[em-bee]

I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason!

telegram is the only chat app that offers Free Software clients, does not force me to share my phonenumber, is easy enough to use even for old people.

matrix is ok. but element is still buggy and the ux is complex and takes some learning.

another alternative is deltachat. it uses smtp as transport and works with an email account. the UX is also easy enough to use. easier than matrix/element.

[kitsunesoba]

The multiple third party clients feature is huge for me. It’s means I’m not stuck with living with whatever set of trade offs have been made in the official client, and it means there are true native (UWP, UIKit, etc) clients for just about every platform that don’t use UI as branding and behave the way one would expect apps of those platforms to behave.

[zelphirkalt]

Last time I tried Telegram to see what it is like, it did automatically broadcast to all my contacts, that I use Telegram, and as a consequence people thought they could message me there, even though I was only testing the app. Also it did require associating with my phone/SIM. Do you mean, that it does not publish your phone number to other people on Telegram?

I keep an eye on deltachat, hoping, that it might become a viable alternative to phone number associated chat solutions. Not sure how mature deltachat is already.

[em-bee]

it should have asked you about that broadcasting. i am very sensitive about that so i am careful not to allow it.

deltachat is pretty mature for the features that it has. one nice one is that the autocrypt feature works with some regular email clients, so you can exchange encrypted deltachat messages with people who don't have a deltachat client.

it handles groups, image sharing, and integrates videochat with a configurable url (so you can use any video chat that can be opened through a webbrowser)

[zoobab]

Signal require a phone number, a nogo for real privacy.

[meijer]

I believe Telegram requires a phone number, too.

[maxnoe]

It requires a phone number, but it doesn't require sharing the phone number with other people. On signal you are only reachable via the phone number, Telegram has User names and allows to hide the number from the profile.

[boboralice]

It asks for a phone number when you sign up, but you don't have to share the phone number with people you want to add as a contact/share it in groups.

For a lot of people, Telegram does a good job of being "less evil than Facebook Messenger", and private in ways that matter to them. I'm more worried about some nutcase from a video game meetup group getting hold of my phone number than I am law enforcement finding out I was in that video game group in the first place.

I have a Matrix server and an XMPP server for 'truly private' communication anyway.

[zoobab]

Let's see if Telegram gives the data to courts:

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/22/08/31/2210240/court-orders...

[hungryforcodes]

It's actually fun to use?

[em-bee]

that's very subjective i suppose, i don't have much to compare it to. if by fun you mean stickers and animated emojis. sure. it doesn't get in my way. it is possible to find groups and people through searching for keywords. i can name my contacts as i like. (which matrix/element for example does not allow, and that's a real problem)

the only thing annoying is that anyone can just talk to me, whereas eg. in wechat people have to make a contact request before they can talk to me directly. but i have the impression that wechat is the unusual one here, which a feature that i'd like to see adapted by other messengers too.

i also miss wechat's feature of being able to choose a custom name for myself in each group. but again, i don't know if any other messenger offers that.