{"slug": "telegram", "name": "Telegram", "category": "communication", "category_name": "Email and chat", "description": "Cloud-based messaging app with group chats, public channels, and a bot platform.", "recommenders": 9, "commenters": 29, "warners": 7, "score": 4.999, "rising": -0.62, "first": "2025-11-07", "latest": "2026-10-28", "why": "HN commenters like Telegram for its easy bot integrations, large group chats with strong moderation tools, and a fast, stable desktop app.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 8, "neutral": 14, "compare": 1, "warn": 7}, "spark": [2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1], "listed": true, "loved": ["Bot integrations", "Everyday messaging"], "caveat": "No E2E encryption", "short_quote": "I use telegram as my main chat app with all of my friends and coworkers.", "icon": true, "domain": "cryptographyengineering.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://telegram.org", "pricing": "free", "aliases": ["Telegram"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like Telegram for its easy bot integrations,", "cites": [{"id": 800502865, "item_id": 50031429, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50031429", "by": "lxgr", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Bot access is definitely better in Telegram; that\u2019s what I sometimes use it for.", "excerpt": "I use them daily, so we might just have different priorities. Bot access is definitely better in Telegram; that\u2019s what I sometimes use it for. WhatsApp has voice message transcription now, but fortunately I don\u2019t receive many. (I consider it pretty rude to put the effort of messaging on the recipient because the sender can\u2019t be bothered to type or transcribe on their side.) Everything else you mentioned is a minor in", "context": "uses both daily", "use_case": "bots", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 782868704, "item_id": 48929294, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48929294", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But telegram has its uses.", "excerpt": "For a lot of stuff it doesn't really matter whether it's E2EE though. I use it for bots that transfer information that isn't secret and for large public channels that everyone can join as they wish anyway. For private chats I use WhatsApp yes. But telegram has its uses. Why does it matter that telegram can see your local bus times that are published online anyway?", "context": "", "use_case": "bots and public channels", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Serverless"}, {"id": 735692641, "item_id": 45980790, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45980790", "by": "weavermarquez", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Even as a huge Linux tinkerer I've been really pleased with Zo setting things up for me that I wouldn't have expected to get done on a server like this. I've started to experiment with installing Guix and serving Lem, and made a personal Telegram bot as an alternative interface. They really focus on keeping out of your way, and the Zo agent is quite persistent and gets things done that I didn't think was feasible. Th", "context": "Linux tinkerer", "use_case": "interface to server agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zo: Intelligent Personal Servers for Everyone"}, {"id": 764575393, "item_id": 47785962, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47785962", "by": "pama", "date": "2026-04-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "voice and image UI via telegram", "excerpt": "I use it a lot for personal stuff. Off the top of my head: Best way so far to build and use personalized/family tools for dining/recipe/movie/literature/reminder/organizer/security/notes\u2014-in addition to robust text input, all of them have a voice and image UI via telegram without extra code via an intermediate LLM agent, and all data end up on your machine in your format of choice. More fun than codex/claude-code for", "context": "", "use_case": "chat interface", "switched_from": "", "story": "Is anyone actually using OpenClaw?"}]}, {"text": " large group chats with strong moderation tools,", "cites": [{"id": 800625104, "item_id": 50039069, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50039069", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The moderation and access tools are way better than WhatsApp's.", "excerpt": "Maybe that's regional but here in Spain it's very popular for clubs. We use it for our makerspace and also for several other clubs. The moderation and access tools are way better than WhatsApp's. It's not end to end encrypted but for big group channels that anyone can join that doesn't really matter. Here it's all WhatsApp and Telegram. iMessage isn't really a thing at all except for expats. Because most locals use s", "context": "in Spain, runs makerspace group", "use_case": "makerspace and club groups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 782298944, "item_id": 48893684, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48893684", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we're all on Telegram", "excerpt": "> Part of me hopes that we got back to the late 1990s dedicated websites/forums. That seems to be the Discord model but let's see. Dunno: people in my circles all have Telegram (Europe here but I think they have 1 billion MAU now: they're not just successful in Europe). I've got Telegram groups depending on my interests. I just got invited to try ball trap (clay pidgeon shooting) tomorrow. Then another group set up a", "context": "Europe-based user", "use_case": "group chats for interests and meetups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media"}]}, {"text": " and a fast, stable desktop app.", "cites": [{"id": 797244882, "item_id": 49827805, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49827805", "by": "fschuett", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Telegram which has a near-perfect UX and I've never had it crash on me", "excerpt": "The issue with KDE is not the \"UX\", the issue is the crashiness and jank, which is an issue of C++ and the OOP-ness of Qt, respectively and no amount of philosophizing will fix that. Users can excuse high memory usage, users can excuse low FPS, users cannot excuse jank and crashes. It is very hard to pin down the problems with Qt because on the one hand you can produce well-working UIs with QML if you are committed t", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}, {"id": 735738976, "item_id": 45983686, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983686", "by": "joecool1029", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Their developers are also very responsive to PR's, I have a couple GCC build fixes in it.", "excerpt": "> Telegram, for all its faults, has an excellent desktop app. Their developers are also very responsive to PR's, I have a couple GCC build fixes in it. I really soured on Signal early with when running BB10, they would not let us fork and use/distribute websocket builds to get around not having google play services on available on that platform: https://github.com/libresignal/libresignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211", "context": "contributor with GCC build fixes", "use_case": "desktop messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "I just want working RCS messaging"}, {"id": 