Comment by Klonoar

Comment by Klonoar 6 days ago

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.

maqp 6 days ago

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.

Reply View 10 replies

izacus 6 days ago

People communicated via unencrypted phone calls and SMS and other unencrypted mediums for decades so you might just be massively overstating the importance of E2E message encryption for an average person.

Reply View | 5 replies
- maqp 5 days ago
  
  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.
  
  Reply View | 1 reply
  
  palata 5 days ago
  
  What the hell was MSN messenger plaintext over unencrypted transport? I'm genuinely shocked, I didn't know! I naively assumed it was at least encrypted to Microsoft. But now that you say it, it makes sense...
  Also feels like missed opportunities :D.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
- kelnos 6 days ago
  
  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.
  
  Reply View | 1 reply
  
  izacus 4 days ago
  
  And how exactly has that surveillance changed the life of an average westerner?
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
- palata 5 days ago
  
  The world was fine without Internet for most of its history. What's your point?
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
Klonoar 6 days ago

> 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.

Reply View | 2 replies
- maqp 5 days ago
  
  >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.
  
  Reply View | 1 reply
  
  Klonoar a day ago
  
  > 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.
  K, and? Every comment I've typed in this thread was surrounding how these things are implemented on the rendering layer. Whether or how those are encrypted is of no relation to my point. Badgering on about it more won't help you make a point.
  > Signal might not have every bell and whistle like pinned messages, but when it eventually does, [...] > I'm saying the true beauty is with the ridiculously seamless and easy to use end-to-end encryption for everything Signal provides.
  You seem to be under the impression that I am knocking Signal as a client, and I'm not. It is my primary messenger.
  I just expect better of them and I do not believe for one moment that they couldn't have the UI/UX of Telegram. You are more than welcome to get all tied up in the crypto/privacy/security arguments - I have never argued those because they are (a) boringly obvious points and (b) not the fucking point of my comment chain.
  Privacy and security have jack shit to do with how well an engineer implements rendering code, full stop. Telegram does it better and Signal/Element/etc need to do better.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
est 6 days ago

> privacy does play a role in every feature
It really depends. People discuss and communicate in public channels like IRC or Discord.
A large chunk of chatting is shitposting with anonymous identity.
Secure chat is only needed in some scenarios.

Reply View | 0 replies

palata 6 days ago

> 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.

Reply View 7 replies

Klonoar 6 days ago

> 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.

Reply View | 6 replies
- palata 6 days ago
  
  > 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?
  
  Reply View | 5 replies
  
  Klonoar 6 days ago
  
  Every single point that you want to try here has nothing to do with implementing a smooth scrolling, buttery UI/UX of a chat application. Please stop moving the goalposts if you want to actually discuss this.
  I also frankly don't even get what you're trying to say with point 1, because Signal loads messages instantly for me on Desktop. There's zero delay. The UI/UX of the scrolling and chat display is the problem.
  > what I've been reading from you is that the UI/UX is not impacted by the privacy, and this is obviously wrong
  It is not obviously wrong, and you've done nothing but attempt to loop the conversation back to some level of privacy/encryption/etc. These things do not matter in this conversation, full stop.
  This (my thread, not the greater thread we're in) is a design and frontend implementation discussion, not a privacy/security discussion. If that is not clear to you, I don't know what to say anymore.
  
  Reply View | 4 replies