Pretty much yes. It has channels so there are news channels, personal channels etc. At some point when I discovered Twitter for myself I hated it so much for not being able to simply read subscribed accounts just like telegram does it. It’s too convenient as a feeds app.
A news feed with comments and a group chat are projections of the same object, thus you have all the events in one “community” in one place, seeing them always (more or less, because going to comments of a post you only see that post’s children and their children and so on).
Personally I think it’s much more convenient than Discord.
And the public opinion seems to be in TG’s favor for usability (except it exhausts me to see that many groups and checking them, so authors’ FB clone background definitely shows).
I think the market has decided that this UX is good. But technically TG is, 1) proprietary in fact despite open client source, 2) insecure, 3) starts getting overloaded with features by now.
I’d want a federated FOSS alternative. I’m actually thinking how one can do that (especially the part about sharing files, the TG way means they’ll have to be stored for long somewhere ; maybe one can have each user issue a fixed amount of tokens on registration, those tokens be passed by uploading user to the one providing storage, and somehow thus using local storage of users as a currency, for file storage only ; the thought is inspired by Redis and probably sucks, especially since in Redis tokens are for hash partitions ; it’s also inspired by BitTorrent reputation and tracker ratings, where you have to upload something to be able to download yadda-yadda) without making running a server a very expensive task. Probably should read something on how XMPP and IRC and other server-server connections work, but lazy.
Interesting even, can a FOSS federated TG alternative be just another Lemmy frontend. Again, the attached files part should be solved in some smarter way than storing them all on servers, people upload huge things to TG. A builtin bittorrent client is not a solution, cause one person sharing a file and going offline means that nobody can download it. So the previous idea with tokens may be not too bad.
Maybe you should start with real existing technologies when you do your analysis: rss, federation, graphql. Group chat is the most primitive of feed types and is incredibly outdated UX in 2025. Even RSS - technology from 1999 - has solved the issues telegram is still trying to solve now 26 years later.
RSS is a general standard, for everyone to use, TG is not. Yet it’s likely that more people use TG than RSS. That’s what I meant by market.
Group chat is the most primitive of feed types and is incredibly outdated UX in 2025.
That’s like saying that wheel is outdated when we have jet engines. What would you propose instead?
Even RSS - technology from 1999 - has solved the issues telegram is still trying to solve now 26 years later.
Which specific issues and in which regard?
I would like TG to have a tree view representation of discussions, a bit like what web forums have available. Or a view separated into pages, like the same thing, with n posts on one page and page numbers and visible post ids.
I don’t like its actual client or its UX in the sense of appearance and widgets. What I meant is that I like what it presents to the user in the sense of entities.
In particular, again, that a community is essentially one thing, where posts with comments and a group chat are projections of the same data. You can see new posts and comments in the group chat, all in one place.
You’re using appeal to popularity to claim that Telegram has good UX because more users use it which makes no sense unless you have A|B test that you can execute right now to prove your point.
Just because it’s popular does not mean it’s good especially when the market in this scenario has no choice or vote how the UX is implemented.
Which specific issues and in which regard?
The one you mentioned for starters - following multiple channels in a single feed.
Telegram has a terrible UX for social networking and feed following - it’s a private messaging app that has been hacked together into use case it was never made for in the first place and it really shows.
I don’t claim it has good UX. I claim it has good semantics.
The one you mentioned for starters - following multiple channels in a single feed.
I didn’t mention that.
But I also think having everything in a single feed from all places would really suck, like it does in FB.
Telegram has a terrible UX for social networking and feed following
What social networking is has many different meanings, easily creating groups (communities) and posting\commenting there, like in LJ, seems more important for me.
it’s a private messaging app
It’s not.
that has been hacked together into use case it was never made for in the first place and it really shows.
Factually wrong - it was from the beginning intended to be what it is now. Channels and chats.
And, of course, I don’t think your ideas for that use case are better than Telegram’s. I don’t think social networks with feeds and following are something good.
