Whats so hard to understand about having a choice? Telegram doesn't keep a plant text copy of your message if you use the secret chats. Its up to you beside the fact that its also completely voluntary to even use telegram.

>The most technical answer you can expect is "All Telegram chats use MTProto encryption. Their End-to-end encryption protocol is called MTProto. Ergo, they can't see my messages".

Sorry but that just stupid. Any user who cares can clearly read which chats are e2e encrypted and which are not. Zero technical knowledge is needed. The name of the protocol or other irrelevant info are also not needed. The reality is people often just dont care.

>Ask any user if they want privacy or no privacy. 0% will tell you, oh I explicitly want no privacy.

Again at the verge of pure stupidity. Idek what your argument is here. No one forces you or anyone to use Telegram nor is the question privacy versus no privacy. Its mostly privacy versus convenience and more likely its use-cases versus nothing. Because other solutions dont have public channels and public groups and other telegram features people want. And "privacy" is meaningless for stuff mean to be public. Anonymity would be the next best thing and Telegram gives that although they ofc know who posts on a channel since there is no feasible way to change that. They have to know who's responsible for publicly posted content.

If you dont want or need any of that dont use it, its that simple.

>Whats so hard to understand about having a choice?

It's absolutely not hard. Literally my point :D I want choice but there is no choice. I can't enable secret chats on desktop clients. I can't enable secret chats for groups. The choice is choosing between another app entirely, not from within options in Telegram.

>Its up to you beside the fact that its also completely voluntary to even use telegram.

That's like saying, "if you don't like the society, don't criticize it, join the Amish". I have every right to criticize Telegram, if you think they're immune to critic, understand that's a dangerous situation. It's really weird me being concerned about your (and others') safety, is a threat to your self-esteem. If Telegram is part of your personal identity, you're in a world of trouble.

>Any user who cares can clearly read which chats are e2e encrypted and which are not.

No, 90% of people don't understand what encryption is. 99.9% of people don't understand the distinction between E2EE and cloud encryption. Your views are distorted by your bubble. Also nice work with the weasel word "who cares". So let me say this: if you care about privacy, you read my comments with the mindset "this guy is trying to help me", not "this guy is trying to attack my self-esteem".

"Its mostly privacy versus convenience"

It absolutely boils down to that when we start to compare applications. I'm not denying that. But when we say there's two ways to achieve same level of convenience, one is easy and insecure, the other is hard but secure. The problem isn't e.g. "You can't do end-to-end encrypted group chats", the problem actually "it's hard to do end-to-end encrypted group chats". We know, because apps like Telegram have failed to do that.

So it's not "use-case vs nothing", it's not "insecure group chat or nothing". It's "Telegram lacks know-how on how to create secure group chats vs Signal knows how to make secure group chats". Surely you must see this.

"Because other solutions dont have public channels and public groups and other telegram features people want."

But now you're lying. Signal's group can be public, because the group link can be made public. If you want to make the argument that Signal groups are not searchable inside the app, or if you want to make the argument Signal don't scale to massive group sizes, the by all means do so. Please understand I'm not advocating E2EE for massive, +1000 member gropus, I never have. The point is, small groups for small groups have the right to privacy too, and there is no technical reason non-super-groups can't have E2EE, and upgrading to supergroups would drop the E2EE.

"they ofc know who posts on a channel since there is no feasible way to change that."

Funnily enough, Telegram could make all clients connect via Tor by default, not require phone numbers, and thus, make everyone anonymous. But I can totally see why it's not feasible. E.g. the E2EE calls in telegram would stop being low latency. Adding six relay nodes between users would make it unusable. So you see, I'm not blind to real life technical limitations. But I'm not afraid to point out bad design decision when there is no actual technical limitation, either.

The fact is, Telegram doesn't know how to make E2EE sync across devices. The current design allows two people who own iPhone and iMac to have secret chats. But this is what it looks like: One secret chat between the phone and the phone, another between desktop and phone, and third between desktop and desktop, and a fourth one between phone and desktop. So four chats in total. And you can never know if the contact has read the message.

Compare that to Signal that has one chat per contact, seamlessly synced on all devices. The convenience is right there, embedded in the clever key management system.

"And "privacy" is meaningless for stuff mean to be public"

I ABSOLUTELY agree with you. But surely you have your own friends, and you form groups with them. The stuff you say to each other is not public. And if you disagree with that assessment, surely, you don't think every other group of close friends, family etc. have nothing to hide from the rest of the world?

I say, let the public channels be public, I'm not trying to rob you of the enjoyment like millions of crypto currency spam chanels. That stuff doesn't benefit from E2EE. But I say, give us the choice to E2EE small groups, and 1:1 chats regardless of platform.

Why are you opposed to users having technically guaranteed privacy in these contexts?

"If you dont want or need any of that dont use it, its that simple."

The problem in modern society is, we often don't really have such choice. I can't go tell hundreds of contacts, let alone hundreds of millions of people explicitly everything I know. The ones I've told have been absolutely horrified to learn Telegram is not nearly as private as they've previously thought. And everyone has thought Telegram is right there, next to Signal. So kudos to Telegram marketing team. If only the engineers were able to actually deliver privacy tech that matches the public's perception.

>The choice is choosing between another app entirely, not from within options in Telegram.

Thats exactly what you should do. Telegram is not the tool/service that does what you want. It just as much not what you want like Skype isn't what you want and MS Paint is probably also not what you want. Any and all criticism is pointless there is nothing wrong with these tools they just dont do what you wish them to. Leave them to the people who actually want the features that Telegram/Skype/Paint or any other tool provides.