
Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group - jmsflknr
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/10/telegram-slow-mode-silent-notifications/
======
mattnguyen
A growing number of people and organizations are starting to choose Telegram
over Slack. This became prevalent in the blockchain space where pretty much
everyone prefers Telegram to other messaging apps. OTC brokers, quant funds,
and the largest exchanges use Telegram in some capacity, some almost
exclusively.

Since the official Telegram clients are open source and the org encourages
open competition between third party clients, it's now possible to build a
Slack-like experience with workspaces, folders, integrations, and hot keys.
Telefuel.com is one example.

As Telegram launches their $1.7bn blockchain by eoy, it'll be interesting to
see how they develop their crypto-economy. There seems to be a bit of
development activity in various Telegram groups, but there's still a cloud of
secrecy about the whole thing.

Disclosure - I cofounded Telefuel.

~~~
ngrilly
This is very interesting! I'd be happy to try.

My main pain points with Telegram are:

\- No way to structure a group into sub-groups

\- No way to comment on a specific post without polluting the whole timeline
(the new DiscussionBot is the beginning of a solution to this problem)

\- No way to "like" a specific comment without adding another message to the
group (some discussions are mostly a stream of yes and +1)

\- No way to bookmark/star messages and easily find them later (apart the save
mechanism which is a bit different)

It looks like Telefuel aims to solve them?

~~~
AVTizzle
Hi Nick! Received your invite request! Looking forward to speaking with you
this week :)

\- Yes, we're bringing workspaces & chat folders to Telegram
([https://cl.ly/9d0ac52b55cf](https://cl.ly/9d0ac52b55cf)) \- Not something
we're addressing yet \- Not something we're addressing yet \- Something we can
address :)

Will talk more next week!

------
wruza
WhatsApp vs Telegram E2E encryption seems to be a hot topic here, so I’m not
sure in which subthread to ask.

The question is how WhatsApp is E2E by default, if I can open a browser, read
the QR-code and see all my E2E chats in there instantly? WA either has them
unencrypted or can see my phone’s secret key in transit. Isn’t the whole point
of END to END messaging being undecipherable on devices other than these two?

Or how does that work? Is my browser establishing e2e to my phone and
downloading all chats? This seems unlikely. Does it synchronize the secret
key? Then I see it as a security hole — I don’t want my _secret_ chats to leak
to other devices that may be not as protected as a phone.

~~~
nichos
I always heard that telegram encryption was disabled by default. If you want
security use signal, if you wants stickers and the like, use telegram.

~~~
pentae
Telegram is still a step up from what most people use (Facebook Messenger,
WhatsApp). And if you really want a chat to be secure it's easy to set one up.
I find it to be a perfect blend of security and usability. Saying it's only
good for stickers is pretty disingenuous

~~~
pilif
Seeing that WhatsApp is using the signal protocol and encrypts all
communications by default, I contest the notion that Telegram with its home-
grown protocol and clear text by default is a step up.

~~~
xanipher
I thought Telegram was sending messages encrypted (though not E2E) per
default?

~~~
stunt
It isn't by default. You have to enable it yourself.

~~~
GranPC
This is wrong. All communication is encrypted in transit, even for non-secret
chats.

~~~
justaj
Is it also E2E encrypted though? If not, wouldn't that mean that Telegram
servers could snoop in on the non-E2E conversations?

------
SimplyUnknown
I really like Telegram. Only end-to-end encryption by default and in group
chats would make it perfect.

~~~
tptacek
"I really like Telegram. It being a secure messenger would make it perfect".

I'm not really snarking _at_ you; a lot of things would be better if they were
also secure messengers; Slack is an obvious example.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
They have end to end encryption available but off by default because it
affects searching (they can't index your chat if they don't know what you
said).

Since your average users would be fine with this, it seems fair to have it as
an optional feature.

~~~
vinay427
Signal (the messenger) and Tutanota (for emails) both have search on their
mobile clients with end-to-end encryption. It's definitely feasible to
implement client-side search.

~~~
izacus
Signal will also lose all your messaging history and kick you out of all your
group conversations if your phone breaks or you lose it. It also has no usable
automated backup solution or sync.

It's also completely unable to work on multiple devices. Not really comparable
in usability.

~~~
interfixus
Also, it will snark on you to all contacts whenever you move to a new device.
And plead with you to let it handle your ordinary sms texting, then hold your
text messages hostage, not exportable back to any other app.