800520144, "item_id": 50032509, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032509", "by": "crossroadsguy", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "they regularly re-enable settings inside the app/account that you had specifically disabled", "excerpt": "One of the challenges with Telegram is - they regularly re-enable settings inside the app/account that you had specifically disabled. So at any point you don't know what is happening and what is not. Meaning, even if you didn't see a thing, a malicious file might be sitting all warm and fuzzy on your computer - among possible other things. I used to like the snappiness of this app (and it is still snappier than almos", "context": "", "use_case": "instant messaging desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveat is that it is not end-to-end encrypted,", "cites": [{"id": 750096064, "item_id": 46881004, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46881004", "by": "derrida", "date": "2026-02-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "DON'T TRUST TELEGRAM AS END TO END ENCRYPTED CHAT", "excerpt": "ok thank you! I did not know that, I'm ashamed to admit! sort of like studying physics at university a decade later forgetting V=IR when I actually needed it for some solar install. I took \"technical hiatus\" about 5 years and recently coming back. Anyway cut to the chase, I just checked out Mathew Greens post on the subject, he is on my list of default \"trust what he says about cryptography\" along with some others li", "context": "cryptography background", "use_case": "private messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Paris prosecutors raid France offices of Elon Musk's X"}, {"id": 782763104, "item_id": 48922694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48922694", "by": "qmmmur", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to use telegram for everything and then stopped after I realised it", "excerpt": "Same. I used to use telegram for everything and then stopped after I realised it wasn\u2019t really and to end encrypted. The bots were super useful. I used to have one I could ask different bus times for. Was so much better than the app the local bus company had made.", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging and bots", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Serverless"}, {"id": 782802833, "item_id": 48925177, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925177", "by": "geek_at", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "telegram which has no encryption for the bot backend so the devs can read everything you write", "excerpt": "I use a signal api on a daily basis for all my agentic chatting and notifications about energy prices and server downtime notification. Setup was quick enough but it needs a real phone number once during setup which is kind of a hassle. still better than using telegram which has no encryption for the bot backend so the devs can read everything you write", "context": "", "use_case": "bot messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Serverless"}, {"id": 800625104, "item_id": 50039069, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50039069", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The moderation and access tools are way better than WhatsApp's.", "excerpt": "Maybe that's regional but here in Spain it's very popular for clubs. We use it for our makerspace and also for several other clubs. The moderation and access tools are way better than WhatsApp's. It's not end to end encrypted but for big group channels that anyone can join that doesn't really matter. Here it's all WhatsApp and Telegram. iMessage isn't really a thing at all except for expats. Because most locals use s", "context": "in Spain, runs makerspace group", "use_case": "makerspace and club groups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}]}, {"text": " and some complain it re-enables disabled settings and forces features like AI summaries.", "cites": [{"id": 800520144, "item_id": 50032509, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032509", "by": "crossroadsguy", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "they regularly re-enable settings inside the app/account that you had specifically disabled", "excerpt": "One of the challenges with Telegram is - they regularly re-enable settings inside the app/account that you had specifically disabled. So at any point you don't know what is happening and what is not. Meaning, even if you didn't see a thing, a malicious file might be sitting all warm and fuzzy on your computer - among possible other things. I used to like the snappiness of this app (and it is still snappier than almos", "context": "", "use_case": "instant messaging desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 744849392, "item_id": 46553087, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46553087", "by": "listic", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I find it unacceptable and filed a bug report about that", "excerpt": "On January, 3, 2026, Telegram messenger, which I use a lot, introduced AI Summaries [1] for all posts after January, 3, 2026 with no way to switch them off; neither for the readers nor for channel admins. I find it unacceptable and filed a bug report about that (marking that as an issue; not feature request, which in my view it is), requesting for this feature to be opt-in. [1] https://telegram.org/blog/new-design-ai", "context": "heavy Telegram user", "use_case": "messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram introduced AI Summaries. I filed bug report for them"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Bot integrations", "summary": "Commenters find bots easy to set up and use them for alerts, personal tools and AI agents.", "quotes": [{"id": 800502865, "item_id": 50031429, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50031429", "by": "lxgr", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Bot access is definitely better in Telegram; that\u2019s what I sometimes use it for.", "excerpt": "I use them daily, so we might just have different priorities. Bot access is definitely better in Telegram; that\u2019s what I sometimes use it for. WhatsApp has voice message transcription now, but fortunately I don\u2019t receive many. (I consider it pretty rude to put the effort of messaging on the recipient because the sender can\u2019t be bothered to type or transcribe on their side.) Everything else you mentioned is a minor in", "context": "uses both daily", "use_case": "bots", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 782763104, "item_id": 48922694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48922694", "by": "qmmmur", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to use telegram for everything and then stopped after I realised it", "excerpt": "Same. I used to use telegram for everything and then stopped after I realised it wasn\u2019t really and to end encrypted. The bots were super useful. I used to have one I could ask different bus times for. Was so much better than the app the local bus company had made.", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging and bots", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Serverless"}, {"id": 735692641, "item_id": 45980790, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45980790", "by": "weavermarquez", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Even