I see i can find a foss version on f-droid, and that’s something not a lot of social networks can have, i don’t really like all the crypto bullshit and ads testing they’ve been up to lately, but still looks better to me compared to what Reddit have done lately or what other platforms have done in these years…
I don’t know about their privacy feature, but i wouldn’t trust their chat as for as far as i knew they were not end to end encrypted some time ago (except for secret chats).
Anyway it still looks like one of the at least still decent platforms out there, or am i wrong?
The company’s CEO is Pavel Durov, the very clown who built russian alternative to Facebook, VKontakte, and then practically sold it to russian government with all it’s users. And russian government, being itself, repressed anyone who liked “wrong” stuff there. So, Durov being no stranger to selling things to governments, in my opinion, deserves zero trust.
He didn’t voluntarily sell it to the Russian government.
Being encryption needs to be enabled highlights how Telegram is trying to increase users who want privacy & security but don’t exactly know how to go about it. Granted, the option makes it a step up above sms, but that’s not saying a lot…
Telegram is more popular than WhatsApp in several global south countries. I use it with friends around the world, it has better functionality than WhatsApp. I’m not a fan of Meta so as far as “it just works” messaging apps go, Telegram is probably the best alternative to WhatsApp.