Where to go if Telegram is banned in Ukraine. Three available alternatives
A selection of messengers without a russian trace
Our military, especially those near the frontline, were obliged to uninstall Telegram from their gadgets in the spring of 2022. Just in case: theoretically, this messenger can transmit more than just the user's geolocation to the occupying country's intelligence services. In practice, however, the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has not been caught collaborating with the federal security service of the russian federation yet. However, for several years now, the media has been reporting a lot of circumstantial evidence that, taken together, may indicate Durov's 'bias' and 'holes' in Telegram.
A lot of questions remain unanswered as well. Where does the company get hundreds of millions of dollars annually to support servers, a team, a head office in the UAE, etc.? Do the subscription fees of 1 million TG Premium users and advertising revenues cover these costs? How did the company live on until 2021 (only then it launched monetization)? Who paid off Durov's debts after the 'successful launch' of the Ton cryptocurrency? Why is TG still operating in russia, China, and Iran, whose authorities are allegedly trying to ban the messenger from time to time?
These and many other questions may soon be answered by the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation. "We have agreed with Mykhailo Fedorov to study in detail the facts that may indicate Telegram's connection with the kremlin," Yaroslav Azhniuk, co-owner of Petcube, Spend With Ukraine, and Fuelfinance, recently said.
In this article, Mind talks about alternatives to Telegram. This messenger has become popular in Ukraine because it has the ability to perform three functions at once: to be a corporate communication tool, and to provide platforms for public promotional campaigns and media activity (as an alternative to conventional media). So which competitors have similar functionality? We have selected three of the most convenient messengers without a russian trace. The selection does not include platforms that block or downplay posts about the war in Ukraine.
Discord
Download via Google Play
Download via App Store
Discord has only recently become popular in Ukraine. Before that, it had been in demand mainly among gamers and teenagers for several years. Interest in it was fuelled by the Midjourney neural network. This image generator does not work on its own platform, but in Discord. In addition to the Midjourney chat, there are many various communities (called servers): corporate and school chats, as well as public pages of influencers, businesses, etc. There are also Ukrainian channels:
There are currently only 126 large communities marked "Ukraine".
Discord was launched as a niche messenger specifically for gamers. It helped to attract 10 million users in the first months of operation. Now it has more than 350 million users.
Discord was founded in 2015 by Jason Citron, a well-known US IT entrepreneur, and Stanislav Vishnevsky, a programmer. The latter is a native of Kharkiv. The development company Discord Inc was registered in San Francisco. The team consists of about 750 specialists. Discord is currently valued at $18 billion. In 2021, Microsoft Corp wanted to buy this platform for $12 billion, but the founders of Discord refused the tech giant.
What other features are available? Discord works on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, iPadOS, Linux, and web browsers. It can be used for voice calls, video chats (up to 25 participants), text messages, sending files, GIFs, and emojis in private chats and communities. In public channels, posts are displayed in chronological order. Users can edit or delete any message sent or content posted.
Standard functionality is free. However, Discord has two tariffs: Nitro Basic ($2.99 per month) and Nitro ($10). Subscriptions include HD streaming, a personalised video phone, larger file sizes (up to 500 MB), custom and animated emojis, and more.
Signal
Download via Google Play
Download via App Store
Many Ukrainians started using this messenger after the start of the full-scale invasion. It is considered one of the most secure. "Say anything – the latest end-to-end encryption technology (based on the open-source Signal Protocol™) protects your conversations. Privacy is not an optional extra – Signal just works that way. Every message, every call, every time," the developers assure. Cyber experts do not deny it.
Signal does not collect user information, so it is physically impossible to pass it on to a third party (for example, at the request of law enforcement). Even the developers cannot read the correspondence.
Why? This product is not monetized. It belongs to the non-profit Signal Technology Foundation (California) and lives on donations. The largest donation ($50 million) in 2018 was made by WhatsApp founder Brian Acton, who left his 'brainchild' after selling it to Facebook and disagreements with Mark Zuckerberg.
Interestingly, Signal became popular in the world thanks to the WhatsApp scandal that emerged in 2021. At that time, the platform announced its intention to officially transfer user data to its parent company Facebook: phone numbers, address books, locations, dates and shopping lists, etc. In the first week after the news, 9 million users switched to Signal from WhatsApp. The app now has over 105 million downloads.
What is its functionality? In addition to Android and iOS, it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The app allows users to write messages, create single and group chats (up to 1000 participants), have voice and video communication (up to eight users at the same time), share photos, emojis, videos, share location, etc. At the user's request, messages can disappear in a few seconds after reading them. Another feature of Signal is that it can check user contacts to avoid fraudsters or pranksters (the app sometimes asks for the pin code set during registration or allows interlocutors to exchange QR codes).
However, there is currently no functionality for creating large channels (over 1000 readers) to promote products or media.
Slack
Download via Google Play
Download via App Store
This is a niche messenger designed for corporate communication only. It is used by more than 750,000 companies: Uber, Airbnb, Xero, Shopify, Cole Haan, Sonos, etc. Slack was launched in 2014. The company was founded in San Francisco by IT entrepreneurs Stewart Butterfield and Cal Henderson. The team called their product "a Skype and enterprise email killer". In 2021, Slack was acquired by Salesforce for a record $27.7 billion. Mind told the story of its rise in more detail earlier.
In addition to the standard functionality (audio and video calls, texting, group chats, searching by communication history, etc.), Slack has the ability to enable additional tools that customers need.
"There are all these different pieces of custom functionality that we’ve been able to add to Slack. We’ve been able to take Slack and not just use it out of the box – but really make it our own," explains Will, Deliveroo's CIO. And he gives an example. If the weather is bad outside, the delivery service should prepare for a rapid increase in food orders. This triggers a whole chain of actions. So an alert goes out in Slack, and managers have to decide whether to hire additional couriers and how to serve the restaurants that are fulfilling the orders in the best way. This functionality has allowed the company to beat the competition. Deliveroo's revenue grew by 650%.
Another Slack feature is that it supports integration with almost 100 third-party services: Dropbox, Google Drive, GitHub, Google Docs, Google Hangouts, Twitter, Trello, MailChimp, Heroku, Jira, etc.
The service has both free and paid ($8.75 per month) versions.
How secure is Slack? After the hack in 2015, the developers claim that they have provided many mechanisms to ensure the security of information, conversations, and files. "Slack delivers enterprise-grade security at every layer, adhering to multiple compliance certifications, including SOC 2, SOC 3, ISO/IEC 27001 and more. Slack is GDPR-compliant and can be configured for HIPAA and FINRA compliance. It is FedRAMP Moderate authorised. In addition, Slack offers security features, like Enterprise Key Management, that allow admins fine-grained control over data encryption. You can also integrate your own security tools with Slack to get instant notification if a threat is detected," the company's website says.
However, a few years ago, Microsoft and Ukrainian Grammarly banned their employees from using Slack due to a "possible threat to intellectual property".
Thus, Ukrainian users have a fairly wide range of options for transferring their communication to other platforms if Telegram is banned in Ukraine.
If you have read this article to the end, we hope that means it was useful for you.
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