Telegram Says It's Working on a Paid Service (t.me) 30
Instant messaging app Telegram, which is used by over 500 million active users, said on Friday it's working on a premium tier, but plans to keep many of the current features available to existing users. In a post, Telegram Pavel Durov wrote: Since the day Telegram was launched almost 9 years ago, we've been giving our users more features and resources than any other messaging app. A free app as powerful as Telegram was revolutionary in 2013 and is still unprecedented in 2022. To this day, our limits on chats, media and file uploads are unrivaled. And yet, many have been asking us to raise the current limits even further, so we looked into ways to let you go beyond what is already crazy. The problem here is that if we were to remove all limits for everyone, our server and traffic costs would have become unmanageable, so the party would be unfortunately over for everyone.
After giving it some thought, we realized that the only way to let our most demanding fans get more while keeping our existing features free is to make those raised limits a paid option. That's why this month we will introduce Telegram Premium, a subscription plan that allows anyone to acquire additional features, speed and resources. It will also allow users to support Telegram and join the club that receives new features first. Not to worry though: all existing features remain free, and there are plenty of new free features coming. Moreover, even users who don't subscribe to Telegram Premium will be able to enjoy some of its benefits: for example, they will be able to view extra-large documents, media and stickers sent by Premium users, or tap to add Premium reactions already pinned to a message to react in the same way. While our experiments with privacy-focused ads in public one-to-many channels have been more successful than we expected, I believe that Telegram should be funded primarily by its users, not advertisers. This way our users will always remain our main priority.
After giving it some thought, we realized that the only way to let our most demanding fans get more while keeping our existing features free is to make those raised limits a paid option. That's why this month we will introduce Telegram Premium, a subscription plan that allows anyone to acquire additional features, speed and resources. It will also allow users to support Telegram and join the club that receives new features first. Not to worry though: all existing features remain free, and there are plenty of new free features coming. Moreover, even users who don't subscribe to Telegram Premium will be able to enjoy some of its benefits: for example, they will be able to view extra-large documents, media and stickers sent by Premium users, or tap to add Premium reactions already pinned to a message to react in the same way. While our experiments with privacy-focused ads in public one-to-many channels have been more successful than we expected, I believe that Telegram should be funded primarily by its users, not advertisers. This way our users will always remain our main priority.
Re: A paid what? (Score:2)
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Every company in any country will rat you out.
Every company in any country will rat you out if they can. That's why it's important to use a messaging provider that uses E2E, and an OSS client (or an open protocol so you can use one.)
Re: A paid what? (Score:2)
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let them work on E2E encryption if they want Slashdotters to give a fuck.
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That being said, I use E2E in quotes, as trusting any client's built in E2E is laughably insecure. I can send E2E encrypted messages with any client using PGP. If you are seriously trusting a third party to properly implement E2E encryption in lieu of that, perhaps the secrecy of your messages isn't as important as you think it is?
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Telegram has supported "E2E" encryption for quite some time now. I'm not sure what you're going on about.
Yes, for two party conversations. Signal uses E2E for all communications, by encrypting each message sent to a group for each member separately. Telegram does not. They also do not use E2E for any communications by default, but that's just sleazy, and not a problem for nerds.
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Wow that might get them tens of customers.
We're back! (Score:2, Funny)
I know it's not the same thing, but headline makes it sound like either somebody got a telegram about something, or Western Union is going to start sending telegrams again. IIRC, the last telegram was sent some time in the early 21st century in India... let's look that up...
2013 [nbcnews.com], and unlike the quiet, unceremonial disconnection of a unit in an office that I had imagined, it was actually a bit of an event with people lining up to send a last telegram!
Anyway, as for the subject of this article, my lawn (whi
Received a Western Union telegram in 2019 (Score:1)
> 2013, and unlike the quiet, unceremonial disconnection of a unit in an office that I had imagined, it was actually a bit of an event with people lining up to send a last telegram!
Last telegram sent - 2013. This guy *received* a telegram in 2019.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Re: We're back! (Score:2)
Why even use a stodgy old name that is unrelatable to this generation (except for steampunk hipsters)? Next up: Gramophone.
Also the *Fi this and that really needs to stop.
Paid Telegram? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Paid Telegram? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. Stop.
Telegram thanks you ... (Score:3)
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cell phone number
WiFi only. They pulled the plug on my 3G service some time ago. It's been in airplane mode since then.
'twas nice while it lasted (Score:2)
Because the first thing that happens when a paid tier gets installed is to remove one key feature that everyone needs from the free tier, because else nobody would bother paying for it.
Anyone can recommend a replacement?
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Yeah, Signal, which provides E2E. It does require a phone number to sign up...
A company should be able to make money. (Score:2)
I am not getting the newsworthiness of this. A company should be able to make money, heck they should be making a profit.
To make money, there are only so many pathways one can take, each have their own tradeoffs.
1. Advertising Space (we do that for most of our free services, however at cost of our privacy, and they often get really desterbing with its targeted ads because they figure someone is lumped into a demographic that they really don't belong to)
2. Pay upfront a full cost: This isn't as popular as on
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I am not getting the newsworthiness of this. A company should be able to make money, heck they should be making a profit.
To make money, there are only so many pathways one can take, each have their own tradeoffs.
An extremely popular messaging platform with a conflicted history of user privacy announces a change in profit strategy, potentially changing its own economic incentives of user privacy and development? Yes that's newsworthy!
What sorts of news do you expect here, sports event scores?
The death of Telegram (Score:2)
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Compression can be configured.
And if one has your phone number, why do yo bother he can find you on Telegram (can he actually?)
I fondly remember paying for telegrams (Score:2)
Usually it was "Mom died.Stop"
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Did you send more than two telegrams? If so, how did you get so many moms?
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"Did you send more than two telegrams? If so, how did you get so many moms?"
I have one, my wife has one, not sure how your family works.