Trying to make up my mind about #Signal vs. #Telegram in these days. (Most likely I'll keep both — it's about which to use by default and promote among my contacts of the #WhatsApp #exodus.)
So far:
✅ Telegram:
‣ Web client (this is big).
‣ Many useful features, and rapid pace of development.
‣ One can edit past messages, and (more or less) delete them, too.
‣ API, bots, apps.
✅ Signal:
‣ The server is #FreeSoftware and #OpenSource, too (although this is not terribly important per se).
‣ Better #encryption (eg, E2E also in group chats).
‣ Developed by a non-profit (is it an advantage, though?).
‣ Recommended by #security experts I personally trust (#EdwardSnowden, #BruceSchneier) and other thoughtful techies (#ElonMusk).
Fediverse: anything to correct or add? Specifically: has anyone compared their respective ToS? I'd like to know what types of data they [say they] harvest, and exactly with what legal entities they're shared.
#messaging
@tripu
Telegram has reproducible builds.
For me: the lack of federation disqualifies both of them and I tell people to just email/sms. I tried to fix push notifications on IRC last year but Apple makes it super hard. I might give up and just pay them $100/yr so I can run my own notification relay.
@swiley
Thanks for the reminder. Reproducible builds are indeed a feature.
E-mail, IRC and SMS are so clumsy and offer so much friction… they're very far behind in features compared with #messaging apps. Don't you think?
#Telegram
@tripu Email is actually pretty nice if you have a decent client. Most mobile OSes don't let you run a decent client though so people who do everything on their phone seem to really hate it.
SMS is downright awful in just about every way but in the US everyone has it anyway.
IRC is nice if you have a bouncer, no one runs a bouncer though. Push notifications would be enough but without web push you can't really have individually maintained IRC clients on mobile phones.
If you're talking about editing old messages that's absolutely an anti feature that gets abused by some people.