Whenever telegram gets some publicity, like in this case the arrest of Founder Pavel Durov, all these privacy advocates come out and remind everyone that Telegram is not End to end encrypted.
They are right, but they are missing the point on what telegram is and what it is not. Pavel Durov created a social
network called VK and left that because he was forced to. Then he made telegram. Telegram had channels a concept quite
new to messaging apps at the time, however now Viber and Whatsapp also have channels. Based on the concept of channels,
I believe it was always Durovs
intention to make telegram a social network and not just stay as a messaging app. Perheps starting off as the best
UX for a messaging app was easier to reach a global audience at a time facebook was is leading the social network
space.
Another point to highlight is Telegram is trying to compete with Meta rather than signal. Telegram has always criticized
the practices used by Meta and comparing to that no one can disagree that the privacy, anonymity and security provided
by Telegram is not upto the mark.
We as telegram users trust that telegram will never share user data with anyone. Time and time again Telegram has proven to us that it will never comply with governments requests to share userdata. This is a trust we have for Pavel Durov and his life story and that he will never break his values because that is who he is.
Services like Proton and Signal take a different aproach, and they should because, They are not made by someone with the circumstances as Pavel Durov, so they have to make sure that this trust happens through their systems. So proton makes sure that they dont retain any userlogs so they cannot hand them over and similiarly Signal makes sure that they cannot hand over any userdata through its encryption.
If we look at the price on TON we know that TON revolves around Pavel Durov and his decisions. Like when he got arrested it fell to $5 now. and when he announced the plans for an IPO wayback, it surged up so much. Telegram is a system revolving around Pavel Durov and his story. (for now). Another way to describe it would be Telegram is the result of the circumstances faced by Pavel Durov. It is the same story with Donald Trump and TruthSocial.
If Durov is not around oneday, Telegram should also implement a mechanism where this trust comes from the system. This could be like open sourcing the telegram server and perheps allow other encyrption protocols and so on. and actually addressing all the concerns Signal fans are throwing against telegram. Take notes for now and implement them when the time comes.
Once the difference between these two aproaches are understood we should also understand that telegram is not a messaging app like signal. It could be described as a world or an ecosystem or an everything app like the one Elon is trying build on X.
Telegram has payments, rewards, Apps of any kind, great developer onboarding and experience, a contests platform, a public bugs and suggestions platform, anonymous numbers, blockchain username handles, an advertising ecosystem that has the most non intrusive advertising, voice calls, video calls, group calls, broadcasts, translations for entire channels, Folders for categorizations, Bots, Great Location sharing and proximity alerts for groups, Discovering new people through locations, ability to hide yourself from everyone except your contacts, and the features are quite countless honestly because telegram ships a new update every month or so and the only time I remmeber this not happening was the stories update which was a quite big update.
How do you even compare telegram to signal? They are not even in the same category. Signal should also recognize that they are not any better interms of security. A telegram user can use anonymous numbers to use telegram but in signal you are forced to use your number. Signal is vulnerable to sim swapping and SS7 attacks. While Telegram provides a chance to take your number out of all networks through blockchain. However, this is in noway a comparison between telegram and signal. But it should be pointed out that if you are attacking telegram for not being secure this sort of a way, you should also understand that signal is not the answer either.
I think you could fairly compare Telegram to discord. We never see this comparison made by people but this is the only fair comparison because it is very close. But does discord have someone like Pavel to defend userdata? Is Discord secure? I think everyone knows discord is not secure. But we still use it because it is highly convenient, Telegram is the same. It is highly convenient and fun too and as a plus over discord, we trust Pavel Durov to not break his principles.
9 years ago I defended the private data of Ukranians from the Russian government and lost my company and my home. I would do it again without hesitation.
- Pavel Durov (https://x.com/durov/status/1500909092990341121)