as a huge Linux tinkerer I've been really pleased with Zo setting things up for me that I wouldn't have expected to get done on a server like this. I've started to experiment with installing Guix and serving Lem, and made a personal Telegram bot as an alternative interface. They really focus on keeping out of your way, and the Zo agent is quite persistent and gets things done that I didn't think was feasible. Th", "context": "Linux tinkerer", "use_case": "interface to server agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zo: Intelligent Personal Servers for Everyone"}]}, {"label": "Everyday messaging", "summary": "Several use it as their main chat app with friends, coworkers and family.", "quotes": [{"id": 781395952, "item_id": 48837247, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48837247", "by": "mfkp", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use telegram as my main chat app with all of my friends and coworkers.", "excerpt": "This is awesome, I use telegram as my main chat app with all of my friends and coworkers. Now I need to figure out how to dockerize this and run it on my NAS so it's not reliant on my laptop being online. Maybe can figure out a workflow to make a branch, deploy it and give me a cloudflare tunnel link to test it, and if approved merge the changes into main branch and deploy to prod. The vibes are off the charts.", "context": "", "use_case": "main chat app", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Built a Telegram Client for Pi"}, {"id": 800562464, "item_id": 50035154, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50035154", "by": "boltzmann64", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Telegram as my primary messenger app.", "excerpt": "Can you please tell me what settings get auto re-enabled? I use Telegram as my primary messenger app. I just want to make a more informed decision if I should switch to Signal or something.", "context": "", "use_case": "primary messenger", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 745013266, "item_id": 46563329, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563329", "by": "skeledrew", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "over Telegram (which I use constantly through the day)", "excerpt": "I made an interface to a Perplexica instance over Telegram (which I use constantly through the day) a few months ago, but actually haven't used it much as honestly the quality just isn't as good as Perplexity. It does seem the logical next step is to switch to something with more raw agent-like access.", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "I built a tool to create AI agents that live in iMessage"}]}, {"label": "Groups and moderation", "summary": "Popular for clubs and interest groups, with moderation and access tools seen as better than WhatsApp's.", "quotes": [{"id": 800625104, "item_id": 50039069, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50039069", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The moderation and access tools are way better than WhatsApp's.", "excerpt": "Maybe that's regional but here in Spain it's very popular for clubs. We use it for our makerspace and also for several other clubs. The moderation and access tools are way better than WhatsApp's. It's not end to end encrypted but for big group channels that anyone can join that doesn't really matter. Here it's all WhatsApp and Telegram. iMessage isn't really a thing at all except for expats. Because most locals use s", "context": "in Spain, runs makerspace group", "use_case": "makerspace and club groups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 782298944, "item_id": 48893684, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48893684", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we're all on Telegram", "excerpt": "> Part of me hopes that we got back to the late 1990s dedicated websites/forums. That seems to be the Discord model but let's see. Dunno: people in my circles all have Telegram (Europe here but I think they have 1 billion MAU now: they're not just successful in Europe). I've got Telegram groups depending on my interests. I just got invited to try ball trap (clay pidgeon shooting) tomorrow. Then another group set up a", "context": "Europe-based user", "use_case": "group chats for interests and meetups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media"}, {"id": 782721184, "item_id": 48920074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920074", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Telegram only for groups with people I know. I've got zero issues with boths.", "excerpt": "I use Telegram only for groups with people I know. I've got zero issues with boths. Are you using public channels? (are those even a thing with Telegram?)", "context": "", "use_case": "private group chats", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Serverless"}]}, {"label": "Desktop app", "summary": "The desktop app is praised as snappy, stable and polished.", "quotes": [{"id": 797244882, "item_id": 49827805, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49827805", "by": "fschuett", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Telegram which has a near-perfect UX and I've never had it crash on me", "excerpt": "The issue with KDE is not the \"UX\", the issue is the crashiness and jank, which is an issue of C++ and the OOP-ness of Qt, respectively and no amount of philosophizing will fix that. Users can excuse high memory usage, users can excuse low FPS, users cannot excuse jank and crashes. It is very hard to pin down the problems with Qt because on the one hand you can produce well-working UIs with QML if you are committed t", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}, {"id": 735738976, "item_id": 45983686, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983686", "by": "joecool1029", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Their developers are also very responsive to PR's, I have a couple GCC build fixes in it.", "excerpt": "> Telegram, for all its faults, has an excellent desktop app. Their developers are also very responsive to PR's, I have a couple GCC build fixes in it. I really soured on Signal early with when running BB10, they would not let us fork and use/distribute websocket builds to get around not having google play services on available on that platform: https://github.com/libresignal/libresignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211", "context": "contributor with GCC build fixes", "use_case": "desktop messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "I just want working RCS messaging"}, {"id": 800520144, "item_id": 50032509, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032509", "by": "crossroadsguy", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "they regularly re-enable settings inside the app/account that you had specifically disabled", "excerpt": "One of the challenges with Telegram is - they regularly re-enable settings inside the app/account that you had specifically disabled. So at any point you don't know what is happening and what is not. Meaning, even if you didn't see a thing, a malicious file might be sitting all warm and fuzzy on your computer - among possible other things. I used to like the snappiness of this app (and it is still snappier than almos", "context": "", "use_case": "instant messaging desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}]}, {"label": "File sharing", "summary": "Sends files without compression up to a 2GB limit.", "quotes": [{"id": 766906594, "item_id": 47931662, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47931662", "by": "udugadoqehale", "date": "2026-04-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "just use Telegram (no compression, 2GB limit)", "excerpt": "Check Wormhole or WeTransfer; you drag, get a link, send it. No account needed. If you're sharing with the same people regularly, just use Telegram (no compression, 2GB limit) or a shared Google Drive folder.", "context": "", "use_case": "regular file sharing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What file sharing apps do you guys use?"