~~~
jjeaff
It doesn't plead. It asks one time. At least on Android. I said no and it has
never asked me again.

~~~
interfixus
It asked me a number of times. And it _never_ warned that this was a oneway
process.

~~~
interfixus
Idle curiosity: The above is a report of fact as observed by me. It's not
really up for discussion - this is what _happened_. Could someone for our
edification explain a bit about the reasoning behing their downvotes? Other
than my having sinned in the church of moxie and his true disciple tptacek.

------
gtirloni
Say what you want about Telegram, they innovate much faster than WhatsApp with
way fewer resources.

~~~
techntoke
Definitely, but they need video chat like yesteryear.

~~~
hnarn
I'd argue they don't _need_ it, out of the 10-20 people I know that use
Telegram I've never heard one of them mention it being something that bothers
them, especially not since you can send video clips (which arguably is better
anyway in my opinion, since it sacrifices near-real time comms for no
stuttering, and I vastly prefer the latter). I imagine the ones that really do
care about _real time_ video chat will solve it through a different app for
the occasions they use it. Hopefully Telegram is aware that they shouldn't
sprawl too much, lest they risk being seen as a worse alternative to Snapchat,
Duo, Skype etc. in addition to all the lunches they're already eating.

------
nikivi
Boggles my mind how WhatsApp is still a more popular messenger than Telegram
by a long shot.

Talk about network effects and people not doing their research. Or not caring
about UX.

~~~
jjeaff
I mean, your choice is between an app owned by Facebook or an app owned by the
creators of the largest social network in Russia.

I'm surprised more aren't using Signal, open source, and I believe funded by a
non-profit organization. With founders that are known to care about
organizational transparency and user privacy.

~~~
zzzcpan
> owned by the creators of the largest social network in Russia

Another way to describe them is people who lost the largest social network in
Russia and are now Russian expats and dissidents.

> Signal, open source [...] With founders that are known to care about
> organizational transparency and user privacy.

Not open source, only partly, just like Telegram. And founders are known to
have a radical position on trading privacy for centralizing as much control
over the app as they can, tying identity to phone numbers, etc. They have
exactly as much control over the app as Telegram has. But they are not
dissidents or expats and who knows what they are going to do or did with
covert or overt government backdooring attempts. Still, despite all the flaws
both Signal and Telegram are in a bit better situation wrt privacy than
Facebook owned Whatsapp, being in a business of compromising privacy and all.

~~~
Xenograph
> Not open source, only partly, just like Telegram.

Signal is completely open source. I'm not sure why you think it's only partly
open source.

Quoting Wikipedia[1]:

> All Signal software are free and open-source. The clients are published
> under the GPLv3 license, while the server code is published under the AGPLv3
> license.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_\(software\))

~~~
zzzcpan
It's not even on f-droid. You install the binary they control and connect to
the servers they run, it's literally a proprietary app, just like Telegram.

~~~
flixic
App being open-source means you can compile and build it yourself.

They've also gone to extreme lengths to prove that the software running on
their servers has not been tampered with: [https://signal.org/blog/private-
contact-discovery/#trust-but...](https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-
discovery/#trust-but-verify)

I think your doubts create very unreasonable expectations for Signal.

~~~
techntoke
Telegram can be built locally too, and there are independent apps for it, and
they have taken efforts within the security community to prove that it is
secure.

~~~
doomrobo
Can you build and run the server locally?

~~~
newscracker
You may be able to run Signal server from your build, but you won't be able to
talk to users on Signal.org. Signal's official position is that it will never
federate with others. So I don't understand how building and running a server
locally is a step up in any way.

------
dgellow
They also added a feature to send silent messages, which is a pretty nice
idea.

~~~
stevenpetryk
I could swear I just read about that somewhere ;)

------
johnnycab
Telegram is a great way to read HN articles, by subscribing to the channel,
especially if you can't onboard enough people in your circle, to use it as a
primary messenger. It also fires up on iPad, unlike WhatsApp.

~~~
qqn
I like [https://t.me/hacker_news_feed](https://t.me/hacker_news_feed), it
posts only the articles that have a score of 100+ so you don't get flooded by
goodness, it just trickles in ; )

... in fact, this is so useful I think it merits its own HN post!

~~~
hnarn
Agreed, I had no idea it's been around for so long, this seems to be the
original comment (2017):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15312468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15312468)

------
room505
What does everyone think of Microsoft Kaizala? It meets HIPPA requirements and
you can backup your messages. It has a lot of group chat features. It also has
a beta web chat. I've heard a lot of people in India are moving to it for
personal and work chat ilo WhatsApp.

