Many in the crypto and privacy community mistakenly trust Telegram because it's "end to end encrypted", but there are huge issues including not hiding the metadata, censorship, centralization, and phone numbers.
Send this video to your friend that asks why you won't join:
https://video.simplifiedprivacy.com/why-telegram-sucks/
The point is not that it's private, the point is that they are not owned by Facebook, don't collect as much data and give up to law enforcement as Whatsapp does, and it is based outside of the West and the 14 eyes. People say WhatsApp is end to end encrypted but if it is proprietary and owned by the second largest ad driven company in the world, how can you be sure?
Fair enough, the features are nice. I just want people to know that they're compromising on security by using Telegram. But if you don't have any REAL reason to be paranoid, then you don't really NEED to use Signal.
It was incredibly easy to have friends and family download the app and replace their SMS app with it.
Almost zero change or learning curve on their end, and we all got increased security when we used it.
Telling your parents to download yet another new app to talk to just you is a no-go and sabotaged their goal of increasing security for people at large.
SMS is INCREDIBLY insecure, and it doesn't surprise me that they dropped it. It risks giving a false sense of security to anybody who doesn't understand encryption (like, you know, your parents). They'll think that any conversation in Signal is secure when most of them probably aren't.
Signal isn't "yet another new app", it has been around for a decade and it continues to be the gold standard for E2E encrypted messaging. The fact that SMS still exists and people are stupid enough to use it does not mean Signal needs to maintain a feature that made their product inferior.
and it is based outside of the West and the 14 eyes
It is based in a country that's an ally of several 14 eyes country and you can bet your bottom dollar that it isn't a country that's going to tell the Big eyes of the 14 eyes to go f itself if they come knocking.