Comment by palata 4 days ago
> I don't know how they're the only independent app that seems to be able to produce such a well built UI/UX for a chat application in 2025.
Precisely because they don't spend so much effort for privacy. If your server can read all your messages, it's suddenly easier to provide great features. For instance, GMail can add your next hotel stay to your calendar automatically because it has access to your emails. That's great UX, but poor privacy.
> This is not entirely true.
My point is that it's generally harder to add those features in a privacy-preserving way. GMail couldn't do it if it couldn't read the content of the emails, period. It doesn't mean that there is no way to have nice features in a privacy-preserving way. I just said it's harder (sometimes impossible).
> I don't think Telegram's UX is tied to their permissive privacy
Not exclusively, but it is obviously a lot easier! Take a web client: if the server has access to the data, your client can just fetch it. If the server doesn't even know about the existence of the group, that's harder. Why do you think only the "secret chats" are E2EE in Telegram (and those don't support groups)?
> then do what's needed to support it
What do they do to support privacy? They don't have E2EE except in the secret chats! That hasn't changed in a decade!
> Instagram has terrible privacy and actively mines information from chat and their UX is only passably good
This keeps getting further from what I said :). Of course, it's possible to do worse than Telegram!
This is such an odd comment.
What on earth makes you think that the same engineers responsible for fluid and smooth UI/UX are the ones who’d ever influence the cryptography/privacy/security? Whether or not the chats are encrypted has zero to do with this.
Telegram has almost universally smooth scrolling, things work well across platforms, it’s native pretty much everywhere with low memory usage and mostly platform specific behaviors. Signal half asses this, and Element is… shoddy, at best, in comparison.
Unless you're extremely privileged, privacy does play a role in every feature. There is no user experience if you're imprisoned for speaking your mind and your government intelligence has pwned Telegram servers.
Making a smooth app isn't that hard. Inventing the cryptographic protocols to enable group management without server-side control, and proving their security is the hard part. Something Telegram's developers haven't the faintest idea of how to do.
That was the time before we lived our half of our social lives online in group chats and social media.
My calls and texts used to be about me agreeing with my buddies when to hang out. They weren't nearly as private as me keeping in touch with buddies I rarely see IRL, online.
Also, there was a period of transition. Had I known the MSN messenger was completely unencrypted, in that everyone, not just Microsoft, could listen in, I might have felt my privacy violated. I sure as hell feel that in hindsight.
The world has been changing a lot over those decades, and the technological and surveillance capabilities of state actors (and malicious, non-state actors, for that matter) has increased dramatically. Not needing E2EE a few decades ago has nothing to do with whether or not we need it now.
> Unless you're extremely privileged, privacy does play a role in every feature.
No, dude. Come on - you really think that plays a role in how smooth a listview renders? Or whether it follows the correct tab focus order? I don't think I could be more clear about what I'm saying in my last comment. Their client side app is incredibly smooth and well built. Signal, Element, etc do not stack up.
> Making a smooth app isn't that hard.
Yes, it surprisingly is. Multiple chat apps in 2025 still fail at this.
> Inventing the cryptographic protocols to enable group management without server-side control, and proving their security is the hard part. Something Telegram's developers haven't the faintest idea of how to do.
This isn't even in the realm of what my point was.
>Come on - you really think that plays a role in how smooth a listview renders?
That's not a feature. Stickers is a feature. Calls are a feature. Messages are a feature. Group chats are a feature. Group video calls are a feature. Link thumbnails are a feature. Forwarding messages is a feature.
>Their client side app is incredibly smooth and well built.
Yes, and the Trojan horse was so beautiful John Oliver would totally have hit on it.
Telegram UI is fine, I'll give you that. But it was created at the expense of designing the app private. Move fast yolo security isn't the justification.
They'd have to re-design the protocol from scratch to make it E2EE by default. Hell, you can't even get feature parity with secret chats. E.g., stickers do not work.
Signal might not have every bell and whistle like pinned messages, but when it eventually does, I will know it's done with proper privacy design.
I get that your point is to bore exclusively in the UI/UX with, admiring the forest from the trees. I'm saying the true beauty is with the ridiculously seamless and easy to use end-to-end encryption for everything Signal provides. Both phone app, and all desktop apps stay in sync, all 1:1 chats are E2EE and they are available on all platforms, unlike Telegram where they're limited to phone only. All group chats are E2EE and they're available on all platform, unlike Telegram that doesn't have E2EE for group chats. All chats are E2EE by default, unlike Telegram where no chat is E2EE.
Privacy and security are integral part of every feature. Everything else is a footgun. Arguing about how well the footgun is polished, doesn't make it any less of a footgun.
Signal has over time polished its secure features.
Telegram isn't in the process of securing it's polished turd of a protocol.
> What on earth makes you think that the same engineers responsible for fluid and smooth UI/UX are the ones who’d ever influence the cryptography/privacy/security?
Did you even read my comment? I gave an example of how privacy directly impacts UX: GMail couldn't automatically add your events to your calendar if it could not read the content of your emails. I never talked about engineers, just the technical reality. If you don't have it, you can't read it. That seemed absolutely obvious to me: the best UX for a car would be one that doesn't need a source of energy, fits in my pockets and instantly teleports me anywhere I want. Go ask your engineers to make a car that allows that perfect UX, and see how they react.
Telegram has no E2EE except for the secret chats. Last time I checked, the secret chats were not synchronized between devices (i.e. the privacy has an obvious impact on the UX).
So no, I don't think it was an odd comment. It just feels like you don't know how it works technically.
> Did you even read my comment?
I'm not even sure you read mine.
> It just feels like you don't know how it works technically.
You're disregarding what I've said and trying to have a different discussion. Please pay attention.
I am not discussing - nor do I consider it relevant to my point - privacy/security/etc contexts for Telegram's client side applications. Whether or not it's encrypted has zero to do with how smooth and well built a chat UI is. I am commenting on the frontend client side engineering and how Telegram has, hands down, the best implementation. Other apps need to catch up.
> Whether or not it's encrypted has zero to do with how smooth and well built a chat UI is.
Ok, let's talk with concrete examples.
1. Say you open the Signal Desktop app: either you don't get the history of the messages, or you need to wait a fairly long time for them to arrive. With Telegram, you get the whole history immediately. Does that count as "smooth and unrelated to encryption" to you?
2. Say you send a message to a group on Telegram and on Signal/Element. On Telegram you see that the message was received noticeably faster than on the others. Does that count as "smooth and unrelated to encryption" to you?
3. Let's talk about GIFs and stickers: I'm sure Telegram has many more than e.g. Signal. Is that something you consider when you say Telegram has a better implementation and it is unrelated to the privacy concerns?
4. Telegram has bots that enable a lot of feature. Does that count?
You're telling me that for the stuff that isn't impacted by privacy concerns, Telegram is better. You seem very sure of that, and maybe that's right. But can you give concrete examples? Because until now, what I've been reading from you is that the UI/UX is not impacted by the privacy, and this is obviously wrong.
So let me ask this: would you agree that at least some UI/UX is impacted by the privacy concerns?
This is not entirely true. For example, Calendar.app does the same by locally extracting the .ics out of Mail.app without ever sending anything to Apple.
I don't think Telegram's UX is tied to their permissive privacy, but they do seem to start with UX then do what's needed to support it. That does give them an edge. (Instagram has terrible privacy and actively mines information from chat and their UX is only passably good.)