Lemminary@lemmy.world
on 29 May 03:01
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I cant schedule an appointment at the vet with signal.
just_another_person@lemmy.world
on 29 May 04:06
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Well if you tell them you are using Signal and they adopt it, you sure can.
What is your imaginary boundary here where Telegram makes this easier somehow?
Maxxie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 29 May 04:25
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The problem is not that I’m not using signal (I am), its that I also have to use telegram and\or whatsapp if I want to contact anyone without sending them an sms, or a pigeon.
So all this bloat still affects me, whether I “just use signal” or not.
just_another_person@lemmy.world
on 29 May 04:39
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I’m not sure what part of the world you’re in, so maybe there is a societal difference here, but last I checked, if you’re running a business, it’s not only run on chat apps. There are other venues to contact businesses to schedule things…
“Hello sorry for calling you, can you repair a part of an electric oven? It looks like a thingy with a couple springs. No I can’t send you a photo on whatsapp, do you mind quickly installing signal? No? What about email? You’re going to respond in 3-5 business day? Yeah sure I can survive that long on raw potatoes”
If you can afford existing without big tech, I’m honestly jealous. I’m willing to go quite far for my principles (like I have a phone with graphene) but at a certain point life just gets too difficult. I’m barely above water on my adult-ing as it is 🤷♀️
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
on 28 May 18:00
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Two insane billionaire eugenicists … working together? No way. Birds of like feather stick together.
roofuskit@lemmy.world
on 28 May 18:21
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I just use telegram for sailing the high seas so I couldn’t care less. If I was actually communicating, I’d care.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
on 28 May 18:23
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Im glad the EU started early with sanctioning Telegram, it will make things easier now. This is just a blatant attempt at enforcing Russian political influence.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world
on 28 May 18:36
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"Eat moar AI! EAT IT!! EAT the AI you peasants!"
magnetosphere@fedia.io
on 28 May 19:06
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There doesn’t seem to be any such thing as “good” AI, but there’s definitely a “worst” one, and Telegram chose it. Nice job, assholes.
Signal by design can’t and won’t support big group chats.
Frankly Telegram is socially a reiteration of IRC plus blogs. There are groups where people chat, there are channels where posts have comments. Posts and their comments are visible in the associated group, so all the life of a community is in one place. That’s important for small groups and mobile devices.
Because these two things in the 00s web accounted for most of life.
A TG alternative with ActivityPub identities and proper secret chats would be nice, of course.
cardfire@sh.itjust.works
on 29 May 07:54
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I don’t know about any of this. I pretty much only have looked into it for porn and bootlegs of academic papers. Feels like I’m missing out on all the ‘fun’ of ai chats and cult groups.
frozen@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
on 29 May 22:19
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The only problem with Telegram = IRC angle is that I can’t scroll up in IRC to see what I missed throughout the day. I legitimately would love to switch my friend group to a self-hosted IRC server, but chat history is important.
Having xAI accessing a billion of users conversations? They are going to have the most “educated” LLM. Also isn’t xAI getting subsidies from the government? Literalły workers of America are paying to spy, again
SecretCobra85@lemmy.world
on 29 May 05:41
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I haven’t heard that personally.
sparky@lemmy.federate.cc
on 29 May 00:51
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So you’re telling me that Grok is so bad that they have to pay developers to integrate it? How backwards. People are willing to pay for Grok’s competitors.
This is the real take away from all this. xAI is trying hard to keep up with the big-boys and has to pay a shit ton of money just to be in the game. xAI’s revenue will be in the deep red for a long time at this rate.
My Matrix server is conduwuit which was discontinued some time ago and your comment made me look at the GitHub page of its successor again, tuwunel…
It’s finally out! Ohh I’m so happy, updating today 😁
Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 29 May 05:53
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If you want something more like the fediverse itself, then Matrix. If you want something closer to Telegram out of the box without setup, then Signal or SimpleX.
Signal doesn’t have bot support, so it’s hardly a Telegram equivalent sadly
Matrix works though, but it has the fediverse problem of “which instance do I pick?”
Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 29 May 07:13
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Yeah, that’s true. I still use Signal as the main app to keep in contact with friends and family, though. It’s not like we ever discuss anything important, I just don’t like having my privacy openly invaded by apps like TG. Its affronting and insulting.
I can’t think of any other alternative to Matrix that has bot support, though. I guess just be careful of which instance, because I’ve read that there’s a lot of shady stuff that goes down in Matrix groups sometimes.
Your secret chats are already being read. Hell, secret chats are probably the first to be read.
A secret chat is only for local privacy, meaning if someone got access to your device they can’t find them, nor will you get notifications (in case your partner is watching your screen).
Back when we just had SMS and MMS, they had secret chats, too. They were blatantly marketed as tools to cheat on your partner. GO SMS was one of the first to use them. Its not so blatant anymore, but its still the primary use for “secret” chats.
I remember reading an article that someone figured out everyone’s GO SMS images (even secret ones) were uploaded online without any security whatsoever. You could put in the url and some random numbers and get any pictures and voice clips ever sent. And they never fixed it even after it was leaked.
So yeah, not so secret. You want secure.
Edit:Context: Sorry, my ADHD gets the better of me. I mean that there’s more likely than not a government backdoor. Other users are unlikely reading your messages, but your messages are more than likely being scanned. Just be careful if you use TG.
I thought secret chats were E2EE and weren’t stored on servers. That doesn’t necessarily mean Grok can’t read them if it’s not server side, but that’s what I’m curious about.
Ah no, I mean the government backdoor. Last we knew, Telegram was threatened, then it suddenly quiet and Premium launches. Fishy. So potentially the federal government has access.
Sorry, I’m bad at providing context. When it comes to another user accessing your messages, you should be right. However, when it comes to the US and Russian governments, its probably getting read already. And we all know what ties and connections Elon has there. So Grok can probably read them.
If Grok starts responding with “idk I wanna kill myself” to “what do you want for dinner”, I’m quite sorry, those are my conversations. To be clear, I’m not the one who constantly wants to die.
Im pretty brain rotted, but I guess I’m not quiiiite there yet…
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub
on 29 May 08:51
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Telegram ASTOUNDS me.
Like, there’s been several instances of them outwardly admitting that their security sucks, not to use it for encrypted chats, that they just give logs away to world governments, and yet thousands of crypto bros and bots use telegram to function, EVEN ZLIBRARY, who could just as easily set up and use Matrix, has a Telegram bot for downloading books.
Their bot api is very easy to use. I have made some telegram bots because is so easy. Tried to do the same with WhatsApp and didn’t even get permission and api access.
Average Joes use mainstream things, if you want to do something accessible, these bots are the way. Ideally, you want them to download or use an app that does some hand holding. I’m all up to the fediverse but let’s be honest, it has some non intuitive things for today’s user, most were trained to understand and like centralized services. They vaguely understand and use emails today, and mostly for account creation of other platforms.
Disclaimer: haven’t tried to make signal bots, they are a thing?
No disrespect towards you or your response (which is a good response, btw) – but the Bot API being good means absolutely nothing when the core app is garbage. By “garbage”, I mean that it ignores basic best-practices (like not E2EE everything, which they claimed wasn’t possible with device sync – but look at FB Messenger, Signal, Whatsapp, etc all able to do it).
Nobody is allowed to ask me why that matters. Because the answer is $300 Million.
It matters because when you try to build something new, you choose the path of least resistance. I’m not justifying it, I’m explaining it. Also, guess who doesn’t gives shit about E2EE? Average Joes.
I agree with you, but still your idea of garbage is not shared by the general population. Remember that telegram got traction because it falsely claimed that it was secure, or at least more secure than WhatsApp.
ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee
on 29 May 10:40
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Big yikes
brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 29 May 12:06
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itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 29 May 14:34
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Network effect. It’s been hard enough to get friends and family to move away from Whatsapp, it’s going to be a while till I get them away from telegram as well
Only ever used it for one piece of software we use that decided their support network would be hosted on Telegram. All I get is spam message asking if I live in my own country…
Been saying this for years. Then they introduced Premium to “help fund things” (but they’re also taking $300 MILLION from Elon, and giving them access to user data.
