[lawtalkinghuman]

Meanwhile WhatsApp and Signal's privacy model ensures everyone you talk to has your phone number which means they have the ability to make your device buzz at any time of the day and night. It also excludes people who do not have a phone number.

On Telegram, I can be in rando messaging groups of people and have a username rather than a hard-to-change, legacy voice traffic routing number that's widely used for tracking.

The only improvement is if they could get rid of the requirement that you use a phone number to sign up for these services, which is a regression from AIM, MSN, ICQ, IRC and Jabber/XMPP.

[mschuster91]

> The only improvement is if they could get rid of the requirement that you use a phone number to sign up for these services, which is a regression from AIM, MSN, ICQ, IRC and Jabber/XMPP.

That would only lead to one thing: absurd amounts of spam.

[lxgr]

Signal is working on that feature right now.

And as far as I know, Telegram still requires a phone number (or some crypto nonsense) as a primary identifier and for signups. They just allow you to hide that from your contacts.

[jacooper]

Use matrix then

[lawtalkinghuman]

Yup, I do. It's a great place to talk to myself and nobody else.

A bunch of people I know who play video games are on Telegram. I'm pointing out that I can talk to them without sharing my phone number which I can't do on WhatsApp/Signal.

Not being stalked by weirdos is a higher priority for a lot of people than anything involving spooky Edward Snowden stuff involving the NSA, FSB, GCHQ, Mossad and Five Eyes etc.