this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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Privacy

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Search on Telegram is more powerful than in other messaging apps because it allows users to find public channels and bots. Unfortunately, this feature has been abused by people who violated our Terms of Service to sell illegal goods.

To further deter criminals from abusing Telegram Search, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, ensuring they are consistent across the world. We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (17 children)

regarding its UX, nothing close exists; when it comes to converting normies, so you have someone to actually talk to, then there are no alternatives. that's a pretty shitty state of affairs for something that shoulda been solved a long time ago.

lesson learned, I guess, don't put all your eggs in one basket and have multiple fallback solutions. I've begrudingly moved to Signal and I'm cursing it out at least once per day, can't believe the navel-gazing, self-righteous cluelessness behind it; but that's the best there is at the moment. it's beyond shitty that we're having trouble achieving what we had in like 2012 by way of XMPP and friends, let alone surpassing it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (8 children)

What don't you like about Signal?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)

to me it looks and feels like shit, compared to Durov's spyware it's like a PoC from 2015 looking for funding. fine demo you got there, now bring us the real thing.

but, to practical things, I lose/sell/buy/switch devices frequently. with telegram, I can lose all my devices, log on from a fresh one and all my shit is there - a decade+ of convos with 100s of people with valuable info. no juggling around with the crappy electron desktop app that doesn't give me access to convos or the inane procedure to replace a lost device and restore chat history... the other day, I successfully retrieved a piece of info from a convo from a decade prior.

I realize there are people out there that need that sort of security, but I don't. I just want Telegram with an OTR plugin (OMEMO nowadays) that prevents any nascent mass surveilance and LLM ingestion and I'm golden. but that shit's explicitly against Telegram's ToS; the only logical conclusion is they're adamant about leaving all your shit unencrypted in the cloud for some specific reason.

I can't think of any such reason that's not malevolent.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I see it a lot when ppl complain about signal, but just can't understand why you would save 10+ years in old msgs. Almost all my signal conversations even GRP chats are set to 1 week auto delete. If something important Is said that I need to save, I copy/paste it into my note app where I can organize it. Its sounds so impractical to dig through 10+ years of data everytime you need something. Plus it would be awful to know there is a log of all the dumb things I said 10 years ago lol.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Completely agree! The ephemerality of Signal is a feature, not a bug.

I didn't always see it this way, but then a thought occurred to me. None of the conversations we have in person are recorded. Those communications are just as meaningful if not more so than text conversations, and yet somehow we get by just fine without them being stored indefinitely on some personal device, let alone in someone else's datacenter.

This is a case of technology controlling us when we should be controlling it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I agree that we are fine even without it. But that does not mean it's better than not having that history.

An easy example that comes to mind are all arguments wherr someone remembers one thing while someone else remembers another thing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Decent counter-example. In turn I'd say that's an edge case where we could still survive just fine without knowing the relevant fact for sure. And certainly not worth the cost in privacy terms of recording and storing everything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

There are a lot of things you can survive without :)) They are still nice to have though.

But I understand the privacy concerns, I struggle with the tradeoffs myself. But to me it's worth it it this case since the database is supposed to be encrypted with a passphrase and stored locally, not sent over a network.

Other examples would include searching through history to check if you've talked to someone about something. Or check their answer. Unless you are someone with perfect memory I would think these are common situations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I agree with you about saving the things you need. Especially images and videos since they are not worth the storage size.

But a history of your conversations with people is pretty nice to have if you didn't think about saving some info or it only becomes relevant later on. And as long it's only kept on your own device, I'm fine with it. (But I guess, on the devices of people you speak to)

Plus if you only save text, even 10 years worth of data is not much at all. A few videos probably weighs more.

E: typo

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