Tech, life and everything else
I will migrate away from Telegram. Enough is enough. After more and more features are behind the Telegram Premium paywall (which I understand to a degree) and the increasing integration of stars (a crypto scheme? — I have less understanding for that), now also Grok from xAI by right-wing extremist Elon Musk will be integrated.
Telegram was always my favorite messenger, as it provided a fast and user-friendly experience on multiple devices. But one and a half years ago, I already started doubting my decision to rely on Telegram.
Telegram Premium allows you to convert voice messages to text. But Telegram Premium isn’t officially available in Germany. So why not develop your own solution? That’s exactly what I did this morning: I created a Telegram bot that takes the voice message and transcribes it using OpenAI’s Whisper API. The bot runs as a serverless container on Scaleway. The source code is published on my Gitea instance.
Telegram decided to cancel my Premium, I got the following message from the @PremiumBot:
Unfortunately, Telegram Premium is not available for users from Germany. You were able to subscribe due to an issue with this bot that existed in the first days after launch and has now been fixed.
The full amount you paid for the subscription has been refunded to your card. We apologize for the inconvenience.
I’m a bit sad, because I really liked the voice message transcription and the new premium stickers were nice as well. Seems like I now need to wait again until Premium is officially available in Germany. ☹️
I have found a way, it is possible to subscribe to Telegram Premium at a cheaper price and in Germany (where it is actually not yet officially available)!
I think the 4€ per month is a reasonable price for me for now. I’ve been using Telegram for years and I’m thrilled how quickly new features are implemented. I will gladly pay to keep Telegram going for a long time.
Telegram Premium is there, at least the announcement that it should be there, but the update on Google Play somehow not yet. Unfortunately, the announcement says that Premium is not (yet) available for users in Germany. ☹️ I’m especially waiting for the feature to be able to convert voice messages to text. 😅
It seems that there is a new super-app: Telegram. Bots can now also use HTML5 and JavaScript and thus “replace websites”.
I read this very long article about Telegram today and somehow it left me with mixed feelings. The article is also from WIRED, but it offers more balanced coverage than an article from a year ago.
Telegram is developing updates and new features like crazy, they just released the 12th major update this year. One of the new features is the translation of chat messages from a foreign language to your own.
So Telegram now has ads. But unlike the ads from Google, Facebook or Apple, the ads are not personalized and much more privacy friendly. The ads simply consist of a maximum 160-character message with no external links and are displayed only in large public channels.