather annongingly, the team started out due to problems encountered on HMD/Nokia phones, since acknowledged and partially fixed (https://sleep.urbandroid.org/documentation/faq/alarms-sleep-...).
Personal anecdote: even Google have been wishy-washy between different versions of Android when it comes from battery optimizations (Android 6/Marshmallow is the most hardest on this front), but at least it was documented. Imagine the pain of managing other brands (and it seems that all Android manufacturers engage on it one way or another).
Edit: in 2018, VideoLAN/VLC complained that Huawei agressively kills apps outside of its whitelist (https://twitter.com/videolan/status/1022033608670961665). There is no update on this one unfortunately, but I've heard that it was fixed in subsequent EmUI versions but there is no verification of that from VideoLAN or Huawei.
Edit edit: Unrelated to the notfications issue, benchmark scores are allegedly being tricked out by a certain chip manufacturer running the chips out-of-spec in a whitelist (https://www.techarp.com/mobile/mediatek-benchmark-cheating-2...).
Personal anecdote: even Google have been wishy-washy between different versions of Android when it comes from battery optimizations (Android 6/Marshmallow is the most hardest on this front), but at least it was documented. Imagine the pain of managing other brands (and it seems that all Android manufacturers engage on it one way or another).
Edit: in 2018, VideoLAN/VLC complained that Huawei agressively kills apps outside of its whitelist (https://twitter.com/videolan/status/1022033608670961665). There is no update on this one unfortunately, but I've heard that it was fixed in subsequent EmUI versions but there is no verification of that from VideoLAN or Huawei.
Edit edit: Unrelated to the notfications issue, benchmark scores are allegedly being tricked out by a certain chip manufacturer running the chips out-of-spec in a whitelist (https://www.techarp.com/mobile/mediatek-benchmark-cheating-2...).
Ah, I realized now by context that you’re only talking about android. (You only said device manufacturers so I thought you were referring to iOS as well.)
But I had this whole reply typed up for iOS so, may as well include it:
—
I can only speak for iOS, but it definitely doesn’t work this way on iOS.
The ability to run in the background is something you can grant to any app, and there’s no special treatment of any one third party app versus another.
It’s not unlimited though even if you do grant the permission... if they use too much memory in the background they may be killed, and there’s a limit to how long they can stay running in the background.
Push notifications are supported anyway, because the apps servers are supposed to deliver push notifications to APNS, which delivers them to your phone on behalf of the app even if the app is closed.
But the transition from “app is running in the background and notifies you” (which can’t last forever) and “app is killed but the server delivers a notification through APNS” (which works when the app is dead) is often implemented poorly by developers and isn’t seamless. It’s hard to get it right.
But no third party apps get treated any different in this regard.
But I had this whole reply typed up for iOS so, may as well include it:
—
I can only speak for iOS, but it definitely doesn’t work this way on iOS.
The ability to run in the background is something you can grant to any app, and there’s no special treatment of any one third party app versus another.
It’s not unlimited though even if you do grant the permission... if they use too much memory in the background they may be killed, and there’s a limit to how long they can stay running in the background.
Push notifications are supported anyway, because the apps servers are supposed to deliver push notifications to APNS, which delivers them to your phone on behalf of the app even if the app is closed.
But the transition from “app is running in the background and notifies you” (which can’t last forever) and “app is killed but the server delivers a notification through APNS” (which works when the app is dead) is often implemented poorly by developers and isn’t seamless. It’s hard to get it right.
But no third party apps get treated any different in this regard.
I concur. It is indeed more consistent on their devices, probably because the (relative) unfragmented nature of iOS by nature allows to simplify and focus the app development and get consistent results (unlike Android that you can't just match the UI between devices).
The problem isn't killing the apps in the background, it's whitelisting others.
I want every app I don't manually allow to run in the background to be terminated after a short period of 30s~60s or so.
I want every app I don't manually allow to run in the background to be terminated after a short period of 30s~60s or so.
Telegram's notifications are the best among all apps. It works perfectly. If you view a message on desktop, it also removes the android notification.
What did you find wrong with them? In my experience, Telegram's notifications worked better than any other app on a phone where Google Play Services was replaced with microG. I wish more apps would see how they're doing it without killing battery.
Okay I thought that was just me. The majority of the time, I just don't get a notification. It's intermittent, so it's not that something is turned off. I definitely don't have the issue with other comms apps.
That being said, telegram is probably my preferred app - and sometimes I actually use the broken notifications as a positive (the message isn't that important).
