Telegram is just actually superior in terms of features I don’t get it.
Why does anyone choose Telegram or WhatsApp over Signal which is encrypted and audited? (Probably features I don’t care about, but they do)
Telegram let’s you send 2gb files, and stores them forever. Signal has a 100mb limit.
It also used to be easier to set up on multiple devices at the same time, but I believe that Whatsapp and Signal have improved that by now too.
Why switch platforms if all your data is still being collected? This just provides another business with your data to sell and possibly have hacked. Sure, Telegram offers encryption, but it’s not enabled by default even though they advertise it thoroughly. This demonstrates they’re taking advantage of peoples desire for privacy simply to increase their user base while making the users + contacts do all the work.
As far as file sharing, with ProtonDrive I can use any messaging service and send a 500GB file if I wanted, fully encrypted with password protection and an expiration date. Telegram keeping the files forever doesn’t seem like a benefit either.
I’m not sure the file limitations are much of a factor when 100mb covers most files that would need to be sent through a messaging service. There are plenty of dedicated services for sharing larger files.
That’s the point tho, it negates the need for dedicated services for sharing larger files
Why not use an encrypted service to send files though?
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It’s encrypted, just not E2E encrypted
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A lot of the time the files i’m sending are game clips or parts of Youtube videos. i want good quality above privacy
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Piracy tho. I can go to my telegram, search a movie title and click play and it just works.
If the file size is under 2GB I guess, which is ehhh
4GB if the sender was premium, which they will be.
I don’t care if its 720p if it just works.
Tbh I’ll want it to be decent 1080p
It often is.
I mentioned it because it was an annoying limitation for me. 100mb is not a lot for media and zip files nowadays. And I don’t know any good free services that will work more conveniently than simply sending with Telegram, suggestions welcome.
https://toffeeshare.com/ is what I usually use for big files. But both sender and receiver need to be online for the whole transfer. It doesn’t store anything you send on their servers, but that’s a feature for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Was going to post this :3
Signal is based in the US. Better to use something that is not based in the.US.
As long as your messages are end-to-end encrypted, I don’t know why you would care about that. It’s proven that they do not collect any metadata that could harm your privacy and most of their stuff is open source. The signal protocol is a pretty solid protocol supporting E2EE. There are not even cloud backup options, so your messages can never be read from someone other than you and the receiver, unlike something like iMessage that has cloud backup option that backups your messages stored locally on your device probably in plain text to iCloud.
It takes just one FISA court order to compromise Signal.
I’ve been using Signal for a long time now, it was great until they ended SMS text support, then they started trying to turn Signal into a social media thing, I just want end to end encryption without having to worry about somebody like Zuckerberg having access to my texts.
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I agree that signal is superior in terms of privacy but a lot of people don’t care about that. And most people using WhatsApp DEFINITELY don’t care about that.
Oh so we should only care about good and secure design when end users care about it!
Because you clearly can’t read the room that was sarcasm.
I never said you shouldn’t care though??
WhatsApp uses the same encryption schema as signal.
This undermines your whole original post.
does signal have multi device synchronization? on telegram you can start to write a message on one device and continue on another.
one of the feature i use most on telegram is saved messages to send stuff between phone and pc.
this is pretty much the only thing that is keeping me on telegram.
Right?
I think you mean Signal.
Nope! Telegram because you know what they say in cryptography circles: always roll your own! Oh wait…
Currently using signal but have been intrigued by some of the no phone number alternatives like SimpleX
I mean telegram
Pretty much one of the last messaging platforms I’d try to use.
Makes a post about messaging superiority by advocating for inferior app. Lol. Gotta read the room better buddy.
Why are you taking such a confrontational approach?
Original commenter and you give no information on what makes Signal better. Signal is outside of the topic scope anyway, but would be a fair extension of it. Instead you use an insulting tone and completely dismiss their approach.
And this shit gets more up than downvotes. Makes it clear this platform has group-think toxicity issues too, moreso than promoting fair and good-intention discussion.
It’s probably no more or less confrontational than OP’s question
The tone makes a huge difference.
OP tone is mainly confusion with an open question. They disclose their belief/understanding which they acknowledge either contradicts or puts into question the evident state of things they see.
I don’t see how that’s confrontational similar to the commenter dismissing their whole approach as a definite statement without points you could argue. It’s a closed dismissal and in an insulting tone.
What makes you think they are similar? Or to what degree?
