It would also make sense if more people are already on Telegram (so that you have less people to convince to switch), but again you don't mention this reason to prefer Telegram over Signal.

In my case, as usually advocated by security expert, I prefer Signal, and I fallback to WhatsApp whenever it is too big a hurdle to make people switch.

I have accepted to use Telegram the same way I have accepted to drive a car that isn't the safest in the latest tests.

It is a tradeoff. Someday I or some of my passengers might get killed where we could have survived in a new Mercedes or Volvo.

Someday my messages might get intercepted where I could have avoided it.

Meanwhile I try to drive safely.

unless you use Telegram for some features that Signal does not have

I use bots, large groups, desktop client, hashtags, @replies, answers, channels and possibly more that I can't remember.

I might be wrong but I though Signal lacked several of those.

Happy to be corrected if not :-)

I at least felt you were contributing constructively to the discussion and have upvoted you.

Seems I am getting off the hook easily with my campaign against Whatsapp then.

I'm at a double digit upvotes and that is even when I have seen a few downvotes in a row : )

My biggest gripe with this has been how some of our cryptography stars IMO has a very one-dimensional view on this:

"E2E good, anything else bad."

IMO, E2E message encryption only buys you so much, i.e. as a thought experiment one could consider if you would like to use an E2E protected system run by NSA. Or by FSB. Or by our bosses, wives, parents etc. Whoever you don't want to make statistics on who you contact and when.

For me who like to think I am smart to keep as much data as possible out of the hands of FB - and by that - out of the hands of

- whoever buys the windfall when Facebook collapses or

- whoever manages to hack them thoroughly or

- whoever sends them a valid subpoena or

- (slighly evil here) pays them enough

OK, Facebook guys - let me cut you a deal: you start acting trustworthy and I start liking you. I want to like Whatsapp. I want to pay you money. I want to pay you more for API access. I want to have a brilliant messaging platform to communicate with my stubborn family.

I just don't want you to ruin product I loved. I don't want you scheme so hard to datamine me that you need to update the privacy policy.

We're in a period of closed chat ecosystems (Joe Schmoe doesn't use Matrix, IRC or XMPP) and fairly spacious smartphone storage, which in my circles means that people tend to be quite willing to install an extra app for chatting.

A bunch of my friends use Signal, and the ones that don't I communicate with on WhatsApp.

Chances are you'll see a number of your friends have it installed already as others have noted in this thread.

Then talk about it to your friends, show them the stuff you know they will love. For some it is bots. For others it is themes. Hashtags to follow topics. The possibility to have a chat with yourself (I run a journal like thingy where I note when I check oil on my car, when I changed my contacts etc, all hashtagged so I can retrieve it by tag later.)

I think at some point they had the (IMO possibly good) idea that they would make the client free of charge and make money by charging for API access for businesses etc but that was before (IMO as usual) they decided to go all in on scooping up user data and trying to copy Snapchat again ;-)

Either I am a very good salesman or it isn't really hard.

I have participated in getting hundreds of people to ditch Whatsapp for Telegram (family + a few local groups I am member of).

I just started by using it to communicated woth my wife, then with close friends, then recommending it as enthusiastically as I used to recommend Whatsapp.

When "everyone" find they are using Telegram foreverything but a few groups then they will start bugging the rest of the members and suddenly even big groups switch.