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Comment by joejohnson | Hacker News Reader

The motivation for a lot of this discussion lately is people leaving WhatsApp for something that is more privacy respecting; for the reasons I said above (especially the monetization point), Telegram is maybe no better than sticking with WhatsApp or FB Messenger.

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Telegram is a better app.

Telegram does not have and will not have a monetization model that sells user privacy. Durov has been explicit in this. [1]

And it should be made clear that Telegram was forced into this position by the SEC who torpedoed any chance Telegram had of building out a decentralized network (TON).

[1] https://t.me/durov/142

We heard a lot of promises about Whatsapp too, about how it wouldn't share data with Facebook. Promises are worth nothing.

Which is why you should look at what Telegram has actually done and that has been to protect and preserve the privacy of its users since the beginning.

It's commonly misquoted that WhatsApp data will be shared with Facebook, but the Signal protocol for WhatsApp personal chats remains as is. It's the WhatsApp user-business communication that will be visible on third-party interfaces, like Facebook. It's in this process the e2ee aspect of the chat is lost. [1]

Overall, WhatsApp still remains a safe platform for 1:1 communications and group chats, but there are still many other factors that could be sold by Facebook, including location data, contact info, online status, and other aspects of the platform.

Durov did announce plans to offer more features for premium customers. [2] Hopefully that will help offset their hosting/development costs, without them succumbing to data selling practices.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/this-was-whatsapps-plan-all-along-184606...

[2] https://t.me/durov/142

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