Technology
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oh sure. ban the ONLY modern chat client not running on electron.
get fucked, spain!
Telegram is a security disaster.
agreed. but chats are there to keep in touch, collaborate, and communicate. so we don't have much of a choice, especially since most people just don't care about security and stick with Messenger or similar. in my circles though, it's a lot easier to convince someone to use Telegram unlike one of the many XMPP clients, and seeing as it runs natively, it's my only real choice.
personally, I'd be all over DeltaChat if it wasn't running on electron. brilliant idea for sure, as there would be no convincing necessary to keep in touch with practically anyone on the planet.
You can collaborate on WhatsApp or Signal as well, both messengers are using the end-to-end encrypted Signal protocol. Even in group chats. Telegram is not E2EE per default.
Of course, with WhatsApp Meta collects all your metadata so they have a very detailed network of basically all the people in this world... At least without all their messages.
both use Electron (which is the problem and why Telegram is literally the only modern option on the market) so they aren't options either. If Electron wasn't a problem in and off itself, I wouldn't use either of those anyway since I could use DeltaChat, be secure, and not need to bother to "convert" anyone to use the client since it's literally a chat client built on the email protocol (which everyone on earth has).
Caring about the technology of an app more than about its privacy is really strange to me, but you do you.
electron slows everything on your computer down (by design). for each individual electron app you're running concurrently, you're burning another huge volume of resources and sacrificing performance that normally would have been shared. even well-optimized electron apps can't do anything to avoid this due to the inherent design of electron. because each runtime of electron has to load all its junk separately from one another. it's a burden on your hardware that developers just don't give a shit about because electron makes it easy to push out apps with minimal coding effort and let you ignore native platform support. if they did give a shit they wouldn't use electron. electron basically makes a flagship computer behave like a 90ies computer due to lazy convenience of the coder. i'd propose that any developer who opts to us electron can't be trusted because they obviously don't care (or know) enough to develop real software. almost every electron app is basically a patchwork put together from various github sources and frameworks.
regardless. even if i wanted to use one of the privacy focused applications despite electron, i would have a total of 0 users to chat with, making the chat app useless. people want their modern features and are beyond willing to pay with their privacy. so not only does telegram offer a non-electron native client on all platforms. they also offer all modern features and design elements users have come to expect.
and as said. if i had to pick one chat application i'd prefer over anything else. i'd go with delta chat. since i wouldn't need to convince anyone to install it and still be able to chat with them. but it's unlikely the delta chat developer will rewrite it. heck, most of the actual interface is just another lazy copypaste. so, i do me.
In what way?
Messages are only end-to-end encrypted if you use the Secure Messaging option. Otherwise everything passes the server in cleartext.
That means that anyone with access to those servers can read your messages.
closed source.
plain text unless activated.
Signal, Whatsapp and many Matrix Clients including the new Element X are not Electron based afaik
Signal desktop client is actually Electron based. And AFAIK, Electron doesn't run on Android, only on the desktop.
Electron does run on Android, see Element Android or Discord for example. I thought we were talking about mobile.
Are you sure about that? That would be surprising for me, as I had never before heard about Electron running on mobile.
A quick dive in Element Android's dependencies didn't reveal any mentions of Electron, but perhaps it's referenced in some other way.
mobile is not the problem for many reasons. one being that apps offload so there is no system wide slowdown like you experience on a modern high end computer, caused by electron.
all those protocols only offer shitty electron apps on desktop.
i have a top end m1 mbp and it can handle 2 electron apps running concurrently at best. i won't even install electron apps anymore because i need to be able to actually use my computer for work. which is a bit ironic as most modern utility applications which would be useful for work can't even be used on most computers unless run as the single active app (great workflow, lol!).
There are many Matrix Clients that don't run on Electron on Desktop.
Afaik Telegram desktop does use Electron so I assumed we were talking about mobile.
EDIT: Telegram desktop does in fact not use Electron.
there is only really nheko in development among the non-electron alternatives and it's unstable. can't convince people to use software that only works half the time.
Why not? M$OFT managed to do so for years ...