this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Telegram has open source clients and protocol specifications. Whatsapp is a piece of proprietary bullshit that you can't even use without a phone and zuck will sue you for even trying to decomple it
I am not a big WhatsApp fan, Signal and Matrix are clearly better from a privacy perspective, e.g. because of the meta data.
And while it's true what you wrote, it still doesn't explain my question / counter my argument. WhatsApp is, no matter how much I disliked Facebook / Meta, having better privacy. All messages are end-to-end encrypted and can't be returned to anyone, while most chats in Telegram aren't end-to-end encrypted. Telegram often doesn't give out any chats, but they are capable of doing so and could change their policies at any time.
Telegram's secret chats are e2e encrypted as well. They're not the default option because it's their way of balancing between being a messenger for privacy nuts and a social network with huge channels full of media at the same time.
Comparing the end-to-end chats, I straight up don't trust WhatsApp, it could send my messages straight to Zuck as far as I'm concerned. Given how many reverse engineering projects got closed after a cease and desist letter from them, I suspect a great deal of security by obscurity. While Telegram isn't much better with it's ridiculously convoluted code, it's inviting people to check and they have verifiable builds, that means that they are at least confident in what they are doing.
As for Signal and Matrix, I don't know a single person who uses either, so for me Telegram is the best middle ground for my normie purposes