It clearly says ads will be for the 1:many public community channels and not the private 1:1 and group chats. Other ways of funding will be premium services for businesses and premium stickers.
Ads are never, ever reasonable. Never let other companies brain hack your users. It's unethical and an awful UX. No one is ever pleased to see an ad.
It's not like we can't do instant messaging without ads. I have used IRC every day for the past 15 years. Not every project needs a business model to work and not every approach is justified because the business needs it.
People watching the US Professional Football Championships primarily to see the ads and watching movie trailers voluntarily (which are ads) seem to disprove your suggestion.
Messaging has costs, especially if it includes proxying media, or verifying control of phone numbers. If the costs aren't too big, it's find not to have a business model, but if the costs are large, a business model enables longevity.
I’m pleased to see ads that show me well designed products that solve problems I’ve been experiencing, especially if I don’t know I’ve been experiencing them.
For instance, Instagram’s targeting has realized that I like outdoorsy products, and even though I don’t buy the products, sometimes they inspire me to find a way to recreate the item myself.
In my opinion your POV is very dismissive of all the good work product design foundries the world over have been doing.
The reason primarily is that they have rolled their own crypto, which based on a lot of reading and comments from other experts suggests is the wrong thing to do.
To this end I havent seen a good explanation from Telegram as to why they have taken this route given there are so many proven & battle tested methods and algorithms. "We havent been hacked yet" doesnt seem good enough for me.
1:1 messages aren't e2e by default and group messages dont support e2e.
For these reasons about encryption I dont like it but their UI/UX is the absolute best.
As someone who knew Durov personally, I'd say that it's very unlikely that the UX will be ruined by ads, and even more unlikely that users will be manipulated and/or tracked in any way. If there's one thing he does well it's respecting his users. He knows what "we're earning enough to cover our expenses" means. The company is privately owned so no one will be pushing him into anything either.
Many popular Telegram channels already have ads in them, posted by their creators. My understanding is that Telegram will be taking control of this by acting as an intermediary, taking a cut and possibly deciding what goes through. Thinking of it, it makes sense, and doesn't alter the UX at all for the average user.
Come on, ALL UX is ruined by addition of ads. I bet there is not a single user of any app anywhere ever that can claim that their UX was bettered by ads. Also, users WILL be have to manipulated and/or tracked for the purpose of monetization via ads. By now everyone is well acquainted with these monetization techniques, so no point in pretending otherwise.
Disagree. I like musical instruments. I don’t mind ads for guitar companies. I like embedded systems. I love seeing ads for new esp32 variants or low cost e-ink screens. Also I never object to women’s swimsuit ads. Just sayin’.
Google has investors though. Telegram is wholly owned by Durov.
I've also seen him run monetization at VK. Basically: there was one developer responsible for ads, and he sat in another office together with financial staff because of the different values.
It's a trap. "Enough to cover our expenses" means the ad rates have to be high enough and for them to be high enough the advertisers have to get good performance. We'll see how well this comment ages.
> I'd say that it's very unlikely that the UX will be ruined by ads [...]. If there's one thing he does well it's respecting his users.
If there's one thing Telegram isn't good at, it's having a UX that respect its users. If that was the case, it would be possible to opt out of notifications from group chats and still receive notifications for private chats, but it's not. This forces one to juggle with multiple accounts if they want to both join public groups and also use it for regular chats.
They already put engagement over respect for their users, I don't have much confidence they won't ruin it even more with ads.
> If that was the case, it would be possible to opt out of notifications from group chats and still receive notifications for private chats, but it's not.
Uh, it's possible, and has always been? In the Android client at least, there's a group of big honking toggles under "notifications and sounds" that do just that.
I don't understand how Telegram has managed to stay free for 8 (?) years until now. Was there ever a catch? Since the start it has continuously improved to become a feature-packed product that's easy to use, with a pleasant UI.
I'd recommend Signal[0] as an alternative. It's fully Open-Source (including the backend) and their crypto is public and independently verified[1][2][3]...