}]}, {"label": "Saved Messages", "summary": "Saved Messages with reminders is useful as a personal notes tool.", "quotes": [{"id": 744461680, "item_id": 46528855, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46528855", "by": "eevmanu", "date": "2026-01-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Telegram 'Saved Messages' with the reminder feature is really useful.", "excerpt": "When I have that need, this is what I do. I use the info from here as context: https://github.com/InteractionDesignFoundation/add-event-to-calendar-docs/blob/main/services/google.md I load it via a custom system prompt or skill, then pass my specific need, thought, or anything I want to remember in the future, including events with a certain frequency, as part of the prompt. From that, I render the URLs needed to cre", "context": "", "use_case": "reminders for future self", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Do you write things down for your future self? If so, how?"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "No E2E encryption", "summary": "Chats and the bot backend are not end-to-end encrypted, which drove some users away.", "quotes": [{"id": 750096064, "item_id": 46881004, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46881004", "by": "derrida", "date": "2026-02-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "DON'T TRUST TELEGRAM AS END TO END ENCRYPTED CHAT", "excerpt": "ok thank you! I did not know that, I'm ashamed to admit! sort of like studying physics at university a decade later forgetting V=IR when I actually needed it for some solar install. I took \"technical hiatus\" about 5 years and recently coming back. Anyway cut to the chase, I just checked out Mathew Greens post on the subject, he is on my list of default \"trust what he says about cryptography\" along with some others li", "context": "cryptography background", "use_case": "private messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Paris prosecutors raid France offices of Elon Musk's X"}, {"id": 782763104, "item_id": 48922694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48922694", "by": "qmmmur", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to use telegram for everything and then stopped after I realised it", "excerpt": "Same. I used to use telegram for everything and then stopped after I realised it wasn\u2019t really and to end encrypted. The bots were super useful. I used to have one I could ask different bus times for. Was so much better than the app the local bus company had made.", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging and bots", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Serverless"}, {"id": 782802833, "item_id": 48925177, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925177", "by": "geek_at", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "telegram which has no encryption for the bot backend so the devs can read everything you write", "excerpt": "I use a signal api on a daily basis for all my agentic chatting and notifications about energy prices and server downtime notification. Setup was quick enough but it needs a real phone number once during setup which is kind of a hassle. still better than using telegram which has no encryption for the bot backend so the devs can read everything you write", "context": "", "use_case": "bot messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Serverless"}]}, {"label": "Unwanted changes", "summary": "Users report disabled settings being re-enabled and AI summaries added with no way to turn them off.", "quotes": [{"id": 800520144, "item_id": 50032509, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032509", "by": "crossroadsguy", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "they regularly re-enable settings inside the app/account that you had specifically disabled", "excerpt": "One of the challenges with Telegram is - they regularly re-enable settings inside the app/account that you had specifically disabled. So at any point you don't know what is happening and what is not. Meaning, even if you didn't see a thing, a malicious file might be sitting all warm and fuzzy on your computer - among possible other things. I used to like the snappiness of this app (and it is still snappier than almos", "context": "", "use_case": "instant messaging desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 744849392, "item_id": 46553087, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46553087", "by": "listic", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I find it unacceptable and filed a bug report about that", "excerpt": "On January, 3, 2026, Telegram messenger, which I use a lot, introduced AI Summaries [1] for all posts after January, 3, 2026 with no way to switch them off; neither for the readers nor for channel admins. I find it unacceptable and filed a bug report about that (marking that as an issue; not feature request, which in my view it is), requesting for this feature to be opt-in. [1] https://telegram.org/blog/new-design-ai", "context": "heavy Telegram user", "use_case": "messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram introduced AI Summaries. I filed bug report for them"}]}, {"label": "Reluctant use", "summary": "Some only use it because other people or tools require it.", "quotes": [{"id": 800709682, "item_id": 50044355, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50044355", "by": "Aozora7", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm forced to have whatsapp and telegram to communicate with the general population and I wouldn't use them if I didn't have to.", "excerpt": "Discord is by far my favorite communication platform across anything I used in my entire life, nothing else comes even close in terms of feature set. It also helps that almost everyone I like is there. I'm forced to have whatsapp and telegram to communicate with the general population and I wouldn't use them if I didn't have to.