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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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Telegram does give secret chats which are E2E encrypted. I do find more use WhatsApp over Telegram though.
WhatsApp is owned by Meta, so although messages themselves are encrypted they’ll still be collecting as much data from you elsewhere.
I prefer to use Telegram, it’s a much nicer experience and offers better UI customisation.
If you had to choose 1, I’d go for where most of your friends/family are as it’ll get the most use.
Neither. You can use Matrix and then bridge either (or both) Telegram and Whatsapp so you can chat with people on those compromised chat systems.
For what end do you want to make your choice?
Like many said, whatsapp has a huge userbase, which is the foundation for a IM-app. However, telegram totally blows the compitision out of the water when it comes to features / UI / API access. But there are other alternatives - depending on your usercase: Signal - not as userfriendly, but the encryption and meta-data retention is unpararelled. Matrix-chat - even less userfriendly than Signal, but does match the API access of Telegram and a huge amount of clients, which can satisfy most user-needs (even outside of traditional IM:ing).
Do note - Telegram is not encrypted by default. This was a conscious design of the company running it, so you can easily access your chats accross different devices. And they use a home-made encryption protocol, which is a very bad idea. So don’t rely on Telegram for anything that remotely requires confidentiality.
Whatsapp uses the same encryption protocol as Signal. They might still be able to look at metadata but not the content of your messages.
Telegram uses a halfass protocol. Stay away by all means.
none of them
Even if you have no privacy concerns I would say Telegram is a much better choice. The fact you still can’t edit a message in WhatsApp is baffling.
In terms of Tech and Ops, definitely Telegram.
In terms of prevalence (user and market share), WhatsApp.
I find for these kinds of apps user prevalence and market share are a lot less relevant. You’re generally going to use it to talk to people you know personally, so it’s really a question of whether your friends are willing to use a particular app or not.
I have to use WhatsApp for business because that is what my colleagues are wedded to. But I hate the fact that it is part of Meta, I cancelled by FB account 5 years ago and it bugs me that this last tie remains. I have however successfully migrated my whole family to SIGNAL which is vastly better than WhatsApp or Telegram, and certainly more transparent.
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In my experience if you actually are decent friends with people sticking to your guns is enough.
Yes, you may feel like the dick if they ask you to “just use whatsapp, everyone does!”, but in the end most people will install a free app to keep in contact with family and friends
About two years ago my gf and I just informed everyone that we would be switching in a week. We gave a few reasons why and linked to a local news article of a recent data breach. I recommend making the switch right after a big scandal because it makes it a lot easier to understand for people that don’t follow FOSS or privacy news. We let them know how to contact us on Signal or through SMS. We were actually surprised by how many people installed Signal because of us, already had it installed or were actually already exclusively on Signal but we didn’t have them as a contact yet. I think in the end I have about half of my contacts migrated but that also counts for 90% of the people I care about talking to regularly.
I would never use WhatsApp since it’s associated with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg which is the creepiest (celebrity) human alive I belive. If him and Elon Musk had a baby, it’s over for humanity.
Anyway, I use telegram now but was impressed by Element when I tried it. It’s a client for Matrix and it’s both live chat in public channels and private conversions in one app. Also I love that it’s matrix underneath the good looking surface.
I like Element a lot, but my friend group has decided we aren’t moving from Telegram for text and self hosted Teamspeak for voice until a single self hosted solution can do both just as well (or at least close enough).
Sadly, Element’s voice features aren’t there yet.
I assume both services harvest and sell data. As a Usonian, a foreign service is less likely to be able to act on the data they harvest about me. I guarantee meta sells the social graph gleaned from e2ee communications to a data broker who then sells it to the CIA etc al.
I use signal now but was using Telegram prior.
Telegram. For most stuff, especially public groups, e2ee is vastly overrated.
What matters more is that the Telegram clients are fully open-source and accessible from a more trust worthy 3rd party on F-Droid. With WhatsApp you have basically no idea what the closed client is really doing on your device and you are also stuck with Googles user tracking via the Playstore.
In addition (at least for now), Telegram has a pretty open API, meaning that you can connect to it with alternative clients and bridges easily and without much risk of getting your account banned. Due to this there are many nicely working 3rd party integrations and overall you are much less held hostage by the main provider as in the case of WhatsApp.
Whatsapp imo is better. They are both stealing your data, at least with WA you avoid plain text for third parties.
By the way, people answering Signal or Matrix: you really suck big time. Of course that’s better, but if you ever have a friend outside privacy nich (or at all - your momma doesn’t count-) , you would learn that’s not a choice
Can you elaborate on what kind of data [you think] they each steal?