Signal is great and I believe it does have better crypto. But the UI is severely lacking along with feature set.
Telegram feels like it's adding something new every few months, though the documentation over the features is poor since it's mostly through announcements. It's also a lot more customizable. I ultimately settled on Telegram because it was a good balance of feature-rich and crypto (when you use it)
That being said, it was hard enough to get a small group of friends to transition to Telegram. Signal would be much harder due to not having so many niceties.
I wish both to continue competing against each other, though. It's great to have choices that aren't owned by the big corporations.
One thing that's frustrating re: Signal is the client being a bloated entity (on desktop). In comparison, Telegram runs laps around it, and is a true native experience in many cases. It's a joy to use, whereas Signal - while amazing, and probably better in terms of privacy aspects - feels foreign and unwelcome.
I never found signal lacking in any way, except that occasionally push notifications don’t get through. When people say signal is lacking in features, what do they mean? Simplicity is appealing too
Does signal still have a problem of dropping messages? I tried to use it as a replacement for Android Messages a while ago but roughly 10-25% of all messages were not received any given day.
I experience this quite a lot, at least in group chats (I mainly use Signal for group chats). Some of the participants receive my message, others not. When I check the message details it says "message not sent" or "not delivered" (not sure which one) for some group members while it does not display any errors other members.
As far as i noticed, no error means the message was delivered but even when it showed an error it could be that people actually got my message.
This error seems to happen a lot more often, when i send messages via Signal Desktop.
No. The maintainer of software prohibits alternative clients. It's open source in name only. And when he decides to add ads to Signal, you can't avoid them.
Someone, somewhere, still has to pay for your Matrix instance. Please consider chipping in a few dollars to whoever hosts it, both for their direct costs and their time.
Is this a counter-argument, or plain pontification? OP clearly states that there is a fundamental issue with any centralized solution (i.e, the moment that it becomes too big, it will succumb to the interests of its owners) and you respond by saying "well, Signal is easier for the general audience"?
It might be easier, so what? Apple's products are supposedly more privacy-oriented than the Facebook's/Google's. So what? The idea is that we should be rooting/encouraging others to put decentralization and freedom as a top-priority choice, not to keep excusing ourselves into adopting solutions that are bound to become another dominant walled garden.
If you want to argue for Matrix vs XMPP, or XMPP vs SIP or any other decentralized protocol, by all means go ahead. Just please don't come with "I like Matrix, but here is a completely lazy cop-out that I will use to justify to not fight the good fight"
Is matrix as private as signal? How do you go about finding a good server? How do you know if you picked a good one? Which app do you use? Matrix would be more popular if the getting started flow was more clear on these sorts of questions. The decentralization is a major benefit, but some sort of “pick these if you don’t know what’s going on” flow would get peoples foot in the door; then a user could change things up later when they got their footing (add a pop up every 6 months reminding users that they can use different apps or servers, etc)
Arguably providing everyone the means to pay for what individuals need to live a healthy, thriving life, is what's necessary - so they can cover the costs of these services without the need for ads to cover those costs. The ad industrial complex was a way to fast track processes, however it doesn't account for the externalized costs of manipulative advertising on society - lower quality, addictive products-services having a higher profit margin and therefore a higher budget for marketing/advertising as part of sustaining the complex. Decentralization therefore isn't a necessity except as a failsafe against potential bad actors, however data and network portability is necessary law/policy to be in place to counter actions of bad actors who use this current lack of easy mobility as a network defense mechanism.
so they can cover the costs of these services without the need for ads to cover those costs.
I don't think that once you pay for a service, ads and selling user data simply go away. In general, companies don't exist to just cover their costs, they exist to make as much money as they can. If they can make money by showing you ads or sell your data, they will.
This sounds like a hit piece, ordered by competitors.
