Search on Telegram is more powerful than in other messaging apps because it allows users to find public channels and bots. Unfortunately, this feature has been abused by people who violated our Terms of Service to sell illegal goods.

To further deter criminals from abusing Telegram Search, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, ensuring they are consistent across the world. We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.

    • JustMarkov@lemmy.mlOP
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      2 months ago

      Sorry, should’ve provided the whole post:

      Spoiler

      🔎 Search on Telegram is more powerful than in other messaging apps because it allows users to find public channels and bots. Unfortunately, this feature has been abused by people who violated our Terms of Service to sell illegal goods.
      💪 Over the last few weeks, a dedicated team of moderators, leveraging AI, has made Telegram Search much safer. All the problematic content we identified in Search is no longer accessible. If you still manage to find something unsafe or illegal in Telegram Search, please report it to us via @SearchReport.
      🚫 To further deter criminals from abusing Telegram Search, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, ensuring they are consistent across the world. We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.
      ☝️ These measures should discourage criminals. Telegram Search is meant for finding friends and discovering news, not for promoting illegal goods. We won’t let bad actors jeopardize the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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    2 months ago

    Honestly that isn’t bad. They were knowingly protecting people who target children.

    Privacy should be enforced on a technical level with zero knowledge

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        It has nothing to do with fascism. Fascism is what left leaning politicians call people they don’t agree with. On the right they call people they don’t like communists.

        Outside of that mini rant I disagree with the idea that Telegram is a force for good. Telegram doesn’t use e2ee and has questionable ties. They let people in public group chats post CSAM and other child abuse related stuff. If you look up telegram in the news it is constantly the platform used by criminals. It isn’t private and it sure isn’t anonymous. There are many better alternatives that don’t actively support human trafficking and such. Its not like Telegram has zero knowledge of what happens. They knowingly allowed people to exploit children and then to go around bragging and plotting to harm others.

        This isn’t some attack on freedom or privacy. Telegram is frankly a risk to all. If you want encrypted messaging there are many other platforms that are way less sketchy.

      • vga@sopuli.xyz
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        2 months ago

        Time to close all the fascist schools and put the kids back in factories as Marx intended.

          • vga@sopuli.xyz
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            2 months ago

            Hey don’t blame me. You’re the one who used the A-word in a place filled with OCD nitpickers and in a discussion around CSAM.

        • FractalsInfinite@sh.itjust.works
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          You seem to have made what’s known as a converse error in your logic:

          The person you replied to said that

          All fascist ideologies will use the argument of “Protecting the children”

          You seem to have mistakingly confused that with the false claim

          All arguments that use “Protecting the children” are made by fascist ideologies

          And as such you have responded to a statement the commenter never made.

          And equivalent mistake would be claim that since every time it rains it is cloudy, therefore whenever it is cloudy it is always raining. Honestly logical errors happen for everyone, I hope this helps.

          • vga@sopuli.xyz
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            2 months ago

            The person you replied to said that

            All fascist ideologies will use the argument of “Protecting the children”
            

            Did they? Did you just make a reverse strawman fallacy?

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              2 months ago

              Personally I think the comment could’ve been worded better as it can be interpreted either as

              … is always the excuse for fascism

              (I.E. Fascists use the excuse, provably correct and can be generalised to authoritarianism in general) However I do see that it could potentially be taken the other way as

              … is always the excuse for fascism …

              (I.E only those who used the excuse are fascists, completely false) I used the principle of charity and assumed the inital argument was logical, though its understandable if others aren’t willing to do that

    • communism@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      For private messaging? Signal was always better. The way I use Telegram, and the way Telegram should be used, is like another public social media. I use it for following channels that give news about things I’m interested in.

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          2 months ago

          All completely irrelevant to most people. Nobody they know is on those platforms.

          There are only two alternatives to the Big Tech messengers that are anywhere near critical mass: Signal and the shady one we’re talking about here.

          Though I would love Matrix to go mainstream.

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              2 months ago

              Possibly unsolvable given its distributed nature. Seems like there will be at least some small cost to pay for that benefit.

          • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
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            2 months ago

            This is sadly the exact reason it will stay like this. People can’t reach me because i don’t use WhatsApp? Well bad luck. Use a better app or just don’t. I can’t reach them because they only use WA? What a bummer but so be it.

            As long as people install WhatsCrapp because some distant aunt still uses it for the xmas-greetings, it will continue to be #1.