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "IRCv3"}, {"id": 795117377, "item_id": 49694836, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694836", "by": "RealAlexClay", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I don't particularly like Telegram but it was an easy setup.", "excerpt": "Hi, I'm a retail trader who's spent the last few years reading up on quant finance and building trading tools as a hobby. Q is the latest one: a system that looks for patterns that tend to precede price breakouts on crypto futures. The focus is more on staying on the right side of the broader market trend, avoiding pump-and-dump setups and sizing risk based on current market conditions. I use Cornix to execute the si", "context": "retail trader", "use_case": "delivering signals", "switched_from": "", "story": null}]}, {"label": "File format quirks", "summary": "WebP images are treated as stickers and short silent MP4s as GIFs.", "quotes": [{"id": 800015600, "item_id": 50000975, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50000975", "by": "duskwuff", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "this one is just a terrible technical decision that Telegram made ages ago", "excerpt": "> Telegram still doesn't have sane support for .webp, it treats them as stickers. TBH, this one is just a terrible technical decision that Telegram made ages ago (\"we use WEBP to represent stickers, therefore all WEBPs are stickers\"). It's not the only weird file-format decision they made; see also \"all short MP4 videos with no audio are actually GIFs\". :)", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shipping JPEG XL in Chrome"}]}, {"label": "No threading", "summary": "Chats lack threads, which makes busy bot conversations noisy.", "quotes": [{"id": 756512400, "item_id": 47282025, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47282025", "by": "arjie", "date": "2026-03-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My wife and I use a shared Telegram chat to talk to our claw and it seems pretty fine to be honest.", "excerpt": "My wife and I use a shared Telegram chat to talk to our claw and it seems pretty fine to be honest. It's useful to just see what the other is getting done but it can be pretty noisy. Usually I'm not that interested in the details of it. Telegram doesn't have a threading notion, but Slack does, so it's particularly well-suited to it. Integrating with Slack is much higher friction, but now that I've thought about it, i", "context": "", "use_case": "shared chat with AI agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Anthropic, Please Make a New Slack"}]}], "who": [{"by": "wolvoleo", "context": "in Spain, runs makerspace group", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50039069", "date": "2026-10-11"}, {"by": "RealAlexClay", "context": "retail trader", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694836", "date": "2026-09-14"}, {"by": "TacticalCoder", "context": "Europe-based user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48893684", "date": "2026-07-13"}, {"by": "joecool1029", "context": "contributor with GCC build fixes", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983686", "date": "2025-11-19"}, {"by": "weavermarquez", "context": "Linux tinkerer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45980790", "date": "2025-11-19"}], "tags": ["for building chat bots", "for community groups", "for personal AI agents", "for large file sharing"], "use_cases": ["messaging", "makerspace and club groups", "primary messenger", "instant messaging desktop", "bots", "delivering signals"], "compared": [{"slug": "whatsapp", "name": "WhatsApp", "co": 17, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "signal", "name": "Signal", "co": 9, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "discord", "name": "Discord", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "slack", "name": "Slack", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "openclaw", "name": "OpenClaw", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "element", "name": "Element", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50029123", "title": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48918534", "title": "Telegram Serverless", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48879902", "title": "Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50234183", "title": "Fine-tuned Qwen on my 16gb GPU to respond without the letter e", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50041540", "title": "IRCv3", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49991227", "title": "Shipping JPEG XL in Chrome", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {"warn": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 1, "warn": 2}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"warn": 3, "compare": 1, "neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804460592, "item_id": 50278787, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278787", "by": "LoganDark", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "On Telegram for macOS, pressing F5 can produce a similar thingy.", "excerpt": "Fun fact: On Telegram for macOS, pressing F5 can produce a similar thingy. I have no idea if it's using operating system services or whether it comes with its own thingy, but it feels just as satisfying. You can spam F5-Space-F5-Space over and over and come up with stuff like that I don't know how to make it to the wall and the wall wall is a bit too much for me to be in the office and I can tell you that I have to b", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine-tuned Qwen on my 16gb GPU to respond without the letter e"}, {"id": 800709682, "item_id": 50044355, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50044355", "by": "Aozora7", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm forced to have whatsapp and telegram to communicate with the general population and I wouldn't use them if I didn't have to.", "excerpt": "Discord is by far my favorite communication platform across anything I used in my entire life, nothing else comes even close in terms of feature set. It also helps that almost everyone I like is there. I'm forced to have whatsapp and telegram to communicate with the general population and I wouldn't use them if I didn't have to.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "IRCv3"}, {"id": 800625104, "item_id": 50039069, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50039069", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The moderation and access tools are way better than WhatsApp's.", "excerpt": "Maybe that's regional but here in Spain it's very popular for clubs. We use it for our makerspace and also for several other clubs. The moderation and access tools are way better than WhatsApp's. It's not end to end encrypted but for big group channels that anyone can join that doesn't really matter. Here it's all WhatsApp and Telegram. iMessage isn't really a thing at all except for expats. Because most locals use s", "context": "in Spain, runs makerspace group", "use_case": "makerspace and club groups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 800562464, "item_id": 50035154, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50035154", "by": "boltzmann64", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Telegram as my primary messenger app.", "excerpt": "Can you please tell me what settings get auto re-enabled? I use Telegram as my primary messenger app. I just want to make a more informed decision if I should switch to Signal or something.", "context": "", "use_case": "primary messenger", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 800520144, "item_id": 50032509, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032509", "by": "crossroadsguy", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "they regularly re-enable settings inside the app/account that you had specifically disabled", "excerpt": "One of the challenges with Telegram is - they regularly re-enable settings inside the app/account that you had specifically disabled. So