Yeah, basically both super duper encrypted privacy oriented services want your phone number.
Sorry, but that's not privacy. I don't care what they do to encrypt your messages, they are still tied to me, which makes the super duper encryption pointless.
I agree with you that Telegram does not even have E2EE and that's bad.
But in this thread, GP was just talking about metadata. The goalpost here is metadata. GP particularly mentioned that Signal "fixed" the phone number issue and I just want to note that currently Signal isn't any better than Telegram in this aspect.
Sorry, but that's not privacy. I don't care what they do to encrypt your messages, they are still tied to me, which makes the super duper encryption pointless.