~~~
johnm1019
I will ask the ignorant question, why Kaizala and not MS Teams? It also has
groups, DMs, picture messaging, office integration, etc... I feel rather
overwhelmed lately with all the various messaging options on the market with
the same company often having multiple solutions.

~~~
room505
I don't work for Microsoft, so I couldn't tell you why. From what I understand
though, (I haven't used Kaizala yet, but use Teams at work) Teams uses AD,
whereas Kaizala only needs a registered phone number.

------
michelb
Interesting to see more and more forum features from way back being integrated
into chat apps. Are chat apps the new forums now? Discord sure is already
there I guess.

~~~
code_duck
Typically, forums are public and can be read by a great number of people. The
replacement for that seems to be Facebook and reddit. Chat apps are basically
the new IRC. They’re not too different than apps available decades ago like
ICQ and AIM.

------
1023bytes
I think this would be an interesting concept even in 1-1 communication.
Instant messaging is too fast, we don't think before we send. I think adding a
1 minute delay between all messages would lead to much higher quality
conversation

------
RiversHaveWings
Discord has already had it for a while. Some users seem to appreciate the
mandatory cooling-off period while others feel it makes it harder for them to
respond when a bunch of users pile on them in quick succession.

------
phs318u
If I may ask a tangential question. In none of the comments have I seen
mention of Wickr messenger which seems well designed with respect to security
and provides e2e encryption, ephemeral messaging, device anonymity (to the
servers), video and audio comms. And I believe it’s open source. Is this a
case of just not being well known or is there some problem with it that
everyone but me has heard about?

[https://wickr.com/security/](https://wickr.com/security/)

------
forinti
I had this idea a while back. I was in a group with just too much useless
conversation. So I listed a few things I would like:

\- customizable posting limits (per day, per week, etc);

\- timeouts;

\- time windows (no posts on Sundays, for instance);

~~~
vinayan3
I feel like the point of a group chat is to have a channel to speak to a set
of people. By having a rate at which you can send messages seems to defeat the
purpose of having the communication channel. What if you made a typo or forgot
to say something?

At the same time group chat does encourage background chatter and it's a bit
annoying to put your phone down and see the notification bubble say there is a
ton of unread.

Sub-channels really can help because people can create specific channels for a
specific events, hangouts, topics etc... and not have to get everyone's
attention. Though, invariably there will be someone who will go into the
#general chat and send a message to @everyone. But sub-channels hasn't made it
into SMS, and WhatsApp.

Maybe the real problem is people aren't mindful of how wide their messages are
being sent and how annoying it can be to get a bunch of messages that aren't
relevant to you?

~~~
jdnenej
You can still edit your messages.

------
kevincox
I think the idea is useful for large groups however a simple "cool down
period" is far too simple. Something like "10 messages an hour" would be far
more useful I think as you can still have quick and efficient exchanges while
preventing the ability for any single user to be dominant.

However even that is too simple. You would need to pair it with good UX so
users aren't stuck without messages when someone is asking them a question.

------
codedokode
It is worth noting that earlier moderators in some chats used bots with admin
rights to limit posting rate. So Telegram just made this feature easier to
use, without needing to set up a server with bot.

------
floatingatoll
@dang I’d enjoy seeing a trial run of this on HN for one day.

~~~
eitland
It does exist :-)

If you haven't seen it you have either been very nice and avoided angering
anyone or you haven't posted many times in a day

~~~
floatingatoll
I'd especially enjoy seeing "15 minutes between comments, sitewide" without
regard to where they're posted. If you only got 96 comments a day, and they
had to be "at least one attention span" apart, what changes would occur to the
tone of discussion at HN and would the quality of discussion end up higher or
lower as a result?

------
jjeaff
Is the HN ranking algorithm open source?

I'm curious as to why a story like this makes it to the 2nd or 3rd top ranking
story with only 6 points.

Especially for an article about what seems to be a minor feature upgrade.

Is there some context about telegram that I am missing?

~~~
plibither8
Moderators will sometimes rescue a post which didn't receive a lot of upvotes
and reset the submission time on the post. This is part of an experiment in
giving good HN submissions multiple chances at the front page:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)

~~~
OrgNet
The moderators leave a lot of notes (as comments) when they modify the flow of
information, but do they in that case?

~~~
plibither8
No, at least not when my story was "re-upped", as they term it. The only
indication that a story was rescued is observing the timestamp on the homepage
vs. the timestamp on its comments page.

