Why You Need to Download Telegram

The dead of the Central Texas summertime gives me just enough solace to write a new piece for LinkedIn, which I have noticeably avoided since the pandemic began.

And today, I want to take the time to step back a moment on what happened with WhatsApp during 2021.?

I used to be a fervent lover of WhatsApp, and I rely on instant messaging for both private and business matters.?

Back in late December 2020, I was spending the year-end with my friends and family in Paris, France. Like all US WhatsApp users, I received the infamous notification about the new terms of use, that I needed to agree upon before the deadline, or else... The tone was no less than sheer blackmailing. Unhinged by any of the blanket GDPR privacy protection laws in place in the EU, Facebook was revealing its true face: We are pawns, they sell our private data relentlessly and they do not give a damn, because they are a monopoly.

When I considered it, compounded with the very long list of "honest mistakes" that Mark Zuckerberg has publicly admitted in the face of all the scandals FB has been involved in, I decided the company was really unloyal to its original values, has sold its soul for money, and I needed to take action: My real problem was WhatsApp, not Facebook app.

I still needed to use WeChat (anyone doing business with China knows there is no way around WeChat), but for WhatsApp's replacement, I needed to find a fix. So, I played with the 2 other main apps: Signal and Telegram. And I chose Telegram on New Year's Eve.

If you do not know yet the complicated story between gigantic, greedy, monopolistic Facebook and free-spirited, 55 employee WhatsApp, please watch this YouTube video in the link. Its conclusion is nothing new, we heard it over and over in the last years: " If you do not pay for the product, you are the product".

So this piece is really for those of you who feel concerned about keeping your privacy and who are willing to act on it as far as instant messaging is concerned.?

Being the lucky father of 2 amazing daughters in their academic years, I do realize that the next generation, as well as Millenials, seem to have mostly accepted to give up their privacy for the benefit of targeted ads on their iPhones and other AI-processed suggestions. Call me old fashion in that regard if you will. But you cannot call me a partisan militant (not for the cause of privacy, and not against Facebook, after all, they have thousands of employees here in Austin!), and you cannot call me biased. I'm only being pragmatic here.

Now, what can be done in practical terms by privacy-conscious users around the globe about instant messaging apps? As clearly explained in the clip, the "network" effect is the fact that enough of your friends are using this or that app, and indeed it entails or limits, therefore incentive or prevents your decision to use either Signal or Telegram. The reality is: There are over half a billion Telegram users already out there, (versus 2 billion WhatsApp users to put things in perspective), and Signal is far behind Telegram. You are 10 times more likely to be able to find any given friend on Telegram than on Signal because this friend already HAS Telegram, not Signal. Telegram has broken through the threshold of the "network effect". Signal is great but it has not and is not likely to reach that level any time soon.?

And yes, in terms of end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp has it by default while you need to tap on a Telegram chat button to activate it. The bottom line is: Telegram is the practical choice, not because it is technically safer or superior, but because it has garnered a massive enough number of users to generate the "network effect". Not Signal. So your strategy, for all privacy concerned users: Download Telegram, and nicely incentivize your friends to use it, one after the other.

A simple goodbye message on WhatsApp mentioning you move to Telegram is a great conversation starter, I tell yah! Tell your friends they do not have to delete WhatsApp, just use Telegram for you. They'll soon discover on their own, once they download Telegram, how many other of their friends are ALREADY on Telegram and that's how they'll use it more and more! Migrating from WhatsApp to Telegram is easy because you recover in Telegram all your conversations and assets from all your previous WhatsApp chats super easily.?

Pavel Durov, Telegram founder (and previously founder of VKontakte, the unashamed and successful Facebook copycat in most Cyrillic-based countries) had first-hand experiences of why privacy matters, and why privacy is critical to our civil societies; he demonstrated that he was ready to lose everything to protect VK users' freedom of speech against Putin. Jan Koum, (co-founder of WhatsApp with Brian Acton) who is a bit older than Pavel, can probably relate, being a Ukrainian American.?

Yes, the same private messaging apps that are used to protect freedom of speech in Iran, Russia, and in too many other countries ruled by autocratic or dictatorial powers, can also be used by terrorists. But please let's put that opinion aside for the moment.?

Telegram can emerge as the dominating platform vs WhatsApp, and why not merge later with Signal: I can see how we would all benefit from that, (and honestly I would be very surprised that this strategy has not already been discussed between Pavel Durov and the Signal foundation) and we will have a GREAT, unique privacy safe haven platform, all of us, away from Facebook and their repetitive data scandals and "honest" mistakes about privacy.?

#deletefacebook.?

Betting on Signal is a loss of time and dilution of the mass effect we can all gain with our combined effort on the current winner. I have used both and, like a lot of users, chose Telegram simply because... I could see a lot more of my friends on it, and that's indeed the key driver for a messaging app. I'm positive that Signal and Telegram can somewhere down the road fuse their efforts, and if you're techie, and you prefer Signal for that reason, choosing Telegram is just an indirect bet on the Signal bits and pieces you love.. but we've got to put all our power behind the most credible global contender and it is clearly Telegram.?

So go for it, and download Telegram, before Apple makes us all reconsider this and pushes us to use iMessage even on Android devices.

https://telegram.org