this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
104 points (95.6% liked)

Open Source

30288 readers
726 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Yes this is a Telegram client and yes it will break the Lemmy's downvote world record but I still find this one very nice and "actively" maintained. There are not many good Telegram FOSS forks without Google integrations and similar stuff out there.

top 33 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Looks interesting. I don't fully understand how unified push works, though. I'm I right in reading that the author have set up an UP server themselves?

Yes this is a Telegram client and yes it will break the Lemmy’s downvote world record

Because most people live in a echo chamber. Just ignore them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Thank you for your comment. Since I deactivated Google Play services, I don't get notifications on many apps. I didn't know there were alternatives. Unfortunately, the app server must be compatible, but if I can have it at least for Telegram with this fork, it would be a good start. I'll take time to compare the different alternatives and see if other push servers are compatible with more apps.

For what I understand, there are self hosted push servers, like NextPush that works on Nextcloud, and some that provide you a server, liked ntfy. For the latter, you have to check the privacy policy to see if it's better than the default Google firebase server.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No, it means you need to set up your own server.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

do any of these forks support E2EE? I don't mean the OG "private chat" thingy that Telegram supports.

I mean like an add-on, the way pidgin had an OTR plugin that enabled private comms over Google's unencrypted XMPP servers.

as a consequence, that would also encrypt everything in the cloud and prevent your chat history being ingested for LLM training and whatnot.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

That would require the other user to use the same app as you right? Could be interesting.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

At that point why not use a different app that supports E2EE natively?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

because Telegram's UI/UX is second to none; possibly iMessage or whatever it's called is close, albeit with way limited functionality. Signal and friends look like a PoC from 2015 in comparison. also the apps, on mobile and on desktop, have a low memory footprint with no bloated electron crap, the cross-device sync is phenomenal and there's the virtually unlimited cloud storage. if an addon could piggyback off of that, that would be spectacular.

however, OP's insight as to this being against ToS is obviously a deal breaker. seeing as how they're adamant about leaving all your shit unencrypted in the cloud I'm looking for other havens, begrudgingly; I've been a user from the early days.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The options are basically:

Matrix if you want a Discord-like experience

XMPP if you want a whatsapp/google talk like experience (both of those are based on XMPP)

Signal if you want hyper-secure chat and don't mind some mild inconveniences in things like registration or desktop apps.

All three support or can support E2EE.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

well yeah, just a simple private/public key solution for encrypting chat and cloud. transfer your private key to a forked desktop app and access your encrypted chat history from there as well.

just basic stuff, not something for people running from nation-state actors, but to prevent LLM ingestion and mass surveilance. but OP says that's against Telegram's ToS, so no dice here.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

E2EE is prohibited by Telegram's TOS (you can't make any feature that requires users to use your client to access it).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Whoa, they not only won't implement it, but will work on not letting anyone else do it. They're more shady than I thought.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They're not shady. They just don't want to lose the market share and I think if they made Telegram really secure, there'd be even more illegal stuff on it and the government wouldn't like it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

"They're not shady." Begins to describe the shady shit they do

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't trust any of these apps that are used by the DEA and trying to get a phone number out of me one bit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Glad I'm not the only one

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How is it "shady" to not want to lose market share and keep illegal stuff off of it?

You could argue it's "shitty" (perhaps, but it is their servers after all) but I don't find it shady.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

How is it "shady" to not want to lose market share and keep illegal stuff off of it?

Market share shouldn't be a concern with encrypted chat. If it is then I don't trust it.

If you're making an encrypted chat, you're going to have illegal things on it. If only the chat owners have the keys then that shouldn't be the server owners concern.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I would strongly recommend libaxolotl/OMEMO over OTR, far stronger algorithm.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

I used this client recently and found it decent. Though for some reason, Google Play Protect always(wrongly I assume) picks it out despite downloading from F Droid.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)

What are you using for the Unified Push setup? I tried using ntfy and could never get notifications to come through on GrapheneOS

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I use ntfy and have no problems. It's very reliable. No idea about graphene though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I use LineageOS without any gapps and notifications often work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Have you tried changing server? The default server is overworked.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I use ntfy on graphene and it works just fine. I had to fully disable battery optimizations but that was it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Does it have tools to easily remove deleted accounts from groups? Or selecting several contacts from your contact list and deleting them? Because those are big features missing from telegram

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think you want a CLI client for that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For the group thing, I would expect at least a way to search/filter those accounts while looking at the group's participants, even if I do have to manually remove them. Having to endlessly scroll a list with no apparent order is not fun.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago

I'm not familiar with any clients that have the feature. Make that feature and a merge request yourself I guess.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What's the difference between this and Materialgram?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)
  1. Materialgram is for desktop and this one is for Android.
  2. Mercurygram is based on the Telegram FOSS project that removes proprietary bits from the client, making it more privacy-respecting.
  3. Mercurygram adds some new features that stock Telegram doesn't have (though idk anything about them because I'm not a power user).
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago