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Telegram has stolen my channel's username to sell it on auction
Today Pavel Durov just announced the launch of their dedicated platform to sell/buy premium Telegram usernames. Checking that list, I've searched my channel's username and it says is coming soon: https://fragment.com/?query=%40kissfm
Going back to my channel to make sure this username belongs to me (my channel), I've noticed that the channel was transformed into a private channel, without username!
So telegram just literally stole my channel's username to sell it!
Durov, what you were saying about privacy and security in Telegram? You just dropped its level yourself!
P.S. check if your usernames still yours!
- profstasiak 4y agoif you are not paying, you are a product
- brink 4y agoI am paying.
- tvicpe 4y agowhat's the guarantee that tomorrow my private channels will not become public instead and all my personal data will be exposed!? wtf is happening with durov!?!?!
- ls15 4y agoThere are no such guarantees. People failed to choose a protocol that is trustworthy and fell for pseudo sometimes-on encryption. He is trying to make money while the market is going down.
- neongreen 4y agoI wanted to object (as a happy Telegram user) that I want to preserve message history for all my devices, but then it occurred to me that iMessage is end-to-end-encrypted and also has pretty transparent message history sync. So now I think that yeah, Telegram should adopt E2E by default. Another thing that would be lost with the switch to E2E is server-based search, but honestly I can live with that.
- Normille 4y ago>I wanted to object (as a happy Telegram user) that I want to preserve message history for all my devices... Telegram is already useless on that score. Since the other party/ies in a conversation can delete their messages from everyone else's devices as well as from their own. I stopped taking any of Telegram's privacy and security claims seriously when i discovered that gem. I still use Telegram to keep in touch with a load of family and friends but I have no faith in whatsoever any of their self-righteous privacy & security claims and comparisons with other messaging services. For a very long time now, evey update has focussed on adding moronic cutesy junk like animated emojis and stickers. So it's quite clear that their focus has moved away from being a private & secure messaging service and towards appealing to the TikTok generation. That's fine. It's their project. They can do what they want with it and [as I said] I still find it useful. I just wish they wouldn't keep on trying to convince people it's a serious secure commmunication tool.
- stiltzkin 4y agoNothing, they took away usernames which were holded by squatters.
- filestorage 4y agohaving a roadmap to integrate this channel with the site https://kissfm.md https://kissfm.md is a squatting for you!? Applause (sarcasm)!
- snotrockets 4y agoTelegram is a social network delivered through a messaging front end, which is confusing when you expect it to behave like a messaging service. It isn't one any more than Facebook or Twitter are.
- stiltzkin 4y agoTelegram now is more akin to Discord and Twitter with bots, channels and public groups. It's been some time Telegram has moved from personal chatting app as WhatsApp.
- snotrockets 4y agoExactly. And when talking in a public space that is privately owned, it should be expected that others would listen to your convos or that the owner can throw you out at will. The problem is just that Telegram still advertises itself, and people expect it to be a messaging app.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stereoradonc 4y agoOnly inactive usernames were taken away by them (and not the active ones). While it's good to have a memorable one, you'd run the risk of "spam attacks". I am not sure how the proposed blockchain (TON) will work (it's claimed to be immutable), but then this is their prerogative to earn money.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- IntelMiner 4y agoI know several users who've had their names and channels stolen by this absolutely fucking asinine idea from Durov It comes off the back of him trying to fuck over users with NFT's of all things, which received something like 30K "thumbs down" emojis (to about 800 "thumbs up") before having the counter removed I don't know why Durov can't just do what Discord does and offer Premium. Premium garnered a less than stellar reception, but comes with actual features that users might want (increased GIF cache, bigger file download limits etc)
- neongreen 4y agoTelegram has had Premium for a few months already: https://telegram.org/blog/700-million-and-premium https://telegram.org/blog/700-million-and-premium
- tvicpe 4y agoSame for me, one of my channels usernames: lasezatoare also is gone. The same story, channel now is private without a username!
- VoidWhisperer 4y agoI am interested to hear telegram's side of this - they generally have a decent track record, i wonder if this is the case of someone screwing up and not intentional malice
- NayamAmarshe 4y agoHe talked about this a month ago: https://t.me/durov/195 https://t.me/durov/195 > Until recently, 70% of all Telegram usernames had been reserved in inactive channels by cybersquatters from Iran. This created a graveyard of dead usernames that cluttered search results and prevented millions of Telegram users from selecting appropriate public addresses for their accounts, groups and channels.
- t0w5a 4y agoone of my channels is already up for sale: https://fragment.com/?query=developingit https://fragment.com/?query=developingit I think they've just screwed up everything telegram was based on, no freedom, no privacy, no security!
- NayamAmarshe 4y agoIt happened to channels and groups that were inactive for a long time. Durov did mention this in a message a few months ago that username squatters were becoming a problem. And I was mad at first but it was equally my fault for leaving my public group inactive for more than 10 months, which is probably why the username disappeared. It's a real problem on other social media websites too. For example, a totally inactive account on GitHub claimed an org name and it has no repositories, no information, It's totally empty and I can do nothing about it. Not even report it so that GitHub can look into it and unfreeze the username. EDIT: I just checked the dates and the channel was inactive from November 10, 2021 to August 26, 2022. So basically 9-10 months. Previously, I wrote 3 months but time flies I guess.
- ls15 4y ago> Durov did mention this in a message a few months ago that username squatters were becoming a problem. This is gaslighting
- NayamAmarshe 4y agoIt's not gaslighting if they have analytics to back the claim. https://t.me/durov/195 https://t.me/durov/195 > Until recently, 70% of all Telegram usernames had been reserved in inactive channels by cybersquatters from Iran. This created a graveyard of dead usernames that cluttered search results and prevented millions of Telegram users from selecting appropriate public addresses for their accounts, groups and channels.
- ls15 4y agoLike with every other social media platform, this is not an actual issue. If the username that I would like to have is taken, I can pick another name that is not taken. It is not unreasonable to take a 3 month break from a messenger app. Search results don't have to prioritize inactive channels. Just pulling the rug on people for money makes Telegram look very unreliable. Compare this to how it works on reddit: people can request to take over a dead subreddit as a mod, but it requires that the subreddit has been dead for at least six months and they will try to contact the previous mod first and only transfer it to the requester if that fails. At no cost.
- zaik 4y agoCan we invest in getting our friends on the independent XMPP standard?
- imwillofficial 4y agoThat ship has sailed
- zaik 4y agoNot if we don't want to.
- imwillofficial 4y agoTo catch on, the next solution must be better than the last. It’s too cumbersome for average folks.
- olah_1 4y agoone XMPP server gets big and usernames get squatted and dealt with at the discretion of the server admin. Only solution is something like how Farcaster does it where you at least get to keep your public key the same and usernames are optional. https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol#3-identity https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol#3-identity Or go the urbit route and make the addresses totally user owned.
- kube-system 4y agoFederate messaging servers and make addresses domain specific. Works fine for email.
- olah_1 4y agoPeople lose their gmail accounts all the time for weird reasons. Maybe you are specifically talking about a world where everyone self hosts their own servers?
- diimdeep 4y ago> Until recently, 70% of all Telegram usernames had been reserved in inactive channels by cybersquatters from Iran. This created a graveyard of dead usernames that cluttered search results and prevented millions of Telegram users from selecting appropriate public addresses for their accounts, groups and channels. https://t.me/durov/195 https://t.me/durov/195
- uni_rule 4y ago> We noticed this problem and therefore have found a very profitable solution to sell everyone
- brink 4y agoThey have to pay for servers somehow. Selling long dead channel handles is better than privacy invasion.
- duskwuff 4y agoIt's not better when it comes at the cost of taking some of those handles away from people that were using them.
- jaywalk 4y agoBut they weren't using them. That's the whole point.
- duskwuff 4y agoThere are a number of situations I'm personally aware of where users had usernames revoked for channels they were actively using. One common case where this occurred is when users used a channel as a "bio" or "blog", and posted to the channel infrequently to update it.
- ls15 4y ago@pg hasn't posted on HN for two years. Can I have his username?
- chatterhead 4y agoThis is fucking crazy interesting. Can't wait for this drama to unfold.
- nickphx 4y agoWhy do you feel entitled to a once trademarked brand name of a radio station on a third party system that is provided for free?
- esperent 4y agoIt's not about entitlement, it's about trust.
- stiltzkin 4y agoCan you prove your channel was active and not dead just for squatting?
- concinds 4y agoFor what it's worth, I couldn't find any links anywhere on the net (Google, Bing...) to "https://t.me/kissfm https://t.me/kissfm". I've searched for even small Telegram channels I follow, and they all show up in search results.
- filestorage 4y agoI'm one of the https://kissfm.md https://kissfm.md developers and the channel @kissfm was supposed to be integrated with this site in the upcoming year.
- concinds 4y agoFair enough! However, if the channel was inactive, I guess it's hard to distinguish an upcoming project with a squatted channel. Maybe contact Telegram?
- filestorage 4y agoAlready dropped them a message, but not sure they'll ever get back to me.
- filestorage 4y agothe channel was in pending state, waiting for a project to be ready, to integrate it with the site https://kissfm.md https://kissfm.md
- puppable 4y agoInteresting how many green accounts are in this thread describing the same problem with the exact same typing style. All of them made within the last two hours.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ls15 4y agoPeople using throwaways, because they don't want to connect their HN identity to their TG identity?
- WilTimSon 4y agoThose people should at least bother to learn HN rules then, because some of these comments are... yeesh. That said, how mad can you be about some username that you'd sign up for an extra account just to complain?
- MiguelX413 4y agoThey may also just be new here, spreading news to HN
- WilTimSon 4y agoThen my advice about sticking to a dignified tone and knowing the rules still applies. Happy to have more people sharing but there's a reason HN isn't the same vibe as Reddit.
- ranger_danger 4y agoAnd there's also a reason lobsters isn't the same vibe as HN.
- stiltzkin 4y ago
- ekhaled 4y agoHad two channels. One last activity 2018 another June 2021. I lost the 2021 channel.
- euroam 4y agoSaying that it happened to channels that were inactive is misinformation! Telegram allows editing post, some of those"stolen usernames" were of channels that were active; i.e. posts were edited, and links were replaced, comments were enabled so channel masters can keep connected with their audience. Those channels were also compensating for the absence of advanced bio, status, and as introduction methods where their links were posted on the profiles' "about me" section. Those channels, as many of Telegram users who were affected say that they did nothing wrong, their channels, though have no new posts, were actually "active and alive", and that their only fault was that they were using some Telegram features that Telegram itself did not respect.
- fucktelegram 4y agoThis is terrible, they stole the name of a channel that was active in 2021! It's not because it's inactive, it's just because it has a unique and business name!