So will basic features stop being paywalled now? Or are people going to have to keep paying to stop random people from messaging them?
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml
on 29 May 15:05
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First thing i’m doing is opening a channel to run up Grok API calls maliciously
YesButActuallyMaybe@lemmy.ca
on 29 May 15:46
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There goes my telegram account. Bye, you won’t be missed
I don’t know why people stuck with it. I’ve used it; I get that a lot of the initial success/hype was:
It’s not owned by Meta
"Putin hates Durov!"
“Unlimited” storage (lots of people using it as free cloud storage, which is dumb if you value your files)
But your messages are not E2EE by default (only “Secret Chats”, which aren’t synced across devices)…Telegram (the organization) could always read your messages. I said this so many times and got called everything under the sun.
“Why would they care about my messages though?” ------> Because $300 Million.
This. The second Premium landed I was out, and it was slipping long before that.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
on 29 May 20:04
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Whelp. Same thought :(
ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip
on 29 May 23:57
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now telegram is going to insert random information about South African White genocide to every conversation. or it will be in every recommended reply at least.
Cocopanda@futurology.today
on 30 May 00:42
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Jimmycakes@lemmy.world
on 30 May 01:31
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I only use telegram to buy illegal iptv subscriptions. Is there a reason I would ever need grok in there?
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 30 May 02:59
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great advertisement for signal
talos_the_true_god@sh.itjust.works
on 30 May 04:24
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Nail no.1 in the coffin for me was when this Durov guy sent an unsolicited telegram-wide message on election day in my country, claiming French interference in our elections.
This is nail no.2 in the coffin.
Guess I’ll get off my lazy arse and delete my telegram account now
threaded - newest
Ah, time to switch to a new messaging app :)
Agreed, but which one has easy to use bots and integration into the *arr apps? I used telegram to send notifications about new movies and episodes.
Me too. Switched to pushover. Arrrrrr apps support it just fine. And it’s free.
I really need some free time in my life to try those arrs with unraid, and telegram bots too…
Long overdue :)
You should be using Signal anyway.
I think Telegram is more of a social media than a messenger.
What, like Instagram kind of thing?
Nah, more like a better WhatsApp but with haters even worse than the WhatsApp haters.
Pretty much yes. It has channels so there are news channels, personal channels etc. At some point when I discovered Twitter for myself I hated it so much for not being able to simply read subscribed accounts just like telegram does it. It’s too convenient as a feeds app.
Not really. It just group chats and some are used as news feeds.
Its one of those terrible UX where people force a tool to do something it’s not supposed to like Discord for forums etc.
Its basically used for piracy and drug markets for tech illiterate but somehow caught on.
One can say terrible, one can say ingenious.
A news feed with comments and a group chat are projections of the same object, thus you have all the events in one “community” in one place, seeing them always (more or less, because going to comments of a post you only see that post’s children and their children and so on).
Personally I think it’s much more convenient than Discord.
And the public opinion seems to be in TG’s favor for usability (except it exhausts me to see that many groups and checking them, so authors’ FB clone background definitely shows).
I think the market has decided that this UX is good. But technically TG is, 1) proprietary in fact despite open client source, 2) insecure, 3) starts getting overloaded with features by now.
I’d want a federated FOSS alternative. I’m actually thinking how one can do that (especially the part about sharing files, the TG way means they’ll have to be stored for long somewhere ; maybe one can have each user issue a fixed amount of tokens on registration, those tokens be passed by uploading user to the one providing storage, and somehow thus using local storage of users as a currency, for file storage only ; the thought is inspired by Redis and probably sucks, especially since in Redis tokens are for hash partitions ; it’s also inspired by BitTorrent reputation and tracker ratings, where you have to upload something to be able to download yadda-yadda) without making running a server a very expensive task. Probably should read something on how XMPP and IRC and other server-server connections work, but lazy.
