“Telegram is not a private messenger. There’s nothing private about it. It’s the opposite. It’s a cloud messenger where every message you’ve ever sent or received is in plain text in a database that Telegram the organization controls and has access to it”
“It’s like a Russian oligarch starting an unencrypted version of WhatsApp, a pixel for pixel clone of WhatsApp. That should be kind of a difficult brand to operate. Somehow, they’ve done a really amazing job of convincing the whole world that this is an encrypted messaging app and that the founder is some kind of Russian dissident, even though he goes there once a month, the whole team lives in Russia, and their families are there.”
" What happened in France is they just chose not to respond to the subpoena. So that’s in violation of the law. And, he gets arrested in France, right? And everyone’s like, oh, France. But I think the key point is they have the data, like they can respond to the subpoenas where as Signal, for instance, doesn’t have access to the data and couldn’t respond to that same request. To me it’s very obvious that Russia would’ve had a much less polite version of that conversation with Pavel Durov and the telegram team before this moment"
Why don’t we all just truly go FOSS and use matrix?
That’s absurd coming from the founder of a FOSS messaging app who actively decided not to let Signal federate and rejected any other open source Signal client. Not only that, even now you can’t truly use Signal’s new “username” feature. If any of the recipients have your number stored in their phonebook, irrespective of whether you know them or not, the username goes for a toss. This was/is the problem with Telegram’s username feature. Signal knew this and still decided to go ahead with it. Not to mention never doing anything about completely removing the phone number from the account after its creation. This has been, by design, a privacy and hence safety threat, and even after the username feature was implemented, this not getting implemented is very concerning.
I’m sorry your free messaging app isn’t perfect. /s
And I always assumed that nicknames was just as much to prevent screenshots from becoming a liability.
you can’t truly use Signal’s new “username” feature. If any of the recipients have your number stored in their phonebook, irrespective of whether you know them or not, the username goes for a toss.
Hm. I haven’t interacted with a new Signal user in a while… but I do see in settings two knobs: “who can see my phone number” and “who can find me with my phone number”. Both of these settings can be set to “nobody”.
I’m guessing if I set “who can find me with my phone number” to “nobody”, then even if someone has my phone number in their contacts, they wouldn’t know I’m a Signal user?
You mean the messenger that requires you give them your phone number to make an account? Yeah, fuck that.
I don’t understand his point about restoring your messages to a new phone. How does that prove it isn’t encrypted? Couldn’t Telegram store the encrypted data on their server, send the encrypted data back to you and then you automatically decrypt it because you have the key?
Unlike Signal, Telegram is successful in getting people to move away from Meta’s Whatsapp.
Idk about that. Signal is the main alternative to WA in some parts of europe.
Telegram has approximately 1 billion global users. Signal only has around 100 million. Telegram is about 10x the size of Signal.
She’s pretty hot for a programmer.
And with a name like that she was destined for greatness.
Moxie is the guy
Hmm. Looks more like a Bill
Misgendering on Lemmy? Yikes.
I’m not sure what you mean? I’m pretty sure moxie identifies as a guy. I think the person i was replying to was trying to talk about the interviewer, Sabrina Halper.
Think that was a joke playing on the possibility that Moxie could be a trans woman.
What is a Moxie Marlinspike?
they definately installed signal and fucked afterward
What is not mentioned… there’s no privacy when the device itself is compromised. For instance, Android phones can read and phone home data from your notifications. In that case, any messenger app wouldn’t be private from Google’s eyes.
There’s a commonly used Russian metaphor “to not see the forest behind the trees”.
What you are calling a device is in fact a system. It’s a local system, that you are carrying in your hand, but it’s functioning due to a very complex global system which is not. That device in itself is like a 1960s’ town in complexity. In itself, but there’s also the global system.
And these are a result of quite a lot of people employed by various organizations with hierarchies and dependencies. And most of the power in those organizations doesn’t want you to have privacy and autonomy as much and when you want. If you want those, you should produce your own hardware and everything above it. Or build organizations interested in your full privacy and autonomy which will do that. It’s about structure, so just creating a few of them (a goal hardly reachable in itself) with manifests saying “we want to be good” won’t change anything.
So, if you were wondering why contemporaries of Stalin’s regime were reluctant to divorce it with Marxism and call it something else, - that’s similar to this. They really wanted to believe there’s a Marxist superpower, just like some people wanted to believe Google is a good corporation, and before that some people wanted to believe Apple is a counterculture corporation, and so on. And, at various moments in time and space, in various dimensions, sometimes these were. Just like in some ways the British Empire was really bringing civilization to the world.
The more life and diversity there is, the likelier we are to have good things. That doesn’t mean we’ll ever have full privacy, full autonomy, fully civilized, peaceful and honorable world, and so on. We won’t.
I think that metaphor is quite universal because it’s also used very commonly in English and Estonian at the very least.
It’s common in Russia. It’s common a lot of places, but it’s common in Russia
But yeah, I’ve used that and the inverse depending on the context plenty of time.
Well, that something common in Russia as a metaphor is also common in Estonia wouldn’t be a surprise, but in English seems a bit less common. Anyway, that wasn’t the point of my comment.
…and once you get to “AI” with system level access that is supposed to scan for “bad content” (like with Apple’s supposed “CSAM scanning” and Google’s Android System Safety Core), all bets are off.
All of the major platforms owned by corporations (including Apple) are or will be compromised.
The only way out is degoogled Android (for now) or, better, a true Linux device.
As much as I’d like to favor foss and federated messenger apps, telegram isn’t as much garbage as whatsapp:
1.The client is somewhat open source and have forks like Forkgram, Materialgram and unoffical clients like Telegrand.
2. Telegram isn’t E2EE by default but at least it doesn’t lie about it and have E2EE secret chat when nessesary, that means crucial chats stay on your device and the rest stay on their database recoverable and syncable across devices.
(Yes, whatsapp supposedly is E2EE but we can’t know for sure, it’s closed-source.)
3. You can use telegram as a cloud service with only 2GB per file limit, unlike whatsapp.
(There’s even a third-party app that utilise this as a cloud gallery.)
4. Even tho telegram has ads in large channels, telegram isn’t funded by a greedy big-corp and it doesn’t datamine you, ads are based on the channel’s topic.Yes, in terms of privacy, telegram isn’t the best option, Signal, Session, XMPP, Matrix, or SimpleX have better privacy features, less linkability and E2EE by default but telegram is very mainstream and got more publicity, making it the whatsapp alternative it advertises itself as-is.
Publicity doesn’t make a better messenger app, but for what it tries to do, it’s adoptable for simple users, doubles as cloud storage and is more secure than the garbage being whatsapp.Immigrating users to different apps is a headache on it’s own, but if they know of telegram and it’s not privacy invasive, that’s not bad.
Isn’t it possible to verify WhatsApp encryption with packet sniffing?
Yes, but how would you know Meta doesn’t have a copy of your encryption key (ex: when you sign up) and keeps a copy of your encrypted messages somewhere?
AFAIK your encryption key resides as whatsapp’s data folder but since whatsapp is closed-source you can’t guarantee that whatsapp gave the encryption key to Meta’s server at some point when it was created; (or it was created on their servers and sent to your device.)One would just assume the encryption key is made on your device and never sent to Meta and all the E2EE messages aren’t kept on Meta’s server after they are sent.
Again, Meta is a company that is profiting on targeted advetising and selling user data, how would whatsapp be a free service without any profit?
Also, Here’s someone who saw their whatsapp chat used for targeted ads on them in case you have doubt.
- I can’t find a link to this but I’m sure I’ve read an article about what happens when you “report” a message someone sent to you in WhatsApp. In this case some reviewer at Meta will look at your message and determine if it violated the rules. IIRC the article talked about them most likely being added to the chat but not visible.
- There’s a recent lawsuit that shows that Meta can view your messages through internal systems: https://proton.me/blog/whatsapp-encryption-lawsuit
- Meta’s AI assistant in WhatsApp leaves more questions about privacy. How closed-off is the data used in this AI from other parts of Meta’s services?
Again, as I said, whatsapp doesn’t feel like a genuine messenger app as much as an oversimplified garbage made for tracking users on the background for profiting.
