Not showing you ads in 1:1 chat or in groups the maintainer has chose not to enable them in is different from, "I have your data ready to go for targeted advertisement".

This is essentially the Google model. Your search queries and browsing history (and Android and Chrome) are essential to targeted ads shown on every website "the webmasters choose to enable them on".

> This is essentially the Google model.

What? Google uses all your info for creepy personalized ads. Telegram is showing the same ads to everyone in a channel. And it isn't in 1:1 chats cuz they're supposed to be non-intrusive and gives a feeling of privacy.

Who is the 'maintainer'? Telegram is the only entity here.

The data is still on Telegram's servers, unencrypted. They may be doing ads in a channel/group, but I don't think for one second that's where they're going to stop now that they've entered that rabbit hole. By the time you'd realise, it'd be too late, since they've got your data on their servers, unencrypted. This is strictly worse than WhatsApp.

https://gizmodo.com/the-dangers-of-techs-privacy-promises-18...

> This is strictly worse than WhatsApp.

How? Google has all the whatsapp chats via the drive backups which 98% of users enable. fake E2EE

Telegram has an open API, alternative clients and free cloud storage.

They explain very well why they didn't want to give misleading e2ee claims like whatsapp https://telegra.ph/Why-Isnt-Telegram-End-to-End-Encrypted-by...

It is open source.