category
UX Design
Rethinking Telegram Playlists
A short reflection on Telegram’s “playlists”, why it’s not a true playlist yet, and how it could be improved while keeping user privacy intact.
A few months ago, I wrote about the million-dollar missing feature of Telegram, which was playlists (private note). After a few months of using its current version, I decided to point out a few things:
Unintentional Exposure and Privacy Risks
The visibility and privacy are a concern. I’ve seen many people unintentionally add audio files to their profile (because the button on mobile phones is just too easy to press without even noticing), ⚠️which might expose sensitive data to others— for example , a private voice recording you sent to a psychologist or kept as an audio journal. People missing out on new features and not noticing such things is pretty common.
Not a True Playlist
Well, the thing we have right now is not technically a “playlist”. It’s more like a profile decoration, similar to writing a bio or uploading a profile photo, to tell others about ourselves. It’s cool but it’s not enough. I’d like to have real playlists: multiple lists with their own names, containing songs from public/private channels/groups/chats.
Granular Playlist Access
Playlists could still be a part of a user’s profile (like the current one), but each playlist gets to have its own whitelists and blacklists. Some playlists I’d keep fully private (you don’t want to listen to my electronic music playlist). Some, like a classical music playlist, I might only share with a small group of friends. And some could be public so anyone can access the audio files.
Sharing Controls and Ownership Concerns
A privacy and ownership issue arises when private playlists can be shared. I do think shared private playlists must not be shareable unless the creator has allowed the subscribers for further sharing. Otherwise if I was a user that has received such a playlist, and sharing was not available, I could only download the audio files myself and recreate that playlist on my own and share that instead, similar to how a user would re-share private profile pictures of another user (this is the way that a bad actor would do it I suppose😅).