Even Whatsapp is better than this.
And what is that phone number fetish? It's not like it is some magic identifier. There are bots out there testing every number out there and sending you SNS spam. Your phone number is worthless.
As far as I remember, you can still find people on Telegram by searching for phone numbers. Isn't there even an automatic discovery feature?
The Telegram salt around those announcements seems like the final cry of Telegram fans to me because after that, there is absolutely nothing which would even remotely paint Telegram as a safe or secure messenger. Especially because everybody know why you are on Telegram. It's a different use case. I talk on Signal to people I know personally. They already have my number. People I know go on Telegram for porn and piracy over here. They still have Whatsapp or Signal to talk to their friends and family. They actually are ashamed that they have Telegram because everybody here know why they have it ;)
> elegram knows your number and your messages but it is unlikely that they will give them out
How do you know that? Do you know the people personally or where is your knowledge coming from because if you don't know them, you are just another user who gave out all of their chat contents AND the phone number to "some people somewhere". Nothing else. You have no guarantee for anything, and you should already know that they do act upon requests from governments. Google it.
Then share the link publicly. Signal Public Groups.
Who does this?
How is the spread of this compared to Telegram groups?
Why do you keep on pushing for the wrong use case?
I just use it to follow events at clubs in interested in. There's a bit of an overlap with Instagram but I find the telegram experience nicer. Less ads, no stupid 'reels' forced upon me.
Here it's WhatsApp for 1:1 and small groups, and telegram for big public groups because WhatsApp sucks for those. I (and most of my friends!) even use WhatsApp for making calls these days. The only time I make a legacy phone call is to call a business that doesn't have WhatsApp. 95% of the calls I receive are spam harrassment so I ignore calls unless I know the number.
But Telegram is quite common for normal use to follow clubs, to follow tattoo artists, to get notifications of stock of Nvidia cards, for cybersecurity information, for our makerspace.. We really use it a shitload.
I don't use telegram for porn or piracy at all. Nor do I know anyone that does. Even though I do those things a lot, but I have much better places for it.
But perhaps in the US it's used very differently? I don't know. Here it's really quite mainstream.