Do know why you use Telegram but you shouldn't use it...
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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Privacy
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Telegram has launched horrible ads that look a lot like spam to me.
Ads and spam are the same thing...
It won't take long for clients to pop up. But ultimately people shouldn't rely on telegram or any billionaire backed software for pretty much anything.
100% agreed, but it's so hard to get everyone to move to signal or simplex or something.
It'll be easer when you point out they don't have adds.
My only problem with Signal is the inability to manually sync conversations. Even if I have backups from my phone. They can't be used on the desktop. I have seen some third party tools, but even those state that they might not work.
I use telegram mainly for info channels and tickers. To my knowledge that's not possible in Signal, because you can't restrict participants to be read-only (right?)
I saw people using signal for announcements only by restricting posting messages to group chat admins. Is that similar to what you're looking for?
Ah nice, I didn't know that was possible
You can do that, but Simplex has a limit on the amount of users in a group due to encryption. There is no point in using an e2ee messenger for public announcements
True! But then Simplex / Signal are no real alternatives to Telegram, are they?
The problem with Signal is that the UX isn't up to par aesthetically and the problem with SimpleX is that the UX is overly complicated. People want a great chat app first and foremost, privacy is an afterthought.
What about Signal's UI isn't up to par aesthetically?
Same question. I checked out Signal not a long time ago and it was really good looking. The only thing regular users may not like is the encryption key verification thing but it's not really a UI issue.
Definitely a UI issue because it is not clear what the user is supposed to do according to the UI.
Should I be sitting physically next to the person to confirm? Read out the gazillion character code to them over a regular phone call?
Either
If they are the only two options then it isn't practical. Wouldn't six characters be enough? One in 56,800,235,584 chance of guessing and brute force attacks could be avoided with a limit of 3 tries per hour.
EDIT: Or I could just content myself with the first 6 characters matching. I suppose there is my solution.
You can also use your camera to scan the qr when seeing the person in person.
Set the navigation bar size to compact and this looks much better.
Going from WhatsApp to Signal there's literally no problem with Signal UI.
Many people use TG specifically because it has unlimited cloud storage. Signal doesn't offer this (don't know about SimpleX).
For the average person, the ability to run it on seamlessly on multiple devices is more important than storage.
Simplex neither, the servers are only for transfer and the necessary short term storage.
It's just a joke. I don't want you to actually feel bad.
But you should do some research on Telegram, and the fact that they rolled ads out on its own should be a giant Red Flag waving you down. They're not a good company, and their homespun encryption is dubious at best.
I know! But I don't really have a choice currently; which app would you suggest for tickers / info channels? Mastodon would be an option, but it's not quite the same. Abd I'd first have to convince everyone to use it :/
Just be more like me and refuse to talk to people who aren't on Signal. Works for me sometimes.
I just saw one in fdroid and I can't remember it now, lemme see if I can find it.
EDIT: it was zulip
I feel that. That's why I said it was a joke. If I could get all my people off Discord and on Matrix I would but oh well.
Matrix/Element would be my preferred as I could self-host, but I don't have better suggestions that are more like Telegram I am sorry to say.
i kinda wanna quit nowadays but android customization channels (custom roms, gcam etc) are moving there from xda nowadays so no choice :(
wish there was some read only tg scraper.
Where can I find links to join these? Been wondering why everything is dried up.
I would also like the link to custom roms channels. I never used Telegram but may check it out since its something I am interested in.
they are usually about a specific device. These are the few I'm in.
t.me/eureka_roms (Exynos 7884/5 Galaxy phones)
t.me/eliteroms_sexynos (Exynos 5443, 8890, 8895, 9810)
t.me/exynos9820oss (Exynos 9820)
t.me/LGG7V40Customs (LG's SDM845 devices)
usually when you look at a rom threads' first post you can find a telegram link
Huh, I clicked the link and it’s blocked by my DNS content blocker. Have you tried using an adblocker on your phone?
Which one? There's three in my post. And I do use an ad blocking DNS, but this can't block message-like ads from Telegram. Otherwise it would have to somehow read the encrypted message content...
The first one (ads). I’m not a heavy user, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen ads or sponsored messages even in unencrypted chats. I use Mullvad’s DNS blocker.
Nekogram and Mercurygram (both from F-Droid) may be the option? Using them both now and so far I dont see any ads popping up.
I tried Nekogram but it is also showing ads. It only shows adds on public channels, though.
AyuGram is ad-free and also has a little more TOS-breaking features. Use at your own risk!
Mobile: https://github.com/AyuGram/AyuGram4A
Desktop: https://github.com/AyuGram/AyuGramDesktop
I'll give it a try, thanks! Sadly it doesn't seem to be well maintained though :/
I was under the imoression that Telegram was a better alternative to WhatsApp but even WhatsApp doesn't have ads. What should I be using, then?
WhatsApp kind of has ads, in the form of advertised channels and still sucks up your data. For simplicity use Signal, for decentralized and number less registration use Simplex, and if you want the maximum privacy use Briar (Briar has huge trade offs for more privacy, so unless you gotta leak some documents or something I wouldn’t use it)
Telegram was never a better alternative. It's not even encrypted. All your chats go straight to Abu Dhabi where everyone can freely access them.
Signal is a viable alternative to Whatsapp. Threema is too, but less popular.
Why were you under that impression? No default encryption, no group chat encryption. Data on the servers, meta data, company resides in UAE and many more. Wenn don't know what's und er the hood of WhatsApp but what de know about Telegram is nauseatic
We know WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol for encryption, but it also collects a lot of metadata. Arguably still better than Telegram that collects everything. Its secret chats may be e2ee but nobody uses them even for discussing sensitive matters, and they don't work on the Desktop.
While I'm not using telegram (and you should neither, it sucks and it's bad for privacy), here are two options:
Change your DNS. If that's the way they're distributing their ads, they'll be gone
Maybe Telegram FLOSS (F-Droid-Store) can help?
Telegram FOSS doesn't remove ads anymore
I already use an ad blocking DNS, but that's not how they distribute ads, sadly