Then the advice to "just use Telegram" is useless. It cannot replace the chat services we rail against because it's literally asking people to ditch their friends.

No, we are asking friends to try a better messenger.

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.