It was a many months transition, and it's finally done
Fun thing, you can actually make a backup of all* your messages, groups, contacts, etc. So before leaving you can have all of your data in case you need that one contact or something
The final red flag was as that allegedly Russian authorities were messing with people's deleted messages. Not for the first time there are news that they could read, modify, delete, see location, and etc. Screw it, this is unsafe, I'm out.
Also, these days telegram is really at the state of a pile of garbage, bloated, buggy, and shady messenger.
Good for you. I still don't know how to move my friends and relatives to Signal. Any tips with that?
One day I said that in the future I will only be available via Signal. If not there then there is still SMS. And so far everyone I have contact with regularly installed it eventually.
That's exactly right.
Easy! Just replace their usual SMS app with Signal, and then every contact they have that does use Signal is private and secure!
Oh. Wait. That's exactly the functionality that Signal removed in their effort to ensure that Signal is never widely adopted.....
I didn't agree with their decision at all at the time, but now that I realize they made it a little while after it gained widespread adoption and people stopped using it because "Signal isn't actually secure!" ... seems like people were expecting a secure messenger to be, well, secure. So they would chat about anything and everything thinking "I am using a secure messenger, these messages can't be read..." and tech ignorance is a dangerous thing if you're trying to be secure. I would've preferred a colored window and un-closable message for SMS chats, but oh well. I like that they've introduced usernames so you don't have to give out your real number.
Keep bugging them. I almost exclusively use signal for messaging these days and it's fantastic. It took longer to convince some people than others
Do what I did. Let everyone you care about on TG that you're closing that crap, with your reasons for doing so. Inform them of your moving to signal, session, whatever. Be clear that, otherwise, they can try calling you and wish them good luck. Close TG on the day you set as deadline. I did that and whomever didn't get a Signal or Session account has to call me. I've never looked back.
My family is all on iMessage. I told them if they didn't install Signal I wouldn't reply to their texts.
At first, whenever they texted I would just reply with something that looked automated like "This user is no longer available via text message. Please install Signal if you wish to communicate."
I did something similar and just sent a link to Signal when IPhone friends and family SMS'd me, worked....eventually :) (am on Android)
That's freaking epic. Love it.
Like that, also, a few months prior to the deletion turn off the notifications, and come there every few days, so people need to wait for your reply for days, and when you come you say "oh, I'm not using tg, I switched to signal/session/simplex/bird mail"
These are allngreat suggestions. Another huge advantage is that this help detoxify from the constant pinging with others.
"Hey, Telegram got fucked up for me so I moved to an app called Signal. If you want to contact me, do that, or just use your old normal texting."
start a meme group. People may not want to install a chat app to talk to you, but they don't want to miss out on juicy memes.
this strategy worked for a few of my friends at least.
Install a family XMPP server like Snikket or otherwise. Show them the benchmarks of how little battery & data plan drain is used from Conversations forks. Explain how bloated Electron apps are & how you don’t wish that on your loved ones vs. Dino, Gajim, or a TUI client. Sidecar a Movim server so y’all can share long-lived, non-ephemeral posts instead of losing memories like photos in some long group thread. Let them know their data is safe with you as the operator instead of some massive for-profit corporation—and if they don’t trust you, they are empowered to start their own server to interop.
(This tactic has yet to work for me, but I will keep running into that wall til it breaks 😃)