Even the deal of “giving” Llama LLMs (Meta AI) to everyone feels sketchy and look abusive the way it is pushed to users.Likewise all of meta’s services, the only catch with whatsapp that it used to be good and it’s a well-spread application, that’s why they bought it instead of improving FB’s messenger, as meta want to benefit of it’s naive userbase who think whatsapp is “As fine as ever”;
To you, publicity is nothing important and it doesn’t make a good product, to meta however, publicity is “everything” and it shall be all-time high, they have more analytical data about their userbase and have a good idea of what they would do and what decision they would take.
Yeah don’t get me wrong, I despise meta and their facade pretending WhatsApp is private. Your example is evidence but not proof but it does not mean I doubt you because it really doesn’t surprise me. Gmail likes to pretend it’s secure and private too because data in transit is supposedly encrypted but they can still just read absolutely everything in your inbox themselves
Where I am, Telegram is mainly used by alt- and far right figures close to Russia. Facts don’t matter in these circles any more. Feelings do. And Durov knows how to manage those.
These people are foolish to use telegram, it’s just a plain-text unencrypted app. Plus there’s scams and spam all the time on telegram but not on signal.
Especially after Telegtam started working with authorities and handing out user / chat info.
These people are foolish for reasons far worse than just using Telegram.
It should be the law that any information a online service collects about it’s users should be given to the government immediately and unconditionally, then suddenly people will start really caring about how much information a service has access to.
then suddenly people will start really caring about how much information a service has access to
I sincerely doubt it. The majority of people will accept that this is just “how it is” and will move on with life. After all, they’re not doing anything wrong.
I agree, if majority of people would care, Linux PCs would be the most popular option. They care about convenience only, but not even that much. Instead of researching the best they are just ok with the advertised options. They eat what they get.
Why is this interview happening inside a sauna?
She likes putting guests on the hot seat.
If you watch the video - its explained starting at 1:13, Moxie built it himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPRi7mAGp7I
That’s fucking awesome
Why is this interview happening inside a sauna?
It’s his personal sauna. He built it himself.
Why did he invite the hot reporter chick to his sauna? would be the follow-up question…
It’s a sauna on a boat. She’s out in the middle of nowhere with some dude she barely knows. You know, she looks around and what does she see? Nothin’ but open ocean.
Because of the implication…
That explains that awkward interaction in the interview. It’s like an interview happening in the Black Lodge.
it’s the D.E.N.N.I.S. system working
If I had a personal sauna, I’d invite everyone. But I’m not from puritan central (USA) so that might be a foreign concept to some readers.
You answered yourself.
for the thumbnail :)
Right? If they’re just chatting this should be happening in a jacuzzi with nice glasses of milk 🍼 👍
Somehow all these years I thought that Marlinspike is either Swedish or Finnish, so the sauna would be on brand.
To me, that is just clickbait.
Why not? I thought it was een interesting choice ;-P
Like in a sauna you should be completely exposed or something
They say the trick to public speaking is to picture the audience naked, but I actually prefer to do my interviews in a sauna so the audience pictures me naked.
What
Removed by mod
Telegram is used by Ukrainian armed forces for military actions, ruskie pests use it too for the same… so its probably hard to hack, as these REALLY want to see the messages of each other…
You see, these arguments are just impolite when made against the man in the post going out of his way to provide you with an experiment based on logic that you don’t need computer science knowledge to verify.
As far as I have heard, Ukrainian servicemen are forbidden to use Telegram. Ukrainian civilians do, and Ukrainian special services might do that sometimes perhaps.
Dude for the first 15s I thought this is porn
Raising money for Signal with OnlyFans
its the sauna
How I hate that saunas are associated with porn and sex. It’s not supposed to be sexual and more importantly it’s an awful, just terrible place to have sex
I don’t know man, those benches are nice for a variety of positions. Plus, you are already naked…
Just trust me on this one, 80’C+ room just isn’t the place for that sort of exercise. And it’s not like your heart rate isn’t up already lol. It’s a terrible experience
Slow down, big daddy! You can be gentle at it sometimes.
I want you to actually try sauna sex and report back to me, if you don’t believe me. But don’t say I didn’t warn you lol
you are gonna feel way too gross in the sauna to wanna have sex
