I don't get how people expect services to stay free while also being against any kind of subscription or ads and barely donate to support these projects.
This isn't an essential feature they're paywalling. I don't even remember the last time I sent a voice note, let alone get one from a stranger. Feels more like a thank you from the devs for supporting them
So we want free apps that offer everything and don't take your data or advertise. It must also have constant security updates and a fleet of developers keeping it running. Good Luck finding that unicorn.
I actually like this development. I'd much rather pay for a service with money over my privacy.
It’s only free because they’re trusting users to donate. That method of generating income for their developers could stop working at any time. Lots of FLOSS projects struggle to find kosher funding.
Signal uses donations to keep running. That's one of the reasons why they don't need to do this kind of crap. Kinda like Firefox.
It's sad to see that slowly but surely the Internet gets divided into the more and more useless giant sector and the free and open sector, which just doesn't get the attention it needs to be attractive enough for most to switch over.
And then there's also this weird shadow area where I often hear those pirate chanties from...
I would generally agree with you, if it could allow you to sign-in on multiple devices, and share message history. I understand why it doesn't do either one, but it does cripple the experience
Technically, you can sign in on multiple devices and share history. I share between my phone and multiple desktops. You just can't do it between two mobile devices.
I definitely prefer premium over my personal data being the product for "free".
As I get older I'm appreciating paid electronic services and content when done responsibly in exchange for a private ad-free and well done experience. But it's taking a lot to get over my decades of conditioning assuming everything on a computer and internet should be "free".
I've enjoyed my kagi premium search trial and seeing the prices is a bit much. But getting really good search results and having the webpage or search run so fast and seeing my ad blocker greyed out because there were no ads and trackers to block is surreal this day and age.
I just wish we had a better way of trusting telegram. The only thing encrypted by default is secret chats. I'd buy premium if it made all chats including group chats started by the user encrypted by default.
Yeah, problem with the fremium model is that they usually still collect and sell information on their premium users just the same as their free users. The premium just add some semi-essential features that they cut out for the free users. And finding truly 100% premium services that don't sell personal data is rare these days because that's where the money is for now, information. I don't mind paying for a good service, but I won't both pay and share my personal information, that's just paying twice.
Never noticed because I've never received a single voice message in the 5+ years of using it. Then again, I only use it with friends and not large communities. I've had spam messages, but they're rare and just text talking about crypto.
I switched all of my friends and family to telegram in 2013. I deleted it 2 months ago. 10 years.
Telegram was so great. Always cutting edge, released so many features before anyone else, and the app always stayed extremely lightweight. What broke the camels back for me was them destroying transfer speeds for free users.
I have 1gbps internet connection, and videos and photos take FOREVER to download and send on telegram. Trying to send a short 30 second clip on telegram takes a good 90-120 seconds, even on the lowest compression.
Meanwhile snapchat and other apps take 3 seconds and look better?
They are trying to push their premium so hard, which is fine, gotta pay, but I'm sorry there's no chance in hell all of my friends and family are paying $7 CAD each per month.
At this point I've just switched to RCS messages for all of my Android friends, and Snapchat for my stubborn iOS friends.
For a long time it was ran on money that Durov made from VK and it's selling deal and had no ads, almost perfect development. It was a ton of money obviously, but we all knew it would run out sooner or later and then everything would change. I bought premium once because I wanted to support the project, and I still use it. Hopefully I won't have to use anything else, because I hate almost any other messenger.
Everyone else here is forgetting that Telegram is still pushing the limits and it's still one of the best app for messaging (the best in my opinion though), if they're recurring to this, it's because money aren't unlimited.
Shut the hell up you people: Telegram still isn't invading privacy and using anti-user practice, the hell you complaining about?
Thank you. I would love to support telegram with premium because they've done so much in the past couple years but can't because I can't buy premium where I live.
The main thing that frustrates me is not being able to turn off the emoji interface in their official app.
Serious question - isn't snapchat an absolutely horrible messaging experience? The messages literally disappear, the app is shit, and the messaging interface is shit. And you can see when someone is actively reading the message. I hate all of that.
Do people seriously use it for day to day messaging with people?
Well I don't really care to save chat logs from my friends. If they send something "important", I can save it in the chat so it never disappears, or I can screenshot it.
They only disappear after 24 hours unless you save them by tapping on them. Depending on your relationship, that could be a good thing. I mean Telegram added disappearing messages for a reason.
Yes, millions and millions of people use it daily. It's the easiest way to send videos and photos to friends. I send so much stuff to my girlfriend and vice versa that doesn't sit in my messenger and clog it up. Meanwhile my Telegram chats are full of tens of thousands of photos and 99.9% of them are garbage that I wish didn't exist still like selfies of me making stupid faces.
I'm not acting like snapchat is private, or that screenshots don't exist. They do, I don't care. It's just nice that if I send my friends a stupid selfie, or my girlfriend a lewd, they are not sitting in their messenger for them to come across a few months or years later making shit awkward.
Ye I gave my number to a recruiting agency many years ago when I was looking for a job. The first time I received spam/phishing via Telegram they said they were recruiters. I blocked them but the spam keeps on coming from different accounts that get deleted on the same day
Well I don't think you can turn off receiving voice messages in other messengers, either. It's a weird premium-only feature, but eh, at least they're not making things worse compared to the baseline.
You can just turn off receiving all messages from any user. This is specifically for people who told their friends that they don't want to listen to voice messages and want texts, but friends still use voices. Every one I know has a friend like that.
telegram, originated from our russian friends, and they use it heavely to push their views, eventhough i think that everybody should be able to express their views, still i would not like that my kids would use it, hence it is blocked @ home.
Your response reads like a paid AstroTurf comment.
Putting the ability to block or restrict receiving something behind a paid subscription is batshit crazy. That is an extremely shitty thing to do and will just result in people not using the service entirely as soon as they try to block something like spam or harassing messages. Just because you don't run into any problems with how you use it, that doesn't mean there aren't issues people run into daily.
Whatsapp doesn't have even a tiniest bit of telegram functionality, most importantly, bots. The person who made this post bitches about weirdly specific functionality that doesn't affect you at all. I have a telegram premium (which is dirty cheap) and I never knew I could ban sending VMs, nor I had any reason to do so. Even in the free version you can restrict people who can write to you (e.g. only your contacts), if you don't like to get VMs from your friends, just tell them. Also, security-wise, we all know that whatsapp gives your data to whatever US authorities ask and tg never did anything like that. All the security risks came from users not paying attention to privacy settings, like exposing their mobile number.
As I remember it, nobody had cared about Telegram until Signal started gaining some traction as a more private WA alternative. Telegram just rode that wave, plus I suppose it has better support for large groups I guess? The fact that those aren't even encrypted just gets lost.
Enjoying Matrix, there seems to be an actual focus on privacy. We're using it for the development comms for Kbin. Feels like an alternative version of discord
Telegram has much better Windows/iPad apps, open source client, faster, more customizable, support for sending lossless-files, etc. It's a much better app, and not owned by Meta
It's not. The founder is russian and created vKontakte but basically had it taken away from him by Putin. He's outspoken against the regime and just because he's born in Russia shouldn't mean he should be seen as part of that crappy government.
No. He was born Russian, but has moved out of it after his other social platform VK was confiscated and now owned the Russia. He lives in Germany Dubai, where he placeed Telegram's HQ.