at any point you don't know what is happening and what is not. Meaning, even if you didn't see a thing, a malicious file might be sitting all warm and fuzzy on your computer - among possible other things. I used to like the snappiness of this app (and it is still snappier than almos", "context": "", "use_case": "instant messaging desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 800502865, "item_id": 50031429, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50031429", "by": "lxgr", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Bot access is definitely better in Telegram; that\u2019s what I sometimes use it for.", "excerpt": "I use them daily, so we might just have different priorities. Bot access is definitely better in Telegram; that\u2019s what I sometimes use it for. WhatsApp has voice message transcription now, but fortunately I don\u2019t receive many. (I consider it pretty rude to put the effort of messaging on the recipient because the sender can\u2019t be bothered to type or transcribe on their side.) Everything else you mentioned is a minor in", "context": "uses both daily", "use_case": "bots", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 800495217, "item_id": 50030951, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50030951", "by": "lxgr", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I use both Telegram and WhatsApp", "excerpt": "What a bizarre threat model. Why would you rather have your data with who knows who than just your metadata? And what UX problems exactly is Telegram solving that its many competitors aren\u2019t? I hear this all the time, but I use both Telegram and WhatsApp and I haven\u2019t found anything lacking in the latter, UX wise.", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 800015600, "item_id": 50000975, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50000975", "by": "duskwuff", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "this one is just a terrible technical decision that Telegram made ages ago", "excerpt": "> Telegram still doesn't have sane support for .webp, it treats them as stickers. TBH, this one is just a terrible technical decision that Telegram made ages ago (\"we use WEBP to represent stickers, therefore all WEBPs are stickers\"). It's not the only weird file-format decision they made; see also \"all short MP4 videos with no audio are actually GIFs\". :)", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shipping JPEG XL in Chrome"}, {"id": 797244882, "item_id": 49827805, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49827805", "by": "fschuett", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Telegram which has a near-perfect UX and I've never had it crash on me", "excerpt": "The issue with KDE is not the \"UX\", the issue is the crashiness and jank, which is an issue of C++ and the OOP-ness of Qt, respectively and no amount of philosophizing will fix that. Users can excuse high memory usage, users can excuse low FPS, users cannot excuse jank and crashes. It is very hard to pin down the problems with Qt because on the one hand you can produce well-working UIs with QML if you are committed t", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}, {"id": 795117377, "item_id": 49694836, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694836", "by": "RealAlexClay", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I don't particularly like Telegram but it was an easy setup.", "excerpt": "Hi, I'm a retail trader who's spent the last few years reading up on quant finance and building trading tools as a hobby. Q is the latest one: a system that looks for patterns that tend to precede price breakouts on crypto futures. The focus is more on staying on the right side of the broader market trend, avoiding pump-and-dump setups and sizing risk based on current market conditions. I use Cornix to execute the si", "context": "retail trader", "use_case": "delivering signals", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 791569025, "item_id": 49473064, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49473064", "by": "lbebber", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "people switched to Telegram within the day", "excerpt": "In Brazil, communications do run entirely on WhatsApp, but payments are entirely on Pix. Also I rememeber when there was a Meta-wide outage, and people switched to Telegram within the day, so the stranglehold they have might not be that strong.", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging during outage", "switched_from": "WhatsApp", "story": "Meta Paid $17B \u2013 Gets to Write Safety Rules for Other SocMedia Platform"}, {"id": 786775761, "item_id": 49173485, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49173485", "by": "Markoff", "date": "2026-08-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "since then I have also Telegram installed as backup just in case", "excerpt": "This exactly happened to me as well in beginning of July when I dared to contact my airbnb host from different country directly from web.whatsapp on computer just after adding their contact.. Immediately saw Restricted messages, but once they answered we chatted normally and everything worked fine. Next morning I wake up with Whatsapp account blocked (one day before flight, very convenient timing...), so immediately ", "context": "", "use_case": "backup messenger", "switched_from": "", "story": "People are mysteriously disappearing off WhatsApp"}, {"id": 785054769, "item_id": 49065923, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49065923", "by": "MrDisposable", "date": "2026-07-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "with a sterilized Telegram account", "excerpt": "This is exactly my setup with GrapheneOS. The default / main profile is patriotic, with a sterilized Telegram account, state-adjacent banks and apps, etc. The second profile (that uses a separate PIN) is not so patriotic: it has foreign bank apps, crypto apps, password manager, 2FA app, personal records, and an alternate Telegram account that I use to discuss any potentially unpatriotic topics with potentially unpatr", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging across profiles", "switched_from": "", "story": "US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search"}, {"id": 782868704, "item_id": 48929294, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48929294", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But telegram has its uses.", "excerpt": "For a lot of stuff it doesn't really matter whether it's E2EE though. I use it for bots that transfer information that isn't secret and for large public channels that everyone can join as they wish anyway. For private chats I use WhatsApp yes. But telegram has its uses. Why does it matter that telegram can see your local bus times that are published online anyway?", "context": "", "use_case": "bots and public channels", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Serverless"}, {"id": 782802833, "item_id": 48925177, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925177", "by": "geek_at", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "telegram which has no encryption for the bot backend so the devs can read everything you write", "excerpt": "I use a signal api on a daily basis for all my agentic chatting and notifications about energy prices and server downtime notification. Setup was