“Telegram is not a private messenger. There’s nothing private about it. It’s the opposite. It’s a cloud messenger where every message you’ve ever sent or received is in plain text in a database that Telegram the organization controls and has access to it”
“It’s like a Russian oligarch starting an unencrypted version of WhatsApp, a pixel for pixel clone of WhatsApp. That should be kind of a difficult brand to operate. Somehow, they’ve done a really amazing job of convincing the whole world that this is an encrypted messaging app and that the founder is some kind of Russian dissident, even though he goes there once a month, the whole team lives in Russia, and their families are there.”
" What happened in France is they just chose not to respond to the subpoena. So that’s in violation of the law. And, he gets arrested in France, right? And everyone’s like, oh, France. But I think the key point is they have the data, like they can respond to the subpoenas where as Signal, for instance, doesn’t have access to the data and couldn’t respond to that same request. To me it’s very obvious that Russia would’ve had a much less polite version of that conversation with Pavel Durov and the telegram team before this moment"
Remember how Telegram said they would stop providing Chinese authorities with user data during the Hong Kong protests. Implying that they were doing it at some stage.
Also remember how the FBI have said in several leaked documents they hate signal because the only data they get is when the user signed up and the last time they were online, nothing else.
Which app would you rather use?
Random mention of Matrix because I feel i should
Nothing federated is private, mind. Even with E2EE on in private rooms for specific messages, Matrix still relies on a constant information feed during use that can be used to deduce who is messaging whom and when, even if the content of the message itself is encrypted.
Yeah with a lot of research they may be able to figure out that semi-anoymous account messages semi-anoymous account at this time. But have no idea what was sent.
What, are you talking about? “Information feed”? Where? By whom?
E2E encrypted messages in Matrix contain more user metadata than alternatives like SimpleX, nothing scary but a MitM is able to see origin points, destinations, and times of messages. Server to server, if you’re using E2E encryption, it relies on trust that the other server is not compromised.
And it seems Matrix.org is not the best at security disclosures: https://soatok.blog/2026/02/17/cryptographic-issues-in-matrixs-rust-library-vodozemac/#matrix-response
I agree, metadata collection and the obligatory matrix.org server are the biggest problems for privacy, but I don’t think you made that clear in your comment.
inb4 matrix fanatics say you are wrong and spreading false info
Remember when they arrested the creator of Telegram and forced him to hand over chat logs? Yeah, nothing to see here 🙈
how much data do the FBI get from telegram? do you think the russian owner (who got arrested in france for refusing to make changes demanded of him by glowing authorities) is very likely to give any of your info over to american 3 letter agencies?
I think it probably doesn’t matter what he wants, it only matters that the data exists at all. If the owner is not giving permission, that’s one thing. But I’m inclined to believe that those American 3-letter agencies aren’t the sort to ask permission.
All it takes is one disgruntled systems engineer who thinks they don’t get paid enough. An agency comes knocking with a sizable offer of cash, and they’ll get the backdoor they want.