Interesting even, can a FOSS federated TG alternative be just another Lemmy frontend. Again, the attached files part should be solved in some smarter way than storing them all on servers, people upload huge things to TG. A builtin bittorrent client is not a solution, cause one person sharing a file and going offline means that nobody can download it. So the previous idea with tokens may be not too bad.
Lol
Maybe you should start with real existing technologies when you do your analysis: rss, federation, graphql. Group chat is the most primitive of feed types and is incredibly outdated UX in 2025. Even RSS - technology from 1999 - has solved the issues telegram is still trying to solve now 26 years later.
RSS is a general standard, for everyone to use, TG is not. Yet it’s likely that more people use TG than RSS. That’s what I meant by market.
That’s like saying that wheel is outdated when we have jet engines. What would you propose instead?
Which specific issues and in which regard?
I would like TG to have a tree view representation of discussions, a bit like what web forums have available. Or a view separated into pages, like the same thing, with n posts on one page and page numbers and visible post ids.
I don’t like its actual client or its UX in the sense of appearance and widgets. What I meant is that I like what it presents to the user in the sense of entities.
In particular, again, that a community is essentially one thing, where posts with comments and a group chat are projections of the same data. You can see new posts and comments in the group chat, all in one place.
You’re using appeal to popularity to claim that Telegram has good UX because more users use it which makes no sense unless you have A|B test that you can execute right now to prove your point.
Just because it’s popular does not mean it’s good especially when the market in this scenario has no choice or vote how the UX is implemented.
The one you mentioned for starters - following multiple channels in a single feed.
Telegram has a terrible UX for social networking and feed following - it’s a private messaging app that has been hacked together into use case it was never made for in the first place and it really shows.
I don’t claim it has good UX. I claim it has good semantics.
I didn’t mention that.
But I also think having everything in a single feed from all places would really suck, like it does in FB.
What social networking is has many different meanings, easily creating groups (communities) and posting\commenting there, like in LJ, seems more important for me.
It’s not.
Factually wrong - it was from the beginning intended to be what it is now. Channels and chats.
And, of course, I don’t think your ideas for that use case are better than Telegram’s. I don’t think social networks with feeds and following are something good.
Like a light version of Discord
So, a messenger?
No it would be best to compare it to discord, except the UI is cleaner and much better.
.
In my experience, telegram is one of those “if someone asks you to go on this app, they’re trying to scam you” platforms. Flatly avoid.
I cant schedule an appointment at the vet with signal.
Well if you tell them you are using Signal and they adopt it, you sure can.
What is your imaginary boundary here where Telegram makes this easier somehow?
The problem is not that I’m not using signal (I am), its that I also have to use telegram and\or whatsapp if I want to contact anyone without sending them an sms, or a pigeon.
So all this bloat still affects me, whether I “just use signal” or not.
I’m not sure what part of the world you’re in, so maybe there is a societal difference here, but last I checked, if you’re running a business, it’s not only run on chat apps. There are other venues to contact businesses to schedule things…
Central Asia, businesses here do not have websites. They put a listing on aggregators with a phone number and may be an instagram account.
Well sounds like a phone number is another option…
Sure, if I want to pay per message/call. I could also hire a butler to do all my chores for me, alas I am not a Swedish royalty.
And make a call like a psycho? No thanks, Telegram it is (actually OP here is quite lucky, in my town it would be WhatsApp or Messenger only…).
I doubt Signal is supported by their scheduling/desk software though, Telegram has pretty wide support.
there’s this old thing called the telephone
or if they’re insufficiently modern (in a good way) a website
“Hello sorry for calling you, can you repair a part of an electric oven? It looks like a thingy with a couple springs. No I can’t send you a photo on whatsapp, do you mind quickly installing signal? No? What about email? You’re going to respond in 3-5 business day? Yeah sure I can survive that long on raw potatoes”
If you can afford existing without big tech, I’m honestly jealous. I’m willing to go quite far for my principles (like I have a phone with graphene) but at a certain point life just gets too difficult. I’m barely above water on my adult-ing as it is 🤷♀️
I genuinely don’t understand what’s wrong with email in this situation? Stay on the phone with them until the email arrives?