That being said, telegram is probably my preferred app - and sometimes I actually use the broken notifications as a positive (the message isn't that important).
Try checking this website for the model of phone you have https://dontkillmyapp.com/
It's a mixed bag. Some people (mostly also those who have zero ways of even starting to debug it) seem to have a lot of trouble with it, also on dummy OSes like Apple's, while for me it simply works on a heavily customized Android where a ton of stuff breaks and indeed a lot of other messengers have trouble with it (ranging from Keybase which shows nothing at all ever to Matrix which pops up a notification every 5 seconds for 0.2 seconds "checking for messages" in order to make it work).
It seems not to be a Telegram-specific problem, and I haven't heard from anyone who actually had the issue and even attempted to find what's wrong.
It seems not to be a Telegram-specific problem, and I haven't heard from anyone who actually had the issue and even attempted to find what's wrong.
This reminds me of how I used to use Teamspeak with a gaming organisation I used to be part of. It was a completely different dynamic than a video call. You could "hang out" in a room, chime in when you wanted, say nothing when you wanted. It was a lot more like working separately but with physical proximity to one another. I'm optimistic that, applied to a work context and with the same norms, this could go a long way to recreating the social connection of workspaces.
one of the teams I was on at my previous employer was like this. code review was done in groups on this call as well. Got stuck on something and need another set of eyeballs? Share your screen and pair program on it.
It made working from home a little less solo. You could come and go on the call as you wished it wasn't really required unless it was a team call where certain topics were being discussed that should have everyone (or nearly everyone).
It made working from home a little less solo. You could come and go on the call as you wished it wasn't really required unless it was a team call where certain topics were being discussed that should have everyone (or nearly everyone).
I convinced my coworkers to start a discord, and we now have most of our department in there. Having the (totally optional) PTT voice channels to hang out in makes these long weeks of WFH much less solitary.
I'd totally appreciate ability to turn all those silly animations off. Is it possible already?
No mention of any kind of encryption?
Telegram keeps talking about how private and secure it is, but all group and private chats are not encrypted by default. Its end to end encrypted chats are very limited (only direct messages and only on one device) and rely on self-baked crypto. Their voice chat is also almost definitely not end to end encrypted, as I'm not aware of a way to do e2ee voice chat with many participants without linearly increasing bandwidth requirements for users
I wonder if it’s possible to do in the same way WhatsApp does for media uploads.
When you send a video to a contact on WhatsApp, it takes some time to upload the video. When you then forward the video a few minutes later, it’s near instant. This set off red flags for me, as that can’t be E2EE if so.
Someone explained that the media is encrypted using one key, which is stored locally. The key is then encrypted and transmitted to the recipient using the clients public key. When you forward the media, you only need to send the second recipient the encrypted key using their pubkey (along with the identifier for the media that is still present in WhatsApp server side cache).
This in itself raises some more red flags relating to the encryption of the media being transmitted and cached in the first place, but if that’s all done sensibly, then this isn’t the worst solution to reduce bandwidth utilisation by end users.
A similar approach could be used for E2EE group calls. Encrypt the payload using one key, send the payload to all participants via a central server (which generally has to happen anyway due to NAT traversal issues, especially with mobile internet), and send each participant the keys individually. Voila, group call with 3 people or 30 people doesn’t result in having to retransmit the same audio payload multiple times.
Obviously this is a simplistic overview of how this could work. I am not a cryptographer, I have no expertise in this area, everything above could be total baloney. Anyone with expertise should absolutely correct me please and thank you.
All that said, hope this helps.
EDIT: changed the above to reflect that forwarding media is “near instant” rather than “instant”
When you send a video to a contact on WhatsApp, it takes some time to upload the video. When you then forward the video a few minutes later, it’s near instant. This set off red flags for me, as that can’t be E2EE if so.
Someone explained that the media is encrypted using one key, which is stored locally. The key is then encrypted and transmitted to the recipient using the clients public key. When you forward the media, you only need to send the second recipient the encrypted key using their pubkey (along with the identifier for the media that is still present in WhatsApp server side cache).
This in itself raises some more red flags relating to the encryption of the media being transmitted and cached in the first place, but if that’s all done sensibly, then this isn’t the worst solution to reduce bandwidth utilisation by end users.