quick enough but it needs a real phone number once during setup which is kind of a hassle. still better than using telegram which has no encryption for the bot backend so the devs can read everything you write", "context": "", "use_case": "bot messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Serverless"}, {"id": 782763104, "item_id": 48922694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48922694", "by": "qmmmur", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to use telegram for everything and then stopped after I realised it", "excerpt": "Same. I used to use telegram for everything and then stopped after I realised it wasn\u2019t really and to end encrypted. The bots were super useful. I used to have one I could ask different bus times for. Was so much better than the app the local bus company had made.", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging and bots", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Serverless"}, {"id": 782721184, "item_id": 48920074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920074", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Telegram only for groups with people I know. I've got zero issues with boths.", "excerpt": "I use Telegram only for groups with people I know. I've got zero issues with boths. Are you using public channels? (are those even a thing with Telegram?)", "context": "", "use_case": "private group chats", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Serverless"}, {"id": 782298944, "item_id": 48893684, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48893684", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we're all on Telegram", "excerpt": "> Part of me hopes that we got back to the late 1990s dedicated websites/forums. That seems to be the Discord model but let's see. Dunno: people in my circles all have Telegram (Europe here but I think they have 1 billion MAU now: they're not just successful in Europe). I've got Telegram groups depending on my interests. I just got invited to try ball trap (clay pidgeon shooting) tomorrow. Then another group set up a", "context": "Europe-based user", "use_case": "group chats for interests and meetups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media"}, {"id": 782152145, "item_id": 48884509, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48884509", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Telegram a strong second.", "excerpt": "WhatsApp is paramount here in Spain. Telegram a strong second. The rest non-existent. Though I use discord for global reach interest groups. Never for local communities. Small ones are always on WhatsApp. Big ones usually telegram.", "context": "lives in Spain", "use_case": "messaging for big communities", "switched_from": "", "story": "Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media"}, {"id": 781395952, "item_id": 48837247, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48837247", "by": "mfkp", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use telegram as my main chat app with all of my friends and coworkers.", "excerpt": "This is awesome, I use telegram as my main chat app with all of my friends and coworkers. Now I need to figure out how to dockerize this and run it on my NAS so it's not reliant on my laptop being online. Maybe can figure out a workflow to make a branch, deploy it and give me a cloudflare tunnel link to test it, and if approved merge the changes into main branch and deploy to prod. The vibes are off the charts.", "context": "", "use_case": "main chat app", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Built a Telegram Client for Pi"}, {"id": 779967905, "item_id": 48747994, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747994", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Telegram: 1 billion monthly active users now.", "excerpt": "Not a bad TFA but half of the author's issues would be solved by not using Windows (all the first bullet points he complains about are Microsoftisms). Then half of the other half would be solved by taking some agency back: self-host stuff. I can disconnect my LAN from my router --which I often do-- and be fully operational. I can dev. I've got servers, VMs, containers, etc. I can rip audio CDs I own, I can play my mu", "context": "runs home servers and self-hosts", "use_case": "messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Internet I Grew Up with Doesn't Exist Anymore"}, {"id": 775318867, "item_id": 48457429, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48457429", "by": "apexalpha", "date": "2026-06-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I sent a quick voice note on Telegram and 30 sec later I get a screenshot", "excerpt": "I use Hermes at home. Swapped out Openclaw for this. It seems to work better with smaller contexts, chuncking it up in smaller pieces. I don't code with it, I use Claude for that. But what I do do: it's a sysadmin for my homelab. It has a read-only mcp server to check the k8s status and has it's own ssh access to fix stuff after I approve it per session. It's magical. Each morning I get a small update whether the bac", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging the agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hermes Agent \u2013 Open-Source AI Agent with Persistent Memory"}, {"id": 770790145, "item_id": 48174384, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48174384", "by": "christoph", "date": "2026-05-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use telegram & discord daily.", "excerpt": "Honestly, my opinion, our lives were fundamentally better before some tech came along - touchscren phones & \u201csocial\u201d networks being the main two. We still haven\u2019t caught up with the carnage this has caused. Kids social media bans are only now becoming a thing in some countries and we\u2019re left with a deep sense of unease it\u2019s really not to protect the kids at all. It\u2019s lead to plenty of good as well, a luddite I am not", "context": "", "use_case": "chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "An AI Hate Wave Is Here"}, {"id": 766906594, "item_id": 47931662, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47931662", "by": "udugadoqehale", "date": "2026-04-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "just use Telegram (no compression, 2GB limit)", "excerpt": "Check Wormhole or WeTransfer; you drag, get a link, send it. No account needed. If you're sharing with the same people regularly, just use Telegram (no compression, 2GB limit) or a shared Google Drive folder.", "context": "", "use_case": "regular file sharing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What file sharing apps do you guys use?"}, {"id": 764575393, "item_id": 47785962, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47785962", "by": "pama", "date": "2026-04-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "voice and image UI via telegram", "excerpt": "I use it a lot for personal stuff. Off the top of my head: Best way so far to build and use personalized/family tools for dining/recipe/movie/literature/reminder/organizer/security/notes\u2014-in addition to robust text input, all of them have a voice and image UI via telegram without extra code via an intermediate LLM agent, and all data end up on your machine in your format of choice. More fun than codex/claude-code for", "context": "", "use_case": "chat interface", "switched_from": "", "story": "Is anyone actually using OpenClaw?"