Discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=scrollaway I’ll paste my comment from there below. Telegram blows my mind. Say what you want about their security; they have the absolute...
Telegram blows my mind.
Say what you want about their security; they have the absolute best UX of any (primarily 1-on-1) messaging app, bar none.
Discord is a close second. But the quality and polish of telegram blows me away to this day.
And it’s lots of small features and details such as built in translation for messages in a foreign language, all the smooth animations, quick look and summaries of channels with aggregated links media etc, a super fast and responsive UI etc. And their stickers are actually ridiculously fun to play with (I used to not be into that, telegram converted me).
Just yesterday I accidentally found out that it’s possible to replace a picture you have sent, with a new or different one - I sent a photo, realised it would have been better cropped, and just edited the message as I normally would have.
And with all that it’s the only popular messenger that is actually easy to programmatically interact with. (And cheap! WhatsApp has a business offering and it’s ridiculously expensive)
The stickers are hands down the best underrated feature of Telegram, IMO. It's the entire reason my ex and I settled on it when we were looking for something to replace Hangouts for us. Sadly my...
The stickers are hands down the best underrated feature of Telegram, IMO. It's the entire reason my ex and I settled on it when we were looking for something to replace Hangouts for us.
Sadly my current SO and I just use standard RCS (granted, since we're both on Pixels it's a good experience with encryption and whatnot), and since Telegram has gotten linked with the far right at least in my social circles (I literally had to explain this to the group of friends I do weekly bar trivia with, as myself and my SO are the only non-iPhone users in it, because a couple definitely were wondering if I was secretly a right winger when they saw it on my phone), it's not something I'm comfortable trying to move my contacts to anymore.
But fuck me if I don't miss all of my goofy sticker packs on there when using any other messaging platform.
Following the death of Hangouts, Telegram became the platform of choice for my wife and me. I've been slowly converting friends and family ever since, although iPhone users tend to be holdouts. I...
Following the death of Hangouts, Telegram became the platform of choice for my wife and me. I've been slowly converting friends and family ever since, although iPhone users tend to be holdouts.
Telegram has gotten linked with the far right at least in my social circles
I do have a few family members who joined shortly after January 6. I have yet to engage them on the platform, because I suspect their motivations are... misaligned with mine. I also wonder if they're aware that Telegram notified me of their joining -- a policy that I'm not entirely crazy about myself.
Hah, I’ve converted all my closer friends to Telegram. My board game group moved to it from WhatsApp and now loves it. I used the drama about Facebook from a year ago or so as a good pretext for...
Hah, I’ve converted all my closer friends to Telegram. My board game group moved to it from WhatsApp and now loves it. I used the drama about Facebook from a year ago or so as a good pretext for it (I don’t remember what drama, there’s always something to pick from though).
Sadly my current SO and I just use standard RCS
See, this is why I now only date Ukrainians/Russians :p
wall of text on this, as well as my thoughts on Telegram in general On the one hand, I'm somewhat glad to see Telegram moving to a premium subscription model. This reduces the likelihood that they...
Telegram became one of the top-5 downloaded apps worldwide in 2022 and now has over 700 million monthly active users. This growth is solely from personal recommendations – Telegram has never paid to advertise its apps.
As Telegram keeps growing at rocket speed, many users have expressed their will to support our team. Today we're launching Premium Telegram Premium – a subscription that lets you support Telegram's continued development and gives you access to exclusive additional features.
This will allow us to offer all the resource-heavy features users have asked for over the years, while preserving free access to the most powerful messenger on the planet.
wall of text on this, as well as my thoughts on Telegram in general
On the one hand, I'm somewhat glad to see Telegram moving to a premium subscription model. This reduces the likelihood that they will do stuff such as blatantly sell off user data to third parties, and (hopefully) gives them a sustainable revenue stream. And from what I've read on places such as HackerNews, as well as my own limited experience of it (the Android Progressive Web App is downright enjoyable to use) they seem to have a pretty top quality product, between being very developer friendly, having a really good UI/UX, as well as features such as 2 GB file upload limits. Which explains their rapid growth.