A similar approach could be used for E2EE group calls. Encrypt the payload using one key, send the payload to all participants via a central server (which generally has to happen anyway due to NAT traversal issues, especially with mobile internet), and send each participant the keys individually. Voila, group call with 3 people or 30 people doesn’t result in having to retransmit the same audio payload multiple times.
Obviously this is a simplistic overview of how this could work. I am not a cryptographer, I have no expertise in this area, everything above could be total baloney. Anyone with expertise should absolutely correct me please and thank you.
All that said, hope this helps.
EDIT: changed the above to reflect that forwarding media is “near instant” rather than “instant”
>When you send a video to a contact on WhatsApp, it takes some time to upload the video. When you then forward the video a ..
It's actually not instant. I've tested this multiple times. Maybe you had a spike in upload speeds suddenly when forwarding?
It's actually not instant. I've tested this multiple times. Maybe you had a spike in upload speeds suddenly when forwarding?
Thanks, I’ve edited the comment to better reflect that it’s near instant rather than actually instant.
I’ve done a packet capture to verify that my phone is not uploading the entire payload a second time when forwarding media I’ve recently uploaded or received, which is what compounded my original concern.
I’ve done a packet capture to verify that my phone is not uploading the entire payload a second time when forwarding media I’ve recently uploaded or received, which is what compounded my original concern.
>...rely on self-baked crypto.
I always wondered why Telegram gets criticism for their boring cryto based on well respected algorithms while Signal gets hardly any criticism for their crypto based on unique concepts.
I always wondered why Telegram gets criticism for their boring cryto based on well respected algorithms while Signal gets hardly any criticism for their crypto based on unique concepts.
> I'm not aware of a way to do e2ee voice chat with many participants without linearly increasing bandwidth requirements for users
This can be almost trivially extended from one-to-one end-to-end encrypted text chats: One peer picks a random symmetric key and forwards it to all participants over the existing encrypted and authenticated channel.
Afterwards, you can just use the most appropriate way of relaying encrypted voice data: Full mesh peer to peer, one party acting as relay for everybody else, using an SFU that relays incoming data from one peer to all others (without being able to decrypt it)...
This can be almost trivially extended from one-to-one end-to-end encrypted text chats: One peer picks a random symmetric key and forwards it to all participants over the existing encrypted and authenticated channel.
Afterwards, you can just use the most appropriate way of relaying encrypted voice data: Full mesh peer to peer, one party acting as relay for everybody else, using an SFU that relays incoming data from one peer to all others (without being able to decrypt it)...
I found it interesting that direct calls (just calling one of your contacts) can be peer-to-peer if you enable it in the settings. They even have a unique code at the top of the screen (like 5 emojis) that you can verify match on the other participant's phone.
By default, it's as good (or as bad) as email with secure transport. "Secret chats" are end-to-end encrypted, but it supports only one-to-one conversations. There is no group secret chat feature. Voice chat also being a group feature, would have the same transport level encryption as the default chats, I suppose.
"Server-client encryption is used in Cloud Chats (private and group chats), Secret Chats use an additional layer of client-client encryption."
from: https://telegram.org/faq#q-so-how-do-you-encrypt-data
from: https://telegram.org/faq#q-so-how-do-you-encrypt-data
Big-time Telegram user for usability reasons, but their encryption is a joke. "Server-client encryption" whose server anyway, the NSA's? It might as well be.
Since it is a group thing it would likely only be encrypted to the server. Telegram only does end to end encryption for "Secret Chats" which is a different mode.
TL;DR: It's like Discord's voice channels, instead of WhatsApp's group voice calls. You can join and leave at any point.
Or like Mumble or like TeamSpeak or like Wire or... this isn't unique to any specific brand, not sure if there is a reason to specifically refer to a walled network service.
We love PTT Voice Chat here, been using it with Virtual Airwaves platform (https://cb.virtualairwaves.com)
Wonderful! I kept the beta installed just for this; of course you can have a separate Mumble/Discord/whatever channel, but this definitely removes some friction.
It works remarkably well!
It works remarkably well!
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The whole page has no mention of encryption.
Telegram, Discord, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Hangouts/Voice/Talk/Meet/Allo/Whatever -- who will win?
And without ads deeply ingrained (or highly addictive paid features like Discord has), does it matter?
With the recent scrutiny of the DOJ, I wonder if Google and Facebook's business models are really all that sustainable or desirable.
Discord seems to have the healthiest setup here.
And without ads deeply ingrained (or highly addictive paid features like Discord has), does it matter?
With the recent scrutiny of the DOJ, I wonder if Google and Facebook's business models are really all that sustainable or desirable.
