Whatsapp doesn't have even a tiniest bit of telegram functionality, most importantly, bots. The person who made this post bitches about weirdly specific functionality that doesn't affect you at all. I have a telegram premium (which is dirty cheap) and I never knew I could ban sending VMs, nor I had any reason to do so. Even in the free version you can restrict people who can write to you (e.g. only your contacts), if you don't like to get VMs from your friends, just tell them. Also, security-wise, we all know that whatsapp gives your data to whatever US authorities ask and tg never did anything like that. All the security risks came from users not paying attention to privacy settings, like exposing their mobile number.
As I remember it, nobody had cared about Telegram until Signal started gaining some traction as a more private WA alternative. Telegram just rode that wave, plus I suppose it has better support for large groups I guess? The fact that those aren't even encrypted just gets lost.
Enjoying Matrix, there seems to be an actual focus on privacy. We're using it for the development comms for Kbin. Feels like an alternative version of discord
Telegram has much better Windows/iPad apps, open source client, faster, more customizable, support for sending lossless-files, etc. It's a much better app, and not owned by Meta
It's not. The founder is russian and created vKontakte but basically had it taken away from him by Putin. He's outspoken against the regime and just because he's born in Russia shouldn't mean he should be seen as part of that crappy government.
No. He was born Russian, but has moved out of it after his other social platform VK was confiscated and now owned the Russia. He lives in Germany Dubai, where he placeed Telegram's HQ.