}, {"id": 756512400, "item_id": 47282025, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47282025", "by": "arjie", "date": "2026-03-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My wife and I use a shared Telegram chat to talk to our claw and it seems pretty fine to be honest.", "excerpt": "My wife and I use a shared Telegram chat to talk to our claw and it seems pretty fine to be honest. It's useful to just see what the other is getting done but it can be pretty noisy. Usually I'm not that interested in the details of it. Telegram doesn't have a threading notion, but Slack does, so it's particularly well-suited to it. Integrating with Slack is much higher friction, but now that I've thought about it, i", "context": "", "use_case": "shared chat with AI agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Anthropic, Please Make a New Slack"}, {"id": 750466518, "item_id": 46904157, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904157", "by": "toomuchtodo", "date": "2026-02-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Signal/WhatsApp/GroupMe/Telegram groups", "excerpt": "I'm in several Slack teams for non profits and professional orgs, Teams for a client or two, IRC and Matrix servers for digital archiving ops, Signal/WhatsApp/GroupMe/Telegram groups, etc. I have been in tech for 25+ years, I am familiar with the extremes. You are right, things can be bad, that is the point of systems engineering: to drive directionally towards continual improvement. Success is never assured, but thr", "context": "", "use_case": "group messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams"}, {"id": 750096064, "item_id": 46881004, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46881004", "by": "derrida", "date": "2026-02-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "DON'T TRUST TELEGRAM AS END TO END ENCRYPTED CHAT", "excerpt": "ok thank you! I did not know that, I'm ashamed to admit! sort of like studying physics at university a decade later forgetting V=IR when I actually needed it for some solar install. I took \"technical hiatus\" about 5 years and recently coming back. Anyway cut to the chase, I just checked out Mathew Greens post on the subject, he is on my list of default \"trust what he says about cryptography\" along with some others li", "context": "cryptography background", "use_case": "private messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Paris prosecutors raid France offices of Elon Musk's X"}, {"id": 745013266, "item_id": 46563329, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563329", "by": "skeledrew", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "over Telegram (which I use constantly through the day)", "excerpt": "I made an interface to a Perplexica instance over Telegram (which I use constantly through the day) a few months ago, but actually haven't used it much as honestly the quality just isn't as good as Perplexity. It does seem the logical next step is to switch to something with more raw agent-like access.", "context": "", "use_case": "messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "I built a tool to create AI agents that live in iMessage"}, {"id": 744849392, "item_id": 46553087, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46553087", "by": "listic", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I find it unacceptable and filed a bug report about that", "excerpt": "On January, 3, 2026, Telegram messenger, which I use a lot, introduced AI Summaries [1] for all posts after January, 3, 2026 with no way to switch them off; neither for the readers nor for channel admins. I find it unacceptable and filed a bug report about that (marking that as an issue; not feature request, which in my view it is), requesting for this feature to be opt-in. [1] https://telegram.org/blog/new-design-ai", "context": "heavy Telegram user", "use_case": "messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram introduced AI Summaries. I filed bug report for them"}, {"id": 744461680, "item_id": 46528855, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46528855", "by": "eevmanu", "date": "2026-01-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Telegram 'Saved Messages' with the reminder feature is really useful.", "excerpt": "When I have that need, this is what I do. I use the info from here as context: https://github.com/InteractionDesignFoundation/add-event-to-calendar-docs/blob/main/services/google.md I load it via a custom system prompt or skill, then pass my specific need, thought, or anything I want to remember in the future, including events with a certain frequency, as part of the prompt. From that, I render the URLs needed to cre", "context": "", "use_case": "reminders for future self", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Do you write things down for your future self? If so, how?"}, {"id": 735738976, "item_id": 45983686, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983686", "by": "joecool1029", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Their developers are also very responsive to PR's, I have a couple GCC build fixes in it.", "excerpt": "> Telegram, for all its faults, has an excellent desktop app. Their developers are also very responsive to PR's, I have a couple GCC build fixes in it. I really soured on Signal early with when running BB10, they would not let us fork and use/distribute websocket builds to get around not having google play services on available on that platform: https://github.com/libresignal/libresignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211", "context": "contributor with GCC build fixes", "use_case": "desktop messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "I just want working RCS messaging"}, {"id": 735692641, "item_id": 45980790, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45980790", "by": "weavermarquez", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Even as a huge Linux tinkerer I've been really pleased with Zo setting things up for me that I wouldn't have expected to get done on a server like this. I've started to experiment with installing Guix and serving Lem, and made a personal Telegram bot as an alternative interface. They really focus on keeping out of your way, and the Zo agent is quite persistent and gets things done that I didn't think was feasible. Th", "context": "Linux tinkerer", "use_case": "interface to server agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zo: Intelligent Personal Servers for Everyone"}, {"id": 733580977, "item_id": 45848811, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45848811", "by": "throwaway106382", "date": "2025-11-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Telegram and Whatsapp and SMS to keep in touch with friends and family", "excerpt": "Contribute? That's basically its only purpose now, rot your brain with a dopamine drip and show you a bajillion ads. Now with AI slopgen being baked right into most of them it's been set into overdrive. Deleted all my social media accounts except Youtube (but I use Unhook to remove everything except my subscriptions and the search). Haven't felt better. I use Telegram and Whatsapp and SMS to keep in touch with friend", "context": "", "use_case": "keeping in touch", "switched_from": "", "story": "A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'"}]}