"longtime drug-dealer haven"- most of my work colleagues use telegram, and I see friends from my contact list joining Telegram from all over the world. I started using it when Putin exiled the founder from Russia, and tried to ban its IP space for refusal to hand over the private keys to FSB. He never had any issues with WhatApp by the way. And I am an engineer, not a drug dealer. Private and group conversations (things that compete with WhatsApp) aren't getting ads.
Readit News
if you go to the founders post https://t.me/durov/142
It clearly says ads will be for the 1:many public community channels and not the private 1:1 and group chats. Other ways of funding will be premium services for businesses and premium stickers.
Sounds reasonable to me
It's not like we can't do instant messaging without ads. I have used IRC every day for the past 15 years. Not every project needs a business model to work and not every approach is justified because the business needs it.
People watching the US Professional Football Championships primarily to see the ads and watching movie trailers voluntarily (which are ads) seem to disprove your suggestion.
Messaging has costs, especially if it includes proxying media, or verifying control of phone numbers. If the costs aren't too big, it's find not to have a business model, but if the costs are large, a business model enables longevity.
For instance, Instagram’s targeting has realized that I like outdoorsy products, and even though I don’t buy the products, sometimes they inspire me to find a way to recreate the item myself.
In my opinion your POV is very dismissive of all the good work product design foundries the world over have been doing.
Someone will always have to foot the bill, and telegram has been doing so for free for the last 8 years.
To this end I havent seen a good explanation from Telegram as to why they have taken this route given there are so many proven & battle tested methods and algorithms. "We havent been hacked yet" doesnt seem good enough for me.
1:1 messages aren't e2e by default and group messages dont support e2e.
For these reasons about encryption I dont like it but their UI/UX is the absolute best.
Many popular Telegram channels already have ads in them, posted by their creators. My understanding is that Telegram will be taking control of this by acting as an intermediary, taking a cut and possibly deciding what goes through. Thinking of it, it makes sense, and doesn't alter the UX at all for the average user.
The Google founders were pretty idealistic when they started too and no doubt many swore by their intentions.
I've also seen him run monetization at VK. Basically: there was one developer responsible for ads, and he sat in another office together with financial staff because of the different values.
If there's one thing Telegram isn't good at, it's having a UX that respect its users. If that was the case, it would be possible to opt out of notifications from group chats and still receive notifications for private chats, but it's not. This forces one to juggle with multiple accounts if they want to both join public groups and also use it for regular chats.
They already put engagement over respect for their users, I don't have much confidence they won't ruin it even more with ads.
Uh, it's possible, and has always been? In the Android client at least, there's a group of big honking toggles under "notifications and sounds" that do just that.
TG has in my opinion the best UI and functionality of all chat-apps available too.
On iOS's half baked implementation of notifications, not sure.
[0] https://signal.org/en/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Encryption_p...
[2] https://threatpost.com/signal-audit-reveals-protocol-cryptog...
[3] https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf [PDF]
Telegram feels like it's adding something new every few months, though the documentation over the features is poor since it's mostly through announcements. It's also a lot more customizable. I ultimately settled on Telegram because it was a good balance of feature-rich and crypto (when you use it)
That being said, it was hard enough to get a small group of friends to transition to Telegram. Signal would be much harder due to not having so many niceties.
I wish both to continue competing against each other, though. It's great to have choices that aren't owned by the big corporations.
This error seems to happen a lot more often, when i send messages via Signal Desktop.
https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
Consider using Matrix instead.
It might be easier, so what? Apple's products are supposedly more privacy-oriented than the Facebook's/Google's. So what? The idea is that we should be rooting/encouraging others to put decentralization and freedom as a top-priority choice, not to keep excusing ourselves into adopting solutions that are bound to become another dominant walled garden.
If you want to argue for Matrix vs XMPP, or XMPP vs SIP or any other decentralized protocol, by all means go ahead. Just please don't come with "I like Matrix, but here is a completely lazy cop-out that I will use to justify to not fight the good fight"
I don't think that once you pay for a service, ads and selling user data simply go away. In general, companies don't exist to just cover their costs, they exist to make as much money as they can. If they can make money by showing you ads or sell your data, they will.