I'm a heavy WhatsApp user and I feel like WhatsApp has gone downhill ever since Facebook took over. Performance is down significantly, I experience a lot more visible bugs, more and more exploits are being revealed about seemingly trivial components (file encryption, browser XSS), and useless features are beeing added. Its not like WhatsApp Inc. was flawless before they got acquired, but at least it worked well and most of the developers actually wanted to make a great chat app.
Its just a matter of time before Facebook merges WhatsApp with its Messenger (and keep either of those names).
heavy WhatsApp user here as well, and I have the total opposite experience, WhatsApp has greatly improved since then. End-to-end encryption, group chats and voice are all working really well right now.
1. I know the people working on this and they really care.
2. It would be a pretty big fiasco if they lied on e2e encryption. You can assume that people are actively and periodically reverse engineering their mobile apps, so this would surface at some point or another.
Signal and Telegram are both solid alternatives built around different security models. When I get a notification in Messenger, Instagram, etc., I simply reply back with my contact info for those apps. Telegram gives you a vanity URL using your username, which is pretty cool.
Yes I am using Signal. It's just that most people around me are not on Signal. Trying to convince them to switch is useless (although I try). WhatsApp is not my first choice either.
My perspective is, pick one of the many overlapping channels we already share or don't bother me. I am not signing up to yet another spyware-of-the-month app in order to chase your fashion sense.
It's a trade off. In some cases not installing the messaging app du jour means being left out of group chats. If that's ok with you, then by all means, allow yourself to be excluded. But that's not ok with everyone.
People often say this, but I wonder if they've actually used those apps. For example Signal, try to back up your chat history. The hoops you have to jump through are not feasible for non-technical users. There were many more relatively small issues like this (I tried switching 6 months ago) but I forgot most.
For a basic 'send text message from user A to user B' app, there are lots of options. Something that is as convenient as Whatsapp though - there are none.
Signal prioritizes security over usability. Part of security is limiting the number of copies of data you have floating around as part of reducing the attack surface. Backups of chats, particularly if they're plaintext, represent an extremely juicy targets for attackers.
I've used both substantially, Telegram for the past 2-3 years, Signal since it was Textsecure.
The primary concern is that messages in Telegram aren't encrypted by default. But that's been the case for a lot of messengers and tbh for large groups privacy really can't be assumed on any E2E solution. (yes, technically but practically it wouldn't be the case)
The Telegram creators are also extremely cocky and the encryption they do use is non-standard and done mostly in-house. It backfired on them a little with MTProto which they've fixed in v2, but it doesn't make cryptographers confident.
Signal and Telegram have wildly different philosophies on what it means to be secure. Telegram refuses to implement E2E on desktop clients citing it being too large of an attack surface (I am inclined to agree with them). They emphasize ephemerality of conversations in a way Signal doesn't do (E2E chats in Telegram and frequently brought up and torn down, Signal instead just has self-destructing messages).
Finally, look at the creators' motivations. Moxie is having to sell double-ratchet stuff to the likes of Facebook and relies on Amazon and Google to run the service. Pavel is several orders of magnitude more rich, has been outspoken against Putin, and can afford to fund anything he needs done on Telegram. I'm not claiming either is more trustworthy, but motivations are radically different.
Security aside, Telegram is just so much more pleasant to use, and I think that’s what wins users over more effectively than probably anything except network effects.
Usability on Telegram is fantastic in how it syncs messages between devices and allows editing/deleting them. I see its security as good enough for my risk model, which is primarily keeping my chats out of the hands of Facebook, Google, and other predatory tech giants with a history of playing fast and loose with user data.
I'm guessing from this comment you don't own a Rift.
The driver software has been completely taken over by Facebook's nakedly nefarious motivations. It's not even just spyware, or even malware; the term I would coin for it is "fuck-you-ware". Want to play the game you bought last year, on the headset you bought two years ago? Fuck you! Make an account first. We changed the rules and updated the software without asking you and now all your data are belong to us...
Its just a matter of time before Facebook merges WhatsApp with its Messenger (and keep either of those names).