Basically to evade American reach, you need to have support from Russia and/or China. If you don't have that support, you are going to have a very hard time.

And Russia and China are hardly the type of countries who are keen to support a secure messaging platform.

Which, FWIW is exactly why Telegram doesn’t even try to be a secure messaging platform.

https://m.habr.com/en/post/206900/

Let's not pretend the United States government supports them either.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/the-broken-recor...

How about we not pretend that Russia, China, and the US are playing the same game either?

It seems to me that the US gov’t wouldn’t have a hard time getting Apple to remove Telegram from the App Store. That seems like a pretty awful scenario for them.

I wonder if my version from F-Droid would also be taken down (assuming they would bother sending a letter to F-Droid LLC).

Not really, Telegram works as a web app and also, not that many people in the world actually use iPhones (at least outside of the US. In the US though, more people use iPhone than Android it seems)

1+ billion iPhones are in use worldwide with more people having them in China than the US.

And the idea that people are going to simply switch from an iOS app to a web app is pretty laughable. Mobile web apps are by and large terrible experiences.

Everything I can find on it, seems that Apple and iOS has around 10-25% market share and units shipped[1][2][3][4] In China specifically, it seems to be around 20%[5]

And the idea of real people, having a real need for something in this very moment, is gonna care if they use a iOS app or a web app is pretty laughable too. Even with a worse user experience.

- 1) https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share...

- 2) https://www.statista.com/statistics/271496/global-market-sha...

- 3) https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile

- 4) https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide

- 5) https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/china

There is more over at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste... as well that shows around the same number above too.

You’re saying it’s laughable to think people would not switch to a web app over an iOS app if the iOS app is no longer available?

There’s no way the vast majority of users would switch. This would be the case for any sort of app. But especially for a chat app.

Also, iOS users generally spend more money and I presume in cases like their China market share, are also higher net worth users. Losing iOS users would be more than just losing their small percent of the overall iOS/Android market share.

"You’re saying it’s laughable to think people would not switch to a web app over an iOS app if the iOS app is no longer available?"

No, I'm saying if there is a application that solves a real-world problem (like keeping track of where to protest about the future of your home or communication with people are not reachable elsewhere), people don't care if you open Safari and click on a bookmark or if they open a native application. As long as it works, people will use it in the way they can access it with their current device.

"Losing iOS users would be more than just losing their small percent of the overall iOS/Android market share"

Not sure how much that would actually effect the global market share.

My two comments in this thread is just showing information taken from other sources, but they are getting downvoted. There is almost no opinion in these comments, so why the downvotes?

This is a lie. Telegram has not evaded Russia, has continuously lied about not having staff in .ru.

These aren’t honest people, on telegram.org they still continue to push lies about the “secure” and “encrypted” nature of telegram.