this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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I’ll take back the the "Russian" comment, then. I already mentioned the larger feature set of telegram and it’s totally fine to switch because of that.
I’m also aware of the optionally encrypted chats, but them not being the default, as well as being more cumbersome to use and without a notification preview means that basically no one uses it (at least in my experience).
As I understand it the feature set wasn’t the reason for switching so I’m curious in what areas telegram might be considered the better choice compared to Signal/Matrix or even WhatsApp. As I see it it’s missing e2e encryption and isn’t as wide spread as WhatsApp.
Telegram has also some big issues with misinformation and conspiracy stuff due to its "hidden communities" and social media aspect with broadcasting and gigantic groups. I personally know people that have been sucked into this and it makes me quite sad.
So I’d be working hard to convince people to switch (which I’ve actually done already with telegram when it first came out) with no real upside and mostly downsides.
I use all three apps, WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal, because others use them. And yes, none of my chats on telegram is encrypted because I'm mostly only in groups anyways.
What I've discovered is that especially groups show a certain inertness. For example, I observed that people from a certain context in one city all use signal but people from the same context in a neighboring city all use telegram. So all my groups from city A are in one messenger and groups from city B are in the other. This is weird, right? And these are really the same circles of people and I share many contacts between all groups. But I think it is just important what they started using and now they create more and more subsequent groups in the same messenger. None of them gives a reason to really switch to the other, so they don't.
Oh, and WhatsApp is only for the few people in my life that are quite unpolitical and uninformed, i.e. 'ordinary people'. Like people I meet at a language course or something work related etc.
Well, when telegram alucnhed whatsapp did not have e2e encryption so it was more secure than WhatsApp. Then whatsapp implemented it while telegram pushed tons of new features. It's been some time.