Telegram
For those who has never heard of this word, let me tell you what it is. Telegram Messenger which in short is called ‘Telegram’ is an internet instant messaging app.
One could talk to their contacts through Telegram if they also happen to have that app. One could create/join groups, channels where they could chat with others and share anything. So, basically it’s pretty much like any other instant messaging app.
How I came to know about Telegram
Like, how every tale goes, once upon a time, I was very bored and all I had at the moment was my dad’s android smartphone with me in the house. I used to play games like Subway Surfers, Temple Run, Angry Birds, Clash of Clans and so on… In a word, It was the golden era for android games 🔥 where you could find quality games. I was going through the Google Play Store looking for something to download. This is where I got recommended to download this app called “Telegram”. I knew it was an instant messaging app, but never used it before. I assumed it would be similar to Facebook/Whatsapp, so downloaded it to check out what it’s all about.
First time Experience
Ok, so I have downloaded the app, registered for an account using my mobile number. At first it was empty, there’s nothing there, if one of my contacts has this app, then it would show up there on the personal section. I could then start chatting with my contacts on Telegram if I want.
No one in the contacts was using Telegram, so it was basically empty. There’s pretty much nothing in the app. 😟
What I found
So, I was pretty underwhelmed and asked myself, “Is that it?”. There must be something else there that I’m missing. So, I tried looking at every nook and corner of the app, this is when I found the search function of the app.
Ok, I am over exaggerating this. The function was just right in front of me in the home page itself. I searched 'Movies', and guess what? It showed me a bunch of channels with the name 'Movies'. When I clicked one of them, I was presented with movie files that was uploaded to that on a regular basis.
🎉️ We found piracy!!
This is when I started to look into Telegram a bit more.
Why I stayed
Initially, piracy is the sole reason. I had limited internet (mobile internet) and these channels offered movies at lower sizes. Also to avoid the traditional way of pirating movies off the internet.
Okay, you might ask what is that “Traditional Way”. That traditional way of mine is basically,
- You open the browser
- Search for a piracy site to download your movie
- Open the site
- Look for your movie
- Click the
Downloadbutton. - Oops, Guess what? That was a FAKE
Downloadbutton and you are now presented with 3-4 pop up tabs/ads. - Clear all these ads,
- Carefully, click the
Downloadbutton. - Realise the movie file size is more than the Bandwidth offered by your Internet Plan.
- Go back to the search engine.
- Repeat Bullet Point 2.
I mean, who wants to go through this hell. At that time, there wasn’t any adblockers that I know of.
Telegram, *cough* *cough*, I mean the channels that upload these files to telegram offer 1 click way to download these files. Just go to the channel, click the file and it will start downloading. Look, how simple that is.
Why I really stayed
Piracy was not the sole reason I stayed in Telegram till now and continue to do so. As time went on, I got better Internet in terms of both speed and bandwidth and also, I learned about Torrent 😈. Now pirating stuff from Telegram is viewed by me as a lowly thing to do, since I got the superior Torrent :)
There was a time while I was exploring several groups, I came to know about the concepts of Bots in Telegram. I got hooked at first site. Imagine an account, that you could program to automate any tasks, well yes, it can. So, I got into some programming groups such as @python, Telegram Bot Library Groups like @pythontelegrambot, @pyrogram, @telethon. Started learning python (I already knews the basics). Got into advanced topics. Now, I started developing bots for telegram. Followed examples here and there, literally wacthed youtube videos and typed everything as they typed in that video, all kinds of stuff. But, once I got the hang of it and familiarised myself with that API wrapper, I was getting good at it. I made several bots, most of it are offline for now. You can check out Akinator-Bot which I consider one of my most successful bots. It even got Bot of the Week award in the BotsArchive channel.
I guess, I still stay on telegram because I like the programming community there. Made lots of acquaintances, laughed together, shit on others together, memed together and it was fun and it still is.
Also, I like the the unlimited storage that they are giving. I mean the popular messaging platform “Discord” offers like 8 MiB per file lol. Meanwhile, Telegram offers, if I remember correctly, it’s around 1.5 GiB per file. The difference is insane.
What I dislike
There are a lot of things I dislike, like there are a lot of “crypto bros” in the platform, who will try their hard to make you to invest in some obscure never ever heard of coin. They are annoying.
And I have a slightly negative view on the Introduction of Premium plan to telegram. I mean, if they really are low on money, then it’s perfectly okay to give users premium plan. For me, it’s too costly, and most of the feature is just used for flexing to others except that increase in size of per file for uploading and unrestricted upload/download speed.
Telegram doesn’t have E2E (End to End) Encryption by default for Groups and Channels and they use their own in-house encryption protocol, the MTProto. E2E encrytion is supported for private messages if and only if you enable Secret Chats. I know most people say this point as one of the negative points of telegram. I somewhat I agree with that along with the fact that only the client side is opensource. Well, I don’t blame them, it’s how it is.
Conclusion
Telegram is growing at a fast rate in the category of instant messaging. That means people took a liking to Telegram and what it offers to its users (I hope it’s not piracy 👀️). Telegram is here to stay for the foreseeable future.