[ccity88]

Signal is great, easily one of the best apps I've ever used. As someone who's privacy conscious, I've been trying forever to get my network of friends, family and colleagues to use signal with literally no success. Here in the UK, WhatsApp is ubiquitous, and to even _think_ of using a different app is, by most laypeople's standards, absolutely weird. Most people I've convinced have downloaded Signal, gave it a go with a few messages, and them promptly went back to WhatsApp because that's where the majority of their communication happens.

I'm convinced that it doesn't matter how good the product is, what matters is the network effect. Nobody cares about privacy, what they care about is whether everyone else is using the same app. Until there's some doomsday scenario of everyones messages getting leaked or something (the closest was the WhatsApp privacy policy changes that triggered worldwide scrutiny and was a general PR nightmare), nobody will be moving en masse to a plucky small app that their network isn't on.

Also doesn't help that Signal are implementing features like crypto transactions that most people don't care about.

[TacticalCoder]

> Here in the UK, WhatsApp is ubiquitous, and to even _think_ of using a different app is, by most laypeople's standards, absolutely weird.

Several countries in Europe have already 1/10th of their population using Telegram. Telegram sees more than one million download per quarter in the UK alone.

Telegram is simply a much better app (better UI/UX) and nobody around me finds it weird. As soon as friends and family tries Telegram, they're hooked.

The network effect is already there and I guarantee you that if there still people finding it "weird", it won't last long.

There's also zero problem using both WhatsApp and Telegram (which many people do: I don't but many do).