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                2 months ago

                I remember the times where we didn’t have a tiny computer with us all day to be reachable. And if I’d be lonely because i don’t give a rats ass about WA, fb and the likes, that’d be indeed lonely but not due to that

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            2 months ago

            I feel like there needs to be an incentive in mind for those apps to bring in ppl. People care about privacy but won’t even delete FB, let alone use a different messaging app

            • 01011@monero.town
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              2 months ago

              If they cared about privacy then they wouldn’t use a searchable public database like FB.

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                2 months ago

                I think there’s misconceptions, trust being put in the wrong place, unawareness involved, or simply they don’t think it through, rather than not caring (anectodal/IMO). E.g. “I don’t have anything to hide, so what if they collect everything”.

                If we could build a tool to gather such info, that’s easily accessible and for free, to show all the data available on you in the marketplace - that might make them uncomfortable. And then perhaps they’ll start to try and understand why they’re uncomfortable, and why this is bad.

          • erenkoylu@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            Nobody they know is on those platforms.

            Nobody is on Signal either.

        • Mwa@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          matrix is great but sadly not all my friends use it and i still use discord :(

      • erenkoylu@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Signal was always better

        I love the premise of Signal, but there are too many red flags. Some of my issues are:

        • Hostility against 3rd party clients
        • US-based legal entity
        • Too much tied with Google libs on android
        • No official Fdroid support
        • Open source claims are undermined by code blackouts from time to time.
        • communism@lemmy.ml
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          That’s fair. I just use it because it’s what everyone’s on. When I used Briar only one other person I spoke to used it, and I just use Matrix for some more techy communities I’m in. For my friends and non-tech-savvy comrades, they’re all on Signal, and I imagine trying to move people to something more decentralised/more in the spirit of foss/etc would lead to my social circles becoming very split in terms of how I talk to them. But I get your point.

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      2 months ago

      Element 2.0 or Signal is only worth ones, I think.

      But to be honest - it’s only IP and phone number. If you have concerns about possibility of such request about your persona, you always can buy Telegram’s anonymous phone number / fake telephone number / use VPN to login.

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        2 months ago

        Just clarifying for the ones who don’t know: Element is a Matrix client.

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        2 months ago

        Element I’m not that sure, it’s so bloated that I’m surprised it works on mobile phones. Regarding matrix sure

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          2 months ago

          They said element 2.0, which I’d assume means Element X using matrix 2.0. From my testing in the last few weeks, element X has been the fastest messaging app I’ve ever used. Probably still some bugs but does not feel bloated anymore at all.

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            2 months ago

            Not bloated because it doesn’t have almost any features. No spaces, no threads, joining channels doesn’t work, wait until becomes as the predecessors. The performance improvement is negligible in my experience. It does simply depend on thr homeserver performance , not much on matrix version

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        2 months ago

        I prefer wire.

        Unlike matrix, wire encrypts everything. Its not possible to send unencrypted messages on Wire.

        Unlike Signal, you don’t need a phone or a phone number to use Wire. Create an account with an anonymous email address directly on either the desktop app or the mobile app.

      • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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        2 months ago

        But to be honest - it’s only IP and phone number.

        what guarantees they won’t hand over chat history? if police requested that, could they say no?

    • dingdongitsabear@lemmy.ml
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      regarding its UX, nothing close exists; when it comes to converting normies, so you have someone to actually talk to, then there are no alternatives. that’s a pretty shitty state of affairs for something that shoulda been solved a long time ago.

      lesson learned, I guess, don’t put all your eggs in one basket and have multiple fallback solutions. I’ve begrudingly moved to Signal and I’m cursing it out at least once per day, can’t believe the navel-gazing, self-righteous cluelessness behind it; but that’s the best there is at the moment. it’s beyond shitty that we’re having trouble achieving what we had in like 2012 by way of XMPP and friends, let alone surpassing it.

      • 0x0@programming.dev
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        2 months ago

        XMPP is still around although there’s a constant campaign trying to claim it’s gone.

        • dingdongitsabear@lemmy.ml
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          because things moved forward in the last decade or so and it’s not viable. the same way matrix and element and those ridiculous things aren’t viable and never will be. can you use it today? absolutely. can you convert normies to it and make it an actual widely used comms platform? no. fucking. way.

          this is coming from a guy running their own prosody instance and utilizing rocketchat on two separate client instances. yeah, I know how to set it up and deploy it; but the amount of absolutely credible complaints I get from normies forced to use it staggering.

          • sibachian@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            XMPP would be viable in theory but for whatever reason no one wants to build a modern client out of it.