If you can’t see what would bother me in that situation, me explaining it further will not help, sorry.
If anybody still believed in Telegram’s trustworthiness, it should now be dispelled.
(Only kidding, there’s plenty of people who still “believe” in both Durov and Musk)
Sad but true
I’ll think about if they also somehow prohibit 3rd party clients from removing that AI garbage.
Fascist media meets fascist media… well…
Two insane billionaire eugenicists … working together? No way. Birds of like feather stick together.
I just use telegram for sailing the high seas so I couldn’t care less. If I was actually communicating, I’d care.
Im glad the EU started early with sanctioning Telegram, it will make things easier now. This is just a blatant attempt at enforcing Russian political influence.
"Eat moar AI! EAT IT!! EAT the AI you peasants!"
There doesn’t seem to be any such thing as “good” AI, but there’s definitely a “worst” one, and Telegram chose it. Nice job, assholes.
Well the other ones you have to pay for. This one pays you!
I thought The Establishment was all booboo Telegram badbad, I guess now they’re just another toady
SimpleX for the best anonymity. Signal for talking with grandma.
good news! signal has sticker packs
I tried to switch to Signal but it feels so damn barren compared to Telegram :(
I want to love it but they make it hard
My biggest gripe with it is about electron. I refuse to keep it running on my PC. Even the damned Whatsapp converted to something better.
Oof, that sucks if that’s the case
Signal by design can’t and won’t support big group chats.
Frankly Telegram is socially a reiteration of IRC plus blogs. There are groups where people chat, there are channels where posts have comments. Posts and their comments are visible in the associated group, so all the life of a community is in one place. That’s important for small groups and mobile devices.
Because these two things in the 00s web accounted for most of life.
A TG alternative with ActivityPub identities and proper secret chats would be nice, of course.
I don’t know about any of this. I pretty much only have looked into it for porn and bootlegs of academic papers. Feels like I’m missing out on all the ‘fun’ of ai chats and cult groups.
I said nothing about such.
The only problem with Telegram = IRC angle is that I can’t scroll up in IRC to see what I missed throughout the day. I legitimately would love to switch my friend group to a self-hosted IRC server, but chat history is important.
If only any of my friends would have it.. I have a lot of contacts on telegram, and on signal there's like 1. Even my furry friends are not on there
There are some active chats on matrix, but I don't know why on signal
Maybe if you tell them that an LLM is being trained on all their “private” conversations now, they will change their mind?
Them: “I’ve got nothing to hide” (slowed down and reverbed)
wait it does? maybe then I can convince my contacts to move there xD Seriously stickers are the main selling point of Telegram for us
Telegram are being paid by xAI to use their product? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?
I’m guessing the money flows in this direction because telegram actually has users.
The users must ask themselves if they’re the product, fucking Musk is paying for access to them.
You’re the product either way, free or not. Those days are gone.
I don’t use any of it, neither Telegram or LLMs
.
Having xAI accessing a billion of users conversations? They are going to have the most “educated” LLM. Also isn’t xAI getting subsidies from the government? Literalły workers of America are paying to spy, again
The funny thing is, half of Telegram is drugs, conspiracy nuts and really weird humour. The ai is going to be great, I can already see it.
AI companies paying or straight up buying other businesses to spread their disease has become their go-to strategy as of late.
I’m so glad I don’t use telegram.
who’d have thought that elon would get into bed with a ceo who was arrested for child porn
Was he?
I haven’t heard that personally.
So you’re telling me that Grok is so bad that they have to pay developers to integrate it? How backwards. People are willing to pay for Grok’s competitors.
to be fair, pretty much all ai is that bad these days :)
Or is xAI paying for access to Telegram conversations to train Grok?
This is the reason. Telegram has data and users that can be fed to the AI and they know it. Grok is hungry.
Well it’s gonna learn to post crypto spam ads and swastikas then. Which come to think of it… might be the point
What’s funny is the flipside to it… Telgram is absolutely fucking full of furries so grok’s gonna learn a shitload of gay leftist shit too.
