[elastolin]

> ~1$/month, I don't do anything heavy, text messaging only

Won't work. The vast majority people don't pay for messaging service, and without people, there's no messaging app. Ads are the only way forward.

Will they offer an optional ad-free subscription? Maybe, but I wouldn't count on that, and it's likely to be higher than $1/month.

> So, the day I get ads in Telegram I'm leaving

Nobody cares.

[qwerty456127]

> Nobody cares

I have stimulated many people to switch to Telegram because it is the best and all you have is to try it, realize that and motivate your friends to switch with you. Obviously many of these people will go with me once I find a better alternative. The situation probably is the same for many other people.

[skinnymuch]

Nobody cares is an exaggeration, but correct spiritual point for the grandstanding a minority of HN users make about always leaving X or Y or never joining Z because of situations like you mentioned. Yet nothing actually changes in the real word because of how much of a niche minority these people are.

[elastolin]

> Obviously many of these people will go with me once I find a better alternative.

People will go only if there's another service that's good enough and has enough user density. You may find the best privacy-oriented, ad-free messaging app, but if it's empty or if it's hard to use, it's essentially useless.

By this point, it's hard to compete with the behemoths like WhatsApp or Telegram and people will not care about this nearly as much as you do. So, no, it's not 'obvious' at all.

[qwerty456127]

I have been told the same about Telegram just a couple of months ago.

Most of the people I know have less than 10 contacts they actually care about and communicate regularly and it is not hard to convince the most of them to install an app you would sincerely recommend.

[elastolin]

You don't understand how hard is for a messaging app to gain traction. Telegram has been growing for years and years, and it offers some significant advantages over WhatsApp. Even with all this marketing and effort, I'd say only about 10% of my WhatsApp contacts are on Telegram. Now you want to get people to move to yet another app? For what? Why would they? Because no ads?

If a new app ever manages to become big (as in, Telegram-level big, let alone WhatsApp), it would take years of raising money and marketing. And how would they pay for that exactly? You think people pay a mensual/anual fee for a messaging apps when there are free alternatives? No, the answer is, again, ads. That or selling user data, which is much worse.

You're too focused on the tech, but you have no understanding of how business works.