              • sibachian@lemmy.ml
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                2 months ago

                modern as in stable, good UX, plug-and-play, and supporting features a modern chat client is expected to have with zero hassle.

                the stuff needed to convince your mom to install it.

                • ambitiousslab@lemmy.ml
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                  2 months ago

                  To be honest, I think the above clients and services like Snikket fit that description.

                  Now, I wouldn’t say they’re all on the same level UX-wise as WhatsApp, Telegram etc. But I do think they are 90%-95% of the way there, and in my experience that’s enough to convince friends and family to switch over.

                  In my experience, when people haven’t wanted to switch, it’s normally not been because of the clients, but because they don’t want to install yet another app to talk to someone.

        • dingdongitsabear@lemmy.ml
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          to me it looks and feels like shit, compared to Durov’s spyware it’s like a PoC from 2015 looking for funding. fine demo you got there, now bring us the real thing.

          but, to practical things, I lose/sell/buy/switch devices frequently. with telegram, I can lose all my devices, log on from a fresh one and all my shit is there - a decade+ of convos with 100s of people with valuable info. no juggling around with the crappy electron desktop app that doesn’t give me access to convos or the inane procedure to replace a lost device and restore chat history… the other day, I successfully retrieved a piece of info from a convo from a decade prior.

          I realize there are people out there that need that sort of security, but I don’t. I just want Telegram with an OTR plugin (OMEMO nowadays) that prevents any nascent mass surveilance and LLM ingestion and I’m golden. but that shit’s explicitly against Telegram’s ToS; the only logical conclusion is they’re adamant about leaving all your shit unencrypted in the cloud for some specific reason.

          I can’t think of any such reason that’s not malevolent.

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            I see it a lot when ppl complain about signal, but just can’t understand why you would save 10+ years in old msgs. Almost all my signal conversations even GRP chats are set to 1 week auto delete. If something important Is said that I need to save, I copy/paste it into my note app where I can organize it. Its sounds so impractical to dig through 10+ years of data everytime you need something. Plus it would be awful to know there is a log of all the dumb things I said 10 years ago lol.

            • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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              Completely agree! The ephemerality of Signal is a feature, not a bug.

              I didn’t always see it this way, but then a thought occurred to me. None of the conversations we have in person are recorded. Those communications are just as meaningful if not more so than text conversations, and yet somehow we get by just fine without them being stored indefinitely on some personal device, let alone in someone else’s datacenter.

              This is a case of technology controlling us when we should be controlling it.

              • Grey Cat@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                I agree that we are fine even without it. But that does not mean it’s better than not having that history.

                An easy example that comes to mind are all arguments wherr someone remembers one thing while someone else remembers another thing.

                • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  Decent counter-example. In turn I’d say that’s an edge case where we could still survive just fine without knowing the relevant fact for sure. And certainly not worth the cost in privacy terms of recording and storing everything.

            • Grey Cat@lemmy.world
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              I agree with you about saving the things you need. Especially images and videos since they are not worth the storage size.

              But a history of your conversations with people is pretty nice to have if you didn’t think about saving some info or it only becomes relevant later on. And as long it’s only kept on your own device, I’m fine with it. (But I guess, on the devices of people you speak to)

              Plus if you only save text, even 10 years worth of data is not much at all. A few videos probably weighs more.

              E: typo

    • endofline@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      So far, irc, jabber/ xmpp and matrix and plain old email with gpg :-)

      • sibachian@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        there’s deltachat for gpg - i love the concept, since your friends don’t even need to have it installed in order for you to chat with them.

        but i am forever stuck with telegram because i refuse to install software running on set-my-computer-on-fire-pls-Electron (which every single MODERN chat application does today, bar Telegram).

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      2 months ago

      How about something e2ee? (Even Whatsapp is more privat than telegram)

    • ParetoOptimalDev@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      https://simplex.chat/

      The first messenger without user IDs

      Other apps have user IDs: Signal, Matrix, Session, Briar, Jami, Cwtch, etc. SimpleX does not, not even random numbers. This radically improves your privacy. Why user IDs are bad for privacy? How does SimpleX work? Security assessment

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, ensuring they are consistent across the world.

      They never told they didn’t

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        2 months ago

        They’ve explicitly told in there FAQ 0 bytes of info was disclosed. And I suspect whatever they’ve shared with Germans alone wasn’t 7 bits long.

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          FAQ =/= TOS

          In FAQ, you aren’t punished if you tell BS there, at least as I understand it.

          They made it now more clear, what exactly mean by 0 byte:

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    2 months ago

    “Protecting the children” is always code for “We’re manufacturing consent to fuck you over.”