This is the real take away from all this. xAI is trying hard to keep up with the big-boys and has to pay a shit ton of money just to be in the game. xAI’s revenue will be in the deep red for a long time at this rate.
Can this be a joke pleaseeeee ?
I’ve seen posts in TG that yes, this is a joke and there’s been no such deal.
Reuters reports it’s true: Telegram, Musk-owned xAI partner to distribute Grok to messaging app’s users | Reuters
What is the fediverse chat equivalent?
I use matrix synapse. You can self host or join an existing server.
My Matrix server is conduwuit which was discontinued some time ago and your comment made me look at the GitHub page of its successor again, tuwunel…
It’s finally out! Ohh I’m so happy, updating today 😁
If you want something more like the fediverse itself, then Matrix. If you want something closer to Telegram out of the box without setup, then Signal or SimpleX.
Signal doesn’t have bot support, so it’s hardly a Telegram equivalent sadly
Matrix works though, but it has the fediverse problem of “which instance do I pick?”
Yeah, that’s true. I still use Signal as the main app to keep in contact with friends and family, though. It’s not like we ever discuss anything important, I just don’t like having my privacy openly invaded by apps like TG. Its affronting and insulting.
I can’t think of any other alternative to Matrix that has bot support, though. I guess just be careful of which instance, because I’ve read that there’s a lot of shady stuff that goes down in Matrix groups sometimes.
What do people use bots for in Telegram?
Anything really, it’s really simple to whip up a bot for anything. On par with Discord, maybe even a bit easier.
We have a family channel with bots that do calendar notifications and connect to home automation systems.
But I think you can do full on stores with payments using Telegram bots, never tried nor been in channels that do it.
Interesting. I’ve not used Telegram before, I thought it was just for messaging.
XMPP
I wonder if grok will read even secret chats on telegram
Your secret chats are already being read. Hell, secret chats are probably the first to be read.
A secret chat is only for local privacy, meaning if someone got access to your device they can’t find them, nor will you get notifications (in case your partner is watching your screen).
Back when we just had SMS and MMS, they had secret chats, too. They were blatantly marketed as tools to cheat on your partner. GO SMS was one of the first to use them. Its not so blatant anymore, but its still the primary use for “secret” chats.
I remember reading an article that someone figured out everyone’s GO SMS images (even secret ones) were uploaded online without any security whatsoever. You could put in the url and some random numbers and get any pictures and voice clips ever sent. And they never fixed it even after it was leaked.
So yeah, not so secret. You want secure.
Edit: Context: Sorry, my ADHD gets the better of me. I mean that there’s more likely than not a government backdoor. Other users are unlikely reading your messages, but your messages are more than likely being scanned. Just be careful if you use TG.
I thought secret chats were E2EE and weren’t stored on servers. That doesn’t necessarily mean Grok can’t read them if it’s not server side, but that’s what I’m curious about.
privacyinternational.org/…/telegram-secret-chats-…
Ah no, I mean the government backdoor. Last we knew, Telegram was threatened, then it suddenly quiet and Premium launches. Fishy. So potentially the federal government has access.
Sorry, I’m bad at providing context. When it comes to another user accessing your messages, you should be right. However, when it comes to the US and Russian governments, its probably getting read already. And we all know what ties and connections Elon has there. So Grok can probably read them.
So, a software that is owned by US politician is working together with software that has links to Russian government?
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/0970ee50-be42-47d4-9258-4122b2231f56.webp">
Federal government threatened Telegram and demanded a backdoor a while back, iirc.
You misunderstand. Elon is retired from US politics now, obviously, and will return to being a force of good!
Hasn’t Elon said that he’s “retiring” like every month 47 has been in office?
Just bullshit to try to appease Tesla investors.
Are we calling him a politician now? 😭
If Grok starts responding with “idk I wanna kill myself” to “what do you want for dinner”, I’m quite sorry, those are my conversations. To be clear, I’m not the one who constantly wants to die.
Shoddy talk, grok’s still alive.
So is she, it was all manipulation.
Gross. So glad I deleted it and moved to Signal
How is Signal financed?
