You conveniently left out the fact that Telegram has a history of actual backdoors http://habrahabr.ru/post/206900/
This is completely unrelated to what I said.
>The difference here was it was endorsed by Moxie's acquaintances from the crypto circles
You suggest that this is the major difference between Signal and Telegram, but that's dishonest at best.
upvoting, I am having same feelings towards Telegram vs Signal. Both are man made things, maybe Telegram has not made audit on their crypto yet, but whenever I see something related to IM + crypto, people praise Signal, write hate speech towards Telegram, as if were people are waiting HN to have a mention of Telegram and writing some bad words about it.
The difference here was it was endorsed by Moxie's acquaintances from the crypto circles, followed by a very loud and aggressive disparaging campaign against Telegram led by some of these people. I've been on metzdowd list for a very long time and while cryptographers aren't the chummiest people in the slightest, there's always an underlying mutual respect. The Telegram bashing was the first time I've ever seen geniuenly vicious behavior and hate displayed towards a project that not even remotely deserve it. Almost as if the goal was just to bury the competition.