How do notifications work in the official Telegram Android app (Play Store vs Site version maybe)? Does it have the same mechanism as Signal, which only recognizes the presence of notifications via Google services, but sends them via its web socket service?

    • @rdri
      1•1 year ago

      What basic feature?

      Contacts sync.

      Telegram has told people to make third-party clients

      What? No. It just didn’t tell them they have to use their own servers to use their forks.

      the fact people found it easier to find and download a third party client really speaks to how little they cared about that particular area.

      No, it speaks to how no big developer can do anything to prevent their apps from being banned by oppressive governments. Hence why opposition resorted to 3rd party forks.

      And Telegram now has an increasing history of supporting state governments over the people.

      Telegram has experience of trying to protect people when they oppose governments. Signal is not interested in getting any similar experience. It will remain useless to opposition it seems.

      Telegram stores far more data than Signal, including the memberships of groups

      Signal would have to store the same data to allow users participate in public groups.

      and the contents of every message in every group.

      I don’t think Telegram ever disclosed anything like that. Public groups are open for everyone including governments. Any service that is not serverless will store the same amount of metadata, otherwise it won’t work.

        • @rdri
          1•1 year ago

          This is useless when groups are public.

          And when groups are not public, there is no ground for any action from the service.

            • @rdri
              1•1 year ago

              This argument will have some weight if you can provide examples where telegram shared some information about private groups with someone unauthorized.

              I’m not shilling. Just pointing out obvious differences in products’ features that one has to take into account when judging about app developer’s “wrongdoings”.

                • @rdri
                  1•1 year ago

                  It is you who refuses to take logical steps to agree that every single app with the same feature set will be vulnerable to governments’ decisions. Signal is not a subject of that only because it does not provide such features and therefore is not used by protesters.

                  Yes, telegram knows all your private groups. But you are missing everything by assuming it is bad for you. You will be arrested not because telegram will disclose your private groups. You will be arrested because some person will join your private group and leak your presence there. That person will not need to get any information from Telegram for that. This is not an issue a service could solve by any encryption.