Discord seems to have the healthiest setup here.
Slack/Zoom/Teams/Whatever Google is running now is mostly dictated by what the company uses for their email.
Pretty much no-one uses any of those for personal stuff, Slack does have some open-source project stuff in there.
FB Messenger seems to be highly siloed, I never use it and I know only one person who uses it as their main communication platform.
Whatsapp has reached critical mass in many countries outside of the US. People use it because everyone uses it - not because it's especially good in any way.
Signal, Matrix etc are for idealists, who have a future vision of what the platform will develop into in mind.
My personal favourite is Telegram. It has a good mix of bots, API, native clients and channel management tools.
Pretty much no-one uses any of those for personal stuff, Slack does have some open-source project stuff in there.
FB Messenger seems to be highly siloed, I never use it and I know only one person who uses it as their main communication platform.
Whatsapp has reached critical mass in many countries outside of the US. People use it because everyone uses it - not because it's especially good in any way.
Signal, Matrix etc are for idealists, who have a future vision of what the platform will develop into in mind.
My personal favourite is Telegram. It has a good mix of bots, API, native clients and channel management tools.
I don't actually use it yet myself, but my hope is that Matrix will eventually be the end of having to care about which app someone else uses. That an incumbent or two will switch, and no new app would gain significant market share with a non-Matrix silo.
I may just be dreaming though. Perhaps better bridges are the best we can realistically hope for.
I may just be dreaming though. Perhaps better bridges are the best we can realistically hope for.
Matrix-the-technology is a really good idea, no complaints there.
But Matrix the ecosystem is a mess. Everything is almost there, but not quite. Pretty much anything you want to do is just a little bit too difficult compared to the amount of work you're willing to put in to adopt a new messaging system.
The worst part is, that it's been in this state for a few years now. It's not that much easier to run your own server, clients are just a bit too clunky, bridges are flaky and hard to use.
It'll get there someday, I hope.
But Matrix the ecosystem is a mess. Everything is almost there, but not quite. Pretty much anything you want to do is just a little bit too difficult compared to the amount of work you're willing to put in to adopt a new messaging system.
The worst part is, that it's been in this state for a few years now. It's not that much easier to run your own server, clients are just a bit too clunky, bridges are flaky and hard to use.
It'll get there someday, I hope.
I have almost no hope for matrix at least in the short term given that I recently tried joining Mozilla’s server and ended giving up and creating a new account with Mozilla login.
I assume you're not American. Here everyone uses SMS by default. Failing that, everyone uses FB Messenger. Discord is used for gaming. That's about all the breadth you'll get outside of work. I guess I know three people who use Hangouts sometimes. Marco Polo and Snapchat are moderately popular things, though a bit different. Still, I have never met a single person who has used Whatsapp, Signal, Matrix, or Telegram. I doubt more than a handful have ever heard of any of them.
No one will win. That's not how this works. Things will continue to be an ongoing example of XKCD-927 until the world as a whole cares enough to fix things.
The train wreck that is instant messaging makes me realize how incredibly lucky we are to have email.
The train wreck that is instant messaging makes me realize how incredibly lucky we are to have email.
> The train wreck that is instant messaging makes me realize how incredibly lucky we are to have email.
Isn't the opposite of xkcd 927 a monopoly?
If we're talking about a federated standard, we had XMPP [1], but nobody who can create user-friendly apps seems to want to adopt it.
[1] https://xmpp.org/
Isn't the opposite of xkcd 927 a monopoly?
If we're talking about a federated standard, we had XMPP [1], but nobody who can create user-friendly apps seems to want to adopt it.
[1] https://xmpp.org/
Snikket[1] is an attempt at creating (maybe better "curating", as we're not starting from scratch) a suite of well-integrated user-friendly XMPP software (a server, and a single app for each platform).
The server is available as a Docker image, though we're still working on things like a web admin. Android app is available, the iOS app is due to enter beta in a month or two.
This is a personal thing for me. This year I migrated my family to XMPP from WhatsApp (at least for communicating with each other), and I want others to be able to do the same. Trying to make it a sustainable project (it's 100% open-source).
[1]: https://snikket.org/
The server is available as a Docker image, though we're still working on things like a web admin. Android app is available, the iOS app is due to enter beta in a month or two.
This is a personal thing for me. This year I migrated my family to XMPP from WhatsApp (at least for communicating with each other), and I want others to be able to do the same. Trying to make it a sustainable project (it's 100% open-source).