I don’t know about you, but the tone of the original question come across very dismissively to me. OP isn’t asking what they missed, why WhatsApp might be as good as Telegram. They’ve flat out declared the winner and are asking why nobody else is agreeing with them.
Seriously?
Telegram is just actually superior in terms of features I don’t get it.
vs
… Lol. Gotta read the room better buddy.
We’re not even in the same ballpark in terms of tone.
I can see your point, and agree with it for the most part. But they’re still posting on Asklemmy implying it is a question or interest of reason. It also doesn’t dismiss a person directly/specifically, nor is the tone insulting.
In regards to Whatsapp. If I were talking about signal vs telegram then this comment would be relevant but I’m not am i
I mean, Telegram is the worst of the bunch, but putting that aside, the point is that people aren’t comparing telegram and whatsapp, they’re comparing telegram, whatsapp, signal, matrix, sms, imessage, facebook messenger, instagram messenger, session, wire, wechat, the crypto ones, kik, and a dozen other chat clients you’ve never heard of. And most people are not actually making those comparisons, most people just use the one their friends use, or the one that their phone came with. Nobody, anywhere, is pretending there are only two options and picking one of them.
Wooosh
Brotha it wasn’t a joke
It was a joke, but you appear not to have gotten it. Hence the wooosh sound.
Bring that back over to reddit.
Why do people choose Telegram over Signal? Signal encrypts everything by default, unlike Telegram which only “encrypts” messages in a (iirc) secure or secret chat. Fortunately, EU is forcing all major gatekeepers’ messaging apps to be able to communicate with other messaging apps. I, finally, will be able to break free from WhatsApp and use Signal. Uninstalling WhatsApp and requesting for a deletion of my account; a dream come true soon.
Why use Signal over XMPP and Matrix? Signal is centralized and wants you to stay in check, using their crappy client, giving away your phone number, and all your presence, social graph and other privacy sensitive information to a single actor (which can’t be yourself, because you can’t self host signal) and that has nothing to back it up other than “trust me bro, I’m gonna do no harm, but also I control all your communications under my own terms and conditions and there’s nothing you can do about it”.
Because one is an app and the others are a technology standard. I can install Signal on my phone and use it to talk to people securely.
Where do I go to get XMPP or Matrix? Can I trust app makers to have correctly implemented the protocols? When it comes to security I tend to trust larger entities versus the garage startup.
While that’s a fair point, element.io is the defacto matrix implementation and effectively the group that started matrix.
Matrix was found leaking metadata, it’s not like Matrix is bad or anything. But it just doesn’t get the attention it needs. For WhatsApp users that do want better privacy and security, Signal is a solid choice. XMPP, by default with no configuration doesn’t really have encryption and also, it has issues with metadata leakage as well.
For the average joe, Signal is a simple app that has privacy and security out of the box. Sure, it would be awesome if Matrix was widely adopted, but it isn’t.
What Matrix metadata leakage are you talking about? Regarding XMPP, I am not aware of anything like it, and I suspect that this leakage you are talking about is just standard client-server signaling, where in federated protocols like Matrix and XMPP you can chose whom to trust (or self-host) whereas in all other cases your metadata isn’t just centralized and consolidated, you have no recourse and knowledge about what’s being done with it.
On the side of XMPP, OMEMO (which is XMPP’s take on double ratchet encryption à la Signal) is standard across the board of all maintained clients, so you wouldn’t be less secure there than on e.g. Signal or Telegram, so your take on XMPP’s security isn’t factual.
Huh, some things might have changed then. My memory is from around 2021-2022, so things might have changed.
Signal is an installable App from an app store… Where’s your matrix and xmpp? That’s why they use it over element/etc
XMPP arguably has some of of the strongest crypto functionality there is, it’s just too dependent on the app to feel safe, since all of the vulnerabilities in these ecosystems are basically down to the client implementation.
Absolutely, and an argument can be made about captive ecosystems controlling both clients and servers. They also represent a single point of failure, so there’s no magic bullet. In practice it’s also not that different than keeping up with your browser’s/OS’/phone’s updates and XMPP has that for itself that it has (unlike Matrix) a vibrant community of clients and servers supported by diverse parties (commercial and not).
Matrix and XMPP have plenty of apps installable from those stores as well, not sure what your argument is about?
