People use Telegram because they have a great user experience. Signal, unfortunately, does not - and it's not entirely because they're limited by E2EE.
Signal does have an inferior experience. Signal has many UX issues, including the lack of a backup mechanism for iOS (if you lose your device or have to reset it, there is no way to restore old chats, and that’s by design). Additional irritants that nobody in the development team has thought about for years:
* I decline Signal’s prompt to turn on notifications with the “Not now” button (there is no “No thanks” button). It responds with “We’ll remind you later” and nags me again in a few days.
* I decline Signal’s prompt to share my contacts with it using the “Not now” button (there is no “No thanks” button). It responds with “We’ll remind you later” and nags me again in a few days.
Signal may be good at security, but whoever designed the app has no respect for users’ time, and it doesn’t seem like they respect a user’s privacy choices either. Telegram, on the other hand, does not have E2EE chats by default, but the privacy features are far ahead.
> * I decline Signal’s prompt to turn on notifications with the “Not now” button (there is no “No thanks” button). It responds with “We’ll remind you later” and nags me again in a few days.
The key here is to say "Yes" to the app's prompt, but "No" to the system prompt.
* I decline Signal’s prompt to turn on notifications with the “Not now” button (there is no “No thanks” button). It responds with “We’ll remind you later” and nags me again in a few days.
* I decline Signal’s prompt to share my contacts with it using the “Not now” button (there is no “No thanks” button). It responds with “We’ll remind you later” and nags me again in a few days.
Signal may be good at security, but whoever designed the app has no respect for users’ time, and it doesn’t seem like they respect a user’s privacy choices either. Telegram, on the other hand, does not have E2EE chats by default, but the privacy features are far ahead.