Technology

I don't know why people stuck with it. I've used it; I get that a lot of the initial success/hype was:

• It's not owned by Meta
• "Putin hates Durov!"
• "Unlimited" storage (lots of people using it as free cloud storage, which is dumb if you value your files)

But your messages are not E2EE by default (only "Secret Chats", which aren't synced across devices)...Telegram (the organization) could always read your messages. I said this so many times and got called everything under the sun.

"Why would they care about my messages though?" ------> Because $300 Million.

Whelp. Same thought :(

Their bot api is very easy to use. I have made some telegram bots because is so easy. Tried to do the same with WhatsApp and didn't even get permission and api access.

Average Joes use mainstream things, if you want to do something accessible, these bots are the way. Ideally, you want them to download or use an app that does some hand holding. I'm all up to the fediverse but let's be honest, it has some non intuitive things for today's user, most were trained to understand and like centralized services. They vaguely understand and use emails today, and mostly for account creation of other platforms.

Disclaimer: haven't tried to make signal bots, they are a thing?

Federal government threatened Telegram and demanded a backdoor a while back, iirc.

You misunderstand. Elon is retired from US politics now, obviously, and will return to being a force of good!

Honestly, Telegramm always seemed to me a bit shifty since I learnt E2EE for chats was opt-in.

• Matrix (Element etc...)
• XMPP
• Session
• SimpleX
• Signal
• GNU-Jami
• Briar

Element here all the way!

If you want something more like the fediverse itself, then Matrix. If you want something closer to Telegram out of the box without setup, then Signal or SimpleX.

XMPP

Your secret chats are already being read. Hell, secret chats are probably the first to be read.

A secret chat is only for local privacy, meaning if someone got access to your device they can't find them, nor will you get notifications (in case your partner is watching your screen).

Back when we just had SMS and MMS, they had secret chats, too. They were blatantly marketed as tools to cheat on your partner. GO SMS was one of the first to use them. Its not so blatant anymore, but its still the primary use for "secret" chats.

I remember reading an article that someone figured out everyone's GO SMS images (even secret ones) were uploaded online without any security whatsoever. You could put in the url and some random numbers and get any pictures and voice clips ever sent. And they never fixed it even after it was leaked.

So yeah, not so secret. You want secure.

Edit: Context: Sorry, my ADHD gets the better of me. I mean that there's more likely than not a government backdoor. Other users are unlikely reading your messages, but your messages are more than likely being scanned. Just be careful if you use TG.