Donations I believe.
Donations and grants.
XMPP for me. Signal is nice, but you’ll never know how nice and their software is very restrictive imo.
Element here all the way!
Briar would be great if I knew anyone who was willing to use briar
How is it for file sharing? It’s my main use of telegram
How many people pressed the play button in the image. I know I did.
Im pretty brain rotted, but I guess I’m not quiiiite there yet…
Telegram ASTOUNDS me.
Like, there’s been several instances of them outwardly admitting that their security sucks, not to use it for encrypted chats, that they just give logs away to world governments, and yet thousands of crypto bros and bots use telegram to function, EVEN ZLIBRARY, who could just as easily set up and use Matrix, has a Telegram bot for downloading books.
Their bot api is very easy to use. I have made some telegram bots because is so easy. Tried to do the same with WhatsApp and didn’t even get permission and api access.
Average Joes use mainstream things, if you want to do something accessible, these bots are the way. Ideally, you want them to download or use an app that does some hand holding. I’m all up to the fediverse but let’s be honest, it has some non intuitive things for today’s user, most were trained to understand and like centralized services. They vaguely understand and use emails today, and mostly for account creation of other platforms.
Disclaimer: haven’t tried to make signal bots, they are a thing?
No disrespect towards you or your response (which is a good response, btw) – but the Bot API being good means absolutely nothing when the core app is garbage. By “garbage”, I mean that it ignores basic best-practices (like not E2EE everything, which they claimed wasn’t possible with device sync – but look at FB Messenger, Signal, Whatsapp, etc all able to do it).
Nobody is allowed to ask me why that matters. Because the answer is $300 Million.
It matters because when you try to build something new, you choose the path of least resistance. I’m not justifying it, I’m explaining it. Also, guess who doesn’t gives shit about E2EE? Average Joes.
I agree with you, but still your idea of garbage is not shared by the general population. Remember that telegram got traction because it falsely claimed that it was secure, or at least more secure than WhatsApp.
Big yikes
Fuck telegram. I get so many spam messages there.
So… why don’t you delete your account there?
Network effect. It’s been hard enough to get friends and family to move away from Whatsapp, it’s going to be a while till I get them away from telegram as well
Only ever used it for one piece of software we use that decided their support network would be hosted on Telegram. All I get is spam message asking if I live in my own country…
Wondering how long has this been cooking? A year or so ago musk started attacking signal for no discernible reason and recommending telegram instead.
ew wtf, Telegram has been one of the less shittified ones :c
Honestly, Telegramm always seemed to me a bit shifty since I learnt E2EE for chats was opt-in.
not even available on desktop clients, or for group chats
Been saying this for years. Then they introduced Premium to “help fund things” (but they’re also taking $300 MILLION from Elon, and giving them access to user data.
So will basic features stop being paywalled now? Or are people going to have to keep paying to stop random people from messaging them?
First thing i’m doing is opening a channel to run up Grok API calls maliciously
There goes my telegram account. Bye, you won’t be missed
I don’t know why people stuck with it. I’ve used it; I get that a lot of the initial success/hype was:
But your messages are not E2EE by default (only “Secret Chats”, which aren’t synced across devices)…Telegram (the organization) could always read your messages. I said this so many times and got called everything under the sun.
“Why would they care about my messages though?” ------> Because $300 Million.
This. The second Premium landed I was out, and it was slipping long before that.
Whelp. Same thought :(
now telegram is going to insert random information about South African White genocide to every conversation. or it will be in every recommended reply at least.
I guess I will never use xAi.
Or Telegram.
Bingo!
Uninstalled!
I only use telegram to buy illegal iptv subscriptions. Is there a reason I would ever need grok in there?
great advertisement for signal
Nail no.1 in the coffin for me was when this Durov guy sent an unsolicited telegram-wide message on election day in my country, claiming French interference in our elections.
This is nail no.2 in the coffin.
Guess I’ll get off my lazy arse and delete my telegram account now
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/46428784-c1a8-4383-b182-71b4b9ed84df.jpeg">