[1]: https://snikket.org/
The advantage of XMPP is that you don't have to use the official site/app. It's not surprising that Facebook and Google removed support when they both rely on ads on their sites to fund their businesses.
Email or the phone networks aren't global monopolies, are they? They even got text messages working globally—no idea about MMS though.
So maybe there's a way to make a globally non-island IM that works in the Internet as well; or maybe with islands that can work with each other if that's how it must be. Sadly I doubt this will not happen without regulation; it worked for the telephone network, though email happened without.
So maybe there's a way to make a globally non-island IM that works in the Internet as well; or maybe with islands that can work with each other if that's how it must be. Sadly I doubt this will not happen without regulation; it worked for the telephone network, though email happened without.
Will win in terms of what?
A lot of things in Telegram are done right, but that does not mean it will win the audience.
Discord is a very good solution too, but I doubt people want to use it on their smartphones as a messenger.
A lot of things in Telegram are done right, but that does not mean it will win the audience.
Discord is a very good solution too, but I doubt people want to use it on their smartphones as a messenger.
The problem with Discord is that every single thing has their own server with 42 highly nuanced channels, intricate permissions and multiple utility bots.
Then you have like 15 active users, all typing on #general
Multiply this by 20 or so communities and it's an UX clusterfuck of epic proportions.
Then you have like 15 active users, all typing on #general
Multiply this by 20 or so communities and it's an UX clusterfuck of epic proportions.
At the other end of the spectrum, I manage a 20-user private channel in which users coordinate to play together and chat about games in a single channel, voice chat in about 2-3 channels and the quality of life is various degrees of magnitude better than the old skype/teamspeak days.
When you look at what it was supposed to compete with (good old mumble and teamspeak). The UX and UI make a lot of sense. You where supposed to have a lot of channel since you where usually creating one per game / per team. I remember having channel lol-1, lol-2, cs-1, cs-2, etc, so that multiple team could play the same game at the same time without speaking over each other. Then you had a main channel where you where hanging out when not playing anything.
But discord became so popular, it stopped being used just has a "game voip" service and has a general messaging service. A lot of streamer/youtuber use discord to host their community. I even know some company who switched to it when the pandemic started. And the fact and the matter is that discord was never designed for this.
But discord became so popular, it stopped being used just has a "game voip" service and has a general messaging service. A lot of streamer/youtuber use discord to host their community. I even know some company who switched to it when the pandemic started. And the fact and the matter is that discord was never designed for this.
Totally Agree. We have quite a few smaller professional communities switching to our airsend (https://www.airsend.io/) exactly for the same reason. What we hear often from these users is that managing discord (tool) takes more time than the actual communication. It is ideal for large communities but if you want something simple discord is not the way to go.
And still not as bad of an UX as the process of joining a Zoom Meeting / Webinar
Yeah. Even I felt the same. It feels incredibly spammy, admin, roles, plus cluttered interface.
That's exactly why I prefer Telegram to Discord in most cases. Everything just feels so cluttered. Yeah, it's nice to have the multiple channels in one server (though forums would be nicer, as then things would be easily searchable in the future for everyone and not behind Discord's wall, where who knows what could happen), but Telegram is just so much sleeker in my opinion, and that's why I use it as my primary chat app (and keep trying to get more of my friends and family on it)
> Will win in terms of what?
Penetration, profitability, etc.
More broadly, what does the landscape look like in 5 years? 10 years?
I'm also skeptical that chat is worth as much as I'd once thought. If it's not paired with an enterprise solution (Slack, Teams, Hangouts/Allo/Meet/Whatever), it has to make money on ads or premium features (emotes, stickers, "server boosts").
Google and Facebook are about to get reamed by the DOJ for anti-competitive practices, and I'll wager that privacy is one of the talking points. If you can't use chat to enhance your advertising moat, what then? Sticker sales can't amount to that much, and ads without purchase intent or social graph knowledge are pretty low value.
I'm curious what people's thoughts are.
Penetration, profitability, etc.
More broadly, what does the landscape look like in 5 years? 10 years?
I'm also skeptical that chat is worth as much as I'd once thought. If it's not paired with an enterprise solution (Slack, Teams, Hangouts/Allo/Meet/Whatever), it has to make money on ads or premium features (emotes, stickers, "server boosts").
