telegram:
- very good android, ios, and desktop open-source apps they keep properly up to date (also a web client)
- stickers, emojos, gifs (and with better compression)
- useful bots (and inline bots)
- groups and good admin tools
- nicely including voice or video in chats
- now even favorites
- requires a phone number (not public)
- is not very secure (but above average)
- is centralized and not entirely open (they haven't been evil for now)
and let's go to threat models now we're at it, if Russia or France wants to get me they will because:
- they can directly threaten me or a friend with death and torture and that will be MUCH more cost-efficient that anything else on this list
- they can legally threaten telegram into giving some of my messages that i knew had to be low-risk information
- they can intercept and attack that encryption to get basically nothing of value either
seriously what's the worst that could happen
The first option is indeed the go-to option for nation states, but it also requires boots on the ground to be effective, and that takes time and money which nation states still need to ration even though they have a lot of it. If your opsec is sufficient then there simply may not be enough SIGINT to trigger the price threshold for a BOOTSOP.
@bob there are specific contexts that make telegram a very bad tool
@CobaltVelvet @bob the only thing I use it for is to talk to my printer...
I’d love something good enough to talk to humans but the humans I try to talk to don’t want to use anything good for some reason.
@bob @CobaltVelvet that’s pretty much my default assumption for all electronic communication tbh.
Given the current state of affairs in the U.S., I don’t even say things out loud irl that I wouldn’t be able to defend played back to me in a holding cell by some cop/agent/etc.