On the other hand...I am somewhat troubled by how successful their marketing themselves as a secure and private messenger is, given how their encryption apparently isn't really that good compared to, say, Signal, Matrix, and maybe even WhatsApp. Yes, it's true that end to end encryption makes syncing with multiple devices hard, and that not having it on can be an acceptable tradeoff to make in the name of convenience (although it is worth noting that matrix does make it work), but I don't think it's ok to market it as being superior security wise to apps such as Signal or WhatsApp that do have it on by default.
Discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=scrollaway
I’ll paste my comment from there below.
Telegram blows my mind.
Say what you want about their security; they have the absolute best UX of any (primarily 1-on-1) messaging app, bar none.
Discord is a close second. But the quality and polish of telegram blows me away to this day.
And it’s lots of small features and details such as built in translation for messages in a foreign language, all the smooth animations, quick look and summaries of channels with aggregated links media etc, a super fast and responsive UI etc. And their stickers are actually ridiculously fun to play with (I used to not be into that, telegram converted me).
Just yesterday I accidentally found out that it’s possible to replace a picture you have sent, with a new or different one - I sent a photo, realised it would have been better cropped, and just edited the message as I normally would have.
And with all that it’s the only popular messenger that is actually easy to programmatically interact with. (And cheap! WhatsApp has a business offering and it’s ridiculously expensive)
The stickers are hands down the best underrated feature of Telegram, IMO. It's the entire reason my ex and I settled on it when we were looking for something to replace Hangouts for us.
Sadly my current SO and I just use standard RCS (granted, since we're both on Pixels it's a good experience with encryption and whatnot), and since Telegram has gotten linked with the far right at least in my social circles (I literally had to explain this to the group of friends I do weekly bar trivia with, as myself and my SO are the only non-iPhone users in it, because a couple definitely were wondering if I was secretly a right winger when they saw it on my phone), it's not something I'm comfortable trying to move my contacts to anymore.
But fuck me if I don't miss all of my goofy sticker packs on there when using any other messaging platform.
Following the death of Hangouts, Telegram became the platform of choice for my wife and me. I've been slowly converting friends and family ever since, although iPhone users tend to be holdouts.
I do have a few family members who joined shortly after January 6. I have yet to engage them on the platform, because I suspect their motivations are... misaligned with mine. I also wonder if they're aware that Telegram notified me of their joining -- a policy that I'm not entirely crazy about myself.
Hah, I’ve converted all my closer friends to Telegram. My board game group moved to it from WhatsApp and now loves it. I used the drama about Facebook from a year ago or so as a good pretext for it (I don’t remember what drama, there’s always something to pick from though).
See, this is why I now only date Ukrainians/Russians :p
wall of text on this, as well as my thoughts on Telegram in general
On the one hand, I'm somewhat glad to see Telegram moving to a premium subscription model. This reduces the likelihood that they will do stuff such as blatantly sell off user data to third parties, and (hopefully) gives them a sustainable revenue stream. And from what I've read on places such as HackerNews, as well as my own limited experience of it (the Android Progressive Web App is downright enjoyable to use) they seem to have a pretty top quality product, between being very developer friendly, having a really good UI/UX, as well as features such as 2 GB file upload limits. Which explains their rapid growth.
On the other hand...I am somewhat troubled by how successful their marketing themselves as a secure and private messenger is, given how their encryption apparently isn't really that good compared to, say, Signal, Matrix, and maybe even WhatsApp. Yes, it's true that end to end encryption makes syncing with multiple devices hard, and that not having it on can be an acceptable tradeoff to make in the name of convenience (although it is worth noting that matrix does make it work), but I don't think it's ok to market it as being superior security wise to apps such as Signal or WhatsApp that do have it on by default.