I don’t think that’s true. By now, my whole family and almost all my friends are on Signal. Only a few of them are into IT to start with, let alone privacy. In my family, it was my not exactly tech-savvy grandpa that came to Signal first after I quit WhatsApp! When I quit WhatsApp most of them first went with SMS, but overtime they switched to Signal because it’s easier. After a year pretty much everyone is over.
Really, all it takes is someone who’s on there but not on WhatsApp (or whatever is the norm around you). Most people don’t care much about privacy, and won’t switch if they don’t have to. But neither do they care much for installing another app if it benefits them (in this case, the benefit was easier chatting with me). Even less they care if that app is Telegram or Signal, especiallly if they use neither already.
And no, I didn’t fight with any of my family or friend, nor did I loose contact with anyone I cared about in the process. If you handle quiting WhatsApp with a bit of tact and respect, no decent human being will hate you. Just don’t be a jerk about it, but that counts for anything…
Matrix might be a bit more complex, but Signal is really not thát much trouble with “friends outside the privacy niche” other than that they have no need for it (a need which would be created by you switching to it).
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Exactly that. Privacy, and in extension of that wanting nothing to do with Meta. I think the key lies in making it a me-problem rather than them-problem. I never told them they need to stop using it nor gave them a lecture about privacy, just that I was no longer on it. And that they could reach me on Signal and SMS, or just call. If they wánt I can discuss privacy with them, but only if théy want to.
As I said, it was a slow process and most people felt it was unnecesary to install another app so they just used SMS. But over time, not being able to send images (MMS services are down with most providers here) or not having group chats made some install Signal after all. And the more did, the easier the rest followed. My grandpa was indeed the first. Not for any tech or privacy reason, but because as a typical grandfather, he cares more about chatting with his grandchild than how many apps he has. He’s more the “it says I need another app, so just press install” type that ends up with tons of bloatware 🥴.
You cannot force people to care about privacy, and trying to will generally make them just get annoyed with you. They also all still use WhatsApp next to it as well. But, every chat that’s moved over to Signal is improvement, and everyone who has both still increases the userbase which increases the appeal of Signal. Small steps are still improvements, and more than you get by arguing over it.
I’m also not sure if I’d count SMS worse than WhatsApp. Sure it’s send plain text, but someone would need to intercept it before it get’s read and used. Wheras with WhatApp, you know Meta will intercepts whatever they can. And their app is propietary + you have no proof about their encryption. For all you know, they may have a copy of your key, or process it locally before encrypting. Wouldn’t be the first time Meta crosses the legal line far and only get’s caught years later if ever. Their track-record isn’t exactly a “they’d never do that” one. Not to forget all other data outside of yohr messages that the apps gathers that my FOSS SMS app doesn’t. I don’t want that installed on my phone.
@PrivateOnions @cambionn
More messenger apps need to be interoperable, with options for leading end-to-end encryption algorithms built into their interoperability protocols.
I agree that mentioning them is not helpful if the question explicitly is about WhatsApp vs. Telegram. However, Signal surely is simple enough that it can be used by anyone capable of using WhatsApp. It free, encrypted and a lot more trustworthy than any F**book app ever will be.
So it is either closed-source with promised encryption (not verifiable) and a lot of meta data collection or open-source without encryption. Tough call. Signal would be best of both worlds, but it seems to be no alternative for you.
Since I don’t trust Meta with anything, I would use Telegram if I had to. But I would absolutely not be happy with it.
Try to convince the people around you to use Signal.
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Just let them know you don’t want Facebook having anything more on you than they already do. Let them know it has everything people want in messaging apps like stickers (whatever the heck those are?!), GIFS, video and phone calls, groups, etc.
I did the same some years ago. Just deleted WhatsApp and told everyone I was either available via Signal/Threema or via SMS/Mail. Most of my friends installed Signal alongside WhatsApp over the following weeks.
And this “worked” in a country with over 90 % WhatsApp users ;-).
I would use Telegram, even if there was no E2EE because the WhatsApp app collects more data. The Telegram app privacy section in the App Store says that it only collects data for “App Functionality”, while WhatsApp collects more data and uses it for ads, tracking, and “other purposes”. That said, both of these apps are bad and I would not send anything sensitive using them. With how bad Facebook is, I would not be surprised if WhatsApp had a backdoor. Even iMessage or RCS would be better than these apps (but of course Signal is the best).
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