Their names are not matrix or xmpp… It’s not as easy as saying “Install Signal” is my point.
that’s not even true, if you search “matrix”, element is your first result, if you type XMPP, you get “Conversations”, exactly as you would expect.
When talking about messaging apps, you’ve to use the one that’s easiest to use even for the most noob tech person.
Signal uses phone number, because that’s how people generally communicate. It’s easy to use, setup. No privacy nightmares compared to WhatsApp, or security nightmares compared to Telegram (where E2EE is not even on by default). It’s open source, regularly audited and can be used on any device (no more proprietary green bubble nonsense). There’s still a market for Threema and Matrix, etc. It just never will be mainstream.
No privacy nightmares compared to WhatsApp
My whole point was that between Signal and WhatsApp, none is intrinsically better than the other in this regard. Both are centralized and collect the same amount of privacy-sensitive data about you (your online presence and patterns, your IP, your network graph, the routing of your messages and their nature…), because they need that to function. Whether they log it (irrespective of what they advertise) is one thing nobody but themselves can verify and where opensource plays no role.
Matrix/XMPP are only better because you can self-host if you trust no one, or choose whom to trust, or change whom to trust along the way without incurring a total loss of your contacts, histories, assets, …
IMO, the sales pitch for XMPP/Matrix shouldn’t be “we are better/more secure/more privacy focused by design” (and it’s pretty clear that the tech-illiterate majority doesn’t care anyway), it should be “with us, you will no longer have to jump ship every 5 years in avg. because facebook/google/amazon/some oligarch/… broke their promise/used their absolute power over your account to their discretion”.
9 People don’t care about encryption but care about custom stickers, convinient search, everything fancy that’s not privacy
I don’t understand the love for Telegram.
In the short period of using it I had so much BS come through by scammers/spammers - both as DMs and group messages. I’ve rarely had that with WhatsApp.
In my eyes WhatsApp is far better than Telegram. And Signal is far greater than WhatsApp. The only thing I wish Signal had was inbuilt GIFs; it’s not that much of an issue on mobile but it’s a pain on desktop.
Telegram is awful with spam. I’m constantly getting sent links to Telegram groups for Russian porn models who all pretend to be underage and spamming their Boosty links. I feel like it’s probably part of some scam to bait people into buying something illegal and then blackmail them later. I don’t keep it installed anymore because I don’t need that sort of incriminating shit on my devices.
I’d delete my account, but I have a couple people who only use Telegram, but I’m getting close to cutting them off over it unless they switch to something else. I’ve reported this to Telegram numerous times, but these accounts keep popping up and keep managing to reach me.
It’s either something about your phone number or your username. I’ve never had a problem on there
Just change your privacy settings then.
Telegram is more user friendly than Whatsapp, it’s clients are open source and has a decent desktop app.
It’s way better than Zuck’s trash.
No E2EE by default though
I’ve had way more scam calls, groups and texts on whatsapp than on Telegram.
So I definitely don’t understand why anyone would like whatsapp.
With Telegram you can easily limit any communication requests to only come from your list of contacts while that is impossible with WA. The only way you can get out of getting scam calls is by turning on “mute unknown calls” and “limit groups to contacts” but the calls will still pop up and you will still get chat requests so you will have to block and delete each one of them manually.
Instead of just limiting all communication to your contacts like on telegram.
I believe the same settings are also in WhatsApp.
No in whatsapp you can’t limit requests to only your contacts. It’s only with groups. I’ve checked and googled.
Isn’t it the same in Telegram? Interestingly, in Telegram it looks like everyone can send you a voice message unless you pay Telegram money to unlock the ability to restrict it.
In telegram you can restrict people from calling you completely. WA doesn’t have that function.
And yes it sucks that VMs on telegram is behind a paywall but at least the restriction exists unlike WA.
Interestingly they don’t appear to advertise it at all as a perk on the premium purchasing page.
That’s interesting I never had that experience with telegram. It’s been cust as “clean” as Whatsapp for me
why did you enable DMs from random accounts?
Easily turned off.
I didn’t enable anything. One would assume the default settings should offer a good level of protection to the users.
Interestingly I haven’t had a single spammer/scammer annoy me on Signal. I’m not sure if there are any of these settings in Signal?
I get you, but I don’t get the love for Facebook/meta/whatsapp
There’s no ‘love’ for Meta, most people don’t think in those terms. It’s just that their platforms are in heavy use in many countries and you tend to use the method most common to people in your circle.
My older friends and family use Messenger and SMS, my similarly aged peers use WhatsApp, and my work colleagues use Signal. So I correspond across all these. I know the benefits and pitfalls of each but I can’t influence the established communication choices of others. The only people i know who use Telegram are racist nutjobs.
Same but android development communities for me, on telegram
How? I’ve been a heavy telegram user for more than 8 years now. Not a single time I have unwillingly been added to a group I had no interest in or been messaged with any scam message.
I know of privacy settings that limit these, but I have none of them turned on, because I have some people that might add me to important groups.
Why do not more people choose a matrix server and use a decentralized way of communication instead of committing themselves to this or that app/company?
Because most people they know use WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram.
If I were clever enough to host my own matrix server I would in a heartbeat. Bridges to WhatsApp, insta, fb, etc. are game changers.
I found a server in the list I posted that was hosted by people in my area and funded by donations. I got in touch with them and they even implemented some bridges with that server. Now I am using it with a WhatsApp bridge, feels pretty seamless.
I’m not sure but I’m going to take a look. Thanks
Lol I’ve tried matrix before. It’s really bad. And it’s more of a IRC/discord alternative than instant messaging apps.
Not sure when you tried it or with which app but you can use it just like an instant messenger. It can do more like discord but this can easily very ignored.
I have heard that once it was a pain to use as a client but since I started using it half a year ago it felt pretty smooth.
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Because latin americans are way too brainwashed to use it. (source: i can’t get any of my friends or family to use telegram)
people use the messaging app that their friends are on
doesn’t matter if it’s objectively terribleTelegram has no end-to-end encryption for normal messages
Signal is much better than Telegram in terms of privacy. Do people find Telegram more convenient?
I don’t consider privacy a primary reason for someone to choose one service over another because most don’t care. What I mean is that telegram has more features in general.
What do you say to all of the people who use Whatsapp instead of Telegram because its default privacy is better? Privacy is one of the main selling points of WhatsApp, even though Signal has better privacy.
I’d say that why not just use signal if you actually care about privacy lol…
WhatsApp is more convenient than Signal and more people are on WhatsApp
Most people don’t care that it’s owned by Meta. They just want to be on the platform everyone else is on.
What I’m asking is why is everyone on that platform already when they have better alternatives
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people have explained a dozen reasons why a. telegram is not better and b. nobody cares which is better anyway.
Because whatsapp came first.
Yes, everyone I know outside the US uses it. If I understand correctly years ago in a lot of countries SMS was either very costly or unavailable, while WhatsApp was free.
Also, WhatsApp allowed people to send pictures and stuff. Effectively, it has replaced SMS, MMS, and MSN Messenger. There was a brief period where people would still communicate via Facebook chat on PC, but once smarphones became prevalent WhatsApp won the battle (except in the US, which is something I’ve never been able to understand)
Yeah I think I was paying €0.09 throughout a lot of the 2000s. I switched to WhatsApp in 2010 I think, when I got an iPhone.
Was WhatsApp ever on those late 2000s Nokia s Symbian phones?
- Whatsapp is more popular.
- It has a lot of scammers. Especially crypto scammers.
- A little bit more difficult to use. There are so many features and it can kind lf get overwhelming.
- Messages are not end to end encrypted by default.
I have been using whatsapp for a long time. No onle has tried to scam me. Only received some spam or promotional materials.
Telegram is full of spammers. More than whatsapp. I
Number 1 is what my question is about
Whatsapp also has scammers
It’s just as easy as Whatsapp if you don’t want/need to look into more features.
The popularity of WhatsApp is /why/ WhatsApp is popular. That’s just kind of how it works with messaging apps. The only reason anyone has WhatsApp is because someone they wanted or needed to talk to was using WhatsApp.
the phrase you’re looking for is “positive network effects.” The large network is a killer feature.
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If most people used Telegram, Meta would have bought it instead of WhatsApp.
People don’t care what’s better. Most people won’t try anything new if the existing stuff is not severely broken.
Messaging apps are tricky, you can’t just pick what’s the “best” because it’s primary function is to message people, so the best app is what can do that.
If nobody you want to message uses telegram, or signal, or matrix, than they aren’t very good messaging apps FOR YOU.
You have to start using the app, then start convincing everyone else to use it, and that’s quite a hurdle, when most people you know use the “good enough” Whatsapp, or even just SMS, or iMessage.
