Comment by Aachen
3 hours ago
Calling/ringing works reliably. My gf usually calls via Telegram to notify me and then we call via Signal
Signal can't do live location sharing
Code blocks (let alone syntax highlighting) was the first thing my friend ran into after switching last week
In general, formatting on Telegram is a lot more versatile with >quote blocks that show up formatted as quotes and inline links without needing to have a giant message because of the giant URL
Many more image features, like you can do yellow highlighting and not only ugly shades of olive, you can put a message above an image instead of below, you can mark an image as spoiler, you can send it uncompressed, much simpler UI for selecting multiple images, etc.
Jumping to a date was one of the first things I ran into
Web client lets you temporarily use someone else's computer without needing to install software
Making a Telegram bot takes 10 minutes if you just want a simple http callback and know roughly how it works. Signal has no support at all. Some third parties have made libraries but we keep having issues at work with our internal Signal bot to the point where I think we just gave up altogether now
Many people use Telegram to check if internet works because when opening the app it does a lightning quick check and it's very robust (I think it has no problem if DNS is down, for example) Looking at the title bar confirming that it works is much faster than trying to do a random web search
You can have memorable/pretty group URLs like telegram.me/OpenStreetMapOrg
Large files can be sent (also because of server-side storage not clogging up your phone, which is a double-edged sword of course)
Scheduled messages send at the right time when you're not online & the desktop app supports scheduled messages
As of like next week you can do moderation in groups in Signal. This has of course been a thing in Telegram since 10+ years. I don't know how we'd have run the OpenStreetMap group on Telegram without being able to delete spam messages
Chats take a lot less space. The Signal authors probably don't have many contacts that they use Signal with because you can view the message markers of 4 chats before having to scroll down. In Telegram, 9 fit in view. Similar on desktop but both numbers are bigger. Messages are also more space efficient in Telegram
Telegram so so so much faster than Signal's web, ahem, electron client
The only advantage of Signal that comes to mind is the intangible property of privacy (and maybe local back-ups, so data availability, but then Signal doesn't provide software to view your backup data so is it really a backup if you can't test it and they can lock you out of the app?). I'm nevertheless switching everything over to Signal but it's often very hard to explain to people why they should give all this up for encryption. My family doesn't use all the advanced features but some techy friends do
Hah, literally seconds after the edit window ran out, I thought of an advantage of Signal's, edited it in, and HN rejected it due to post age. It is: Signal lets you add any emoji reaction you want without paying for premium