I use telegram mostly because it have great features and its certainly better than any meta apps in privacy and private enough imo. It was easy to get my friends and family on telegram because they loved those features, signal is just... boring.
Sure, but we have to consider what other people wants too, and if they are getting alot of feature in a single app without any big compromise, they would prefer that and thats perfectly logical.
From my experience of getting other people on Signal, the main issue is that not everyone is already on it. People generally want to use only one app and it attracts them to the most popular one because they don't need to switch as much.
Secondary issues are:
No automatic phone transfer (no cloud backups, has to be done manually)
No large public channels
I might add another one, but it applies to WhatsApp too - it's crazy that there's still no easy way to move between iOS and Android...
OTOH telegram gives you option to export your whatsapp chats there making migration a bit more convenient.
For the last point, yeah it sucks a lot and fuck whoever is responsible for that...
I don't like whatsapp either but my claim still holds. e2ee by default for all chats is arguably more privacy respecting than opt-in e2ee for 1-1 chats only. and what metadata exactly does telegram encrypt but whatsapp does not?
only if you are terrorist or do some CP stuff. Besides there are ton of reasons why I should use telegram.
Its a lot more featureful, its easy for people to move their and its secure enough for me because I am not a terrorist and I dont sell drugs, thanks.
It's fun though. I'm glad they keep an eye on this stuff because I don't and someone definitely should. But it really is just a hobby. It's fun how serious they take it. Super serious hobby lol. Love them to death though. Greatful too!