Google and Facebook are about to get reamed by the DOJ for anti-competitive practices, and I'll wager that privacy is one of the talking points. If you can't use chat to enhance your advertising moat, what then? Sticker sales can't amount to that much, and ads without purchase intent or social graph knowledge are pretty low value.
I'm curious what people's thoughts are.
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What stops zoom from doing it?
Unpopular opinion & OT: Synchronous communication (eg. calls, video calls, real meetings) with more than two people rarely add value.
Edit: Dear Downvoters, it's ok that you downvoted as it was expected but please share why you think different and give examples what value a 2+ meeting adds
Edit: Dear Downvoters, it's ok that you downvoted as it was expected but please share why you think different and give examples what value a 2+ meeting adds
My team hosts a weekly call where we sum up our progress for the last week and loosely plan the activities for the next week.
It's very useful. It adds value, since during this kind of conversation one can offer useful suggestion or another point of view on an issue that they hadn't addressed before (because they were working on something else, for example).
Different use case: incident handling with tight time constraints. In other words: prod offline and has to be brought up asap, but coordination is needed in touching the various systems. A 2+ people voice call is a godsend because now everything is "in sync" and usually updated in real time with what other people are doing.
Your opinion is not unpopular, is just the product of an HN-like echo chamber. People advocating of async-only communications are a small minority that makes a lot of noise, it's a common situation.
It's very useful. It adds value, since during this kind of conversation one can offer useful suggestion or another point of view on an issue that they hadn't addressed before (because they were working on something else, for example).
Different use case: incident handling with tight time constraints. In other words: prod offline and has to be brought up asap, but coordination is needed in touching the various systems. A 2+ people voice call is a godsend because now everything is "in sync" and usually updated in real time with what other people are doing.
Your opinion is not unpopular, is just the product of an HN-like echo chamber. People advocating of async-only communications are a small minority that makes a lot of noise, it's a common situation.
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Yes. You need both sync and async capabilities in a communication tool. It is hard to choose two different tools for that purpose. Both have a place when it comes to Team communication.
Clubhouse user here, it can add value if people are intentional, empathetic to others in the room, and have differing perspectives. There is something magical about co-creating a conversation like Jazz musicians improving a piece. When it works you feel a tangible energy that is it's own 'person', when it doesn't work it degrades into a mob. So the key here is curating people and making sure they have some common base of values.
To add to this: The same reasons we have weekly team meetings on a conference call for work.
This is weird.
I had to talk to two others yesterday, all separated by thousands of kilometres. The video chat gave us the ability to catch up without having to repeat the same stories twice. And it was a chance to hear two voices on the same topic from their experience in their specific country/place. And I got to see their smiling faces.
I had to talk to two others yesterday, all separated by thousands of kilometres. The video chat gave us the ability to catch up without having to repeat the same stories twice. And it was a chance to hear two voices on the same topic from their experience in their specific country/place. And I got to see their smiling faces.
I disagree, but I upvoted since I hate the kind of downvote you're describing and I am regularly downvoted for the same reasons.
I think it adds a great amount of value, I can have a group discussion and plan things in real time instead of a slow async discussion.
Especially for online games, a async communication would be terrible. ;)
I think it adds a great amount of value, I can have a group discussion and plan things in real time instead of a slow async discussion.
Especially for online games, a async communication would be terrible. ;)
Does having a conversation with more than 1 person in real life also rarely add value?
You're thinking business, but this is more like Teamspeak (or Discord).
This this this, i primarily used tg for professional purposes but discovered the communities there lol it's indeed a little like discord.
It's basically a comparison of two functions. On the one hand is the overhead of needing to schedule and maybe travel in order to meet, and amount of time wasted by people in the meeting who don't actively need to participate. On the other is the cost of context switching, risk of misunderstanding inherent in lower-bandwidth communication and delay in understanding one another that comes from asynchronicity. Whichever is more costly in a given situation loses out. In my experience, if the conversation would require a lot of back and forth (e.g. complex or delicate topic) synchronous wins, otherwise asynchronous wins out. As async tools become better, the cost of async goes down, and it comes out ahead more often. It's not always the best solution, but it often is.
I guess its ok for non-business purposes, e.g. catching up with friends. It was a bummer having to bounce off to Messenger for that, especially when tg's user interface is smoother.
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Clubhouse seems to be doing something interesting with voice chat, twitter is testing out too. I think it has value as micropodcasting.
Another amazing thing is when I type a message on my phone - I see it on my PC the moment I press Send button. There's no visible delay, a perfect Google search effect from 2000-s.