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there could be an empty-payload "something changed, do stuff if you want" style of notification like Signal uses. Without a change notification, the remote side needs to poll.
That makes sense, very good point! We will consider it. Maybe we will do something like long polling just because I liked working with it when I used the TG API.
I'm definitely a fan of not having to poll for stuff (even though it's more complex and can be more demanding of resources) and want things to be as real time as possible and reasonable.