[Krasnol]

Bringing up Telegram in this context makes it quite funny, since Telegram users seem not to care about the safety of the contents of their chats at all in this shady black box.

Phone numbers are a quite ridiculously small problem compared to that.

[codedokode]

No. If you join a public chat in Telegram you don't have to share your phone number with other members so you don't have to be afraid that they will find you in real life. You can write anything you want. But with WhatsApp or Signal you have to share a phone number with everyone which means they can easily find who you are and where you live (this data is cheaply sold on black market).

[Krasnol]

Your group chats go into a black box unencrypted. You don't know what happens to it because it's not E2E. You also gave your phone number to this shady company who runs those servers which keep everything you wrote.

Even Whatsapp is better than this.

And what is that phone number fetish? It's not like it is some magic identifier. There are bots out there testing every number out there and sending you SNS spam. Your phone number is worthless.

As far as I remember, you can still find people on Telegram by searching for phone numbers. Isn't there even an automatic discovery feature?

The Telegram salt around those announcements seems like the final cry of Telegram fans to me because after that, there is absolutely nothing which would even remotely paint Telegram as a safe or secure messenger. Especially because everybody know why you are on Telegram. It's a different use case. I talk on Signal to people I know personally. They already have my number. People I know go on Telegram for porn and piracy over here. They still have Whatsapp or Signal to talk to their friends and family. They actually are ashamed that they have Telegram because everybody here know why they have it ;)

[codedokode]

In WhatsApp or Signal your number is visible and anyone in a public group can know who you are and burn down your house if you write something they didn't like. Yes, Telegram knows your number and your messages but it is unlikely that they will give them out to random weirdo^W manly person with strong sense of injustice.

[Krasnol]

There are no "public groups" in Signal. Don't know about Whatsapp since I don't have it anymore. All of my groups consist of people I know. You still don't understand the use case.

> elegram knows your number and your messages but it is unlikely that they will give them out

How do you know that? Do you know the people personally or where is your knowledge coming from because if you don't know them, you are just another user who gave out all of their chat contents AND the phone number to "some people somewhere". Nothing else. You have no guarantee for anything, and you should already know that they do act upon requests from governments. Google it.

[daveloyall]

Group Settings > Group Link

Then share the link publicly. Signal Public Groups.

[Krasnol]

Which are...where?

Who does this?

How is the spread of this compared to Telegram groups?

Why do you keep on pushing for the wrong use case?

[wkat4242]

Telegram is not only used for porn and piracy. In fact there's much better places to get those things.

I just use it to follow events at clubs in interested in. There's a bit of an overlap with Instagram but I find the telegram experience nicer. Less ads, no stupid 'reels' forced upon me.

[Krasnol]

Yeah, I'm sure there is even some guy out there who talks to his grandmother using Telegram.

[wkat4242]

Maybe this is a US thing? I heard messaging apps are wildly different in the US. For example nobody uses iMessage here (Spain), literally nobody, not even people with iPhones. Which are admittedly very few people because they are so expensive here. Most people use budget android phones like $150 redmi's. I never get SMS either, only system/bank/2FA notifications. If someone SMSed me I would tell them to use something else because it would cost me money to reply :P

Here it's WhatsApp for 1:1 and small groups, and telegram for big public groups because WhatsApp sucks for those. I (and most of my friends!) even use WhatsApp for making calls these days. The only time I make a legacy phone call is to call a business that doesn't have WhatsApp. 95% of the calls I receive are spam harrassment so I ignore calls unless I know the number.

But Telegram is quite common for normal use to follow clubs, to follow tattoo artists, to get notifications of stock of Nvidia cards, for cybersecurity information, for our makerspace.. We really use it a shitload.

I don't use telegram for porn or piracy at all. Nor do I know anyone that does. Even though I do those things a lot, but I have much better places for it.

But perhaps in the US it's used very differently? I don't know. Here it's really quite mainstream.

[codedokode]

It depends on the country. In Russia many people use Telegram for work and for personal communication (almost every young person has it so you cannot say it is used mainly by criminals unless you count everyone as a criminal). Telegram also has channels, so you can for example read news or (if you are young enough) funny memes there. Also, Telegram is uncensored unlike web, so you can watch videos with exploding tanks if you are into this kind of stuff. But at the same time in Japan it has a negative image of an app used for shady things.

[wkat4242]

I use telegram mostly for chats to public groups that anyone can join anyway. So the end to end point is kinda moot. Same with IRC for example. This is why nobody complains about it not having that.