Collaborating with Xitter is not the most distasteful thing Telegram has done. Its marketing model has been to consistently lie to people about being encrypted when that's only true in very limited cases. It has also catered to criminals by attempting to make it difficult to comply with legal demands for information, while holding that information for its own purposes.

Signal, on the other hand is always encrypted and does its best to hold as little information about users as possible.

Also I don’t think it’s worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.

What is there to learn? Every popular messaging app has pretty much the same UI.

there's no learning curve with Signal, it's almost exactly like whatsapp.

Can you use signal?

I'd take Telegram over WhatsApp as I find Telegram, ignoring privacy concerns, is an excellent messenger. Much better than WhatsApp

But, Signal's pretty great.

Switch to Signal. It's not like there's anything to learn, the UI isn't all that different from WhatsApp

Telegram was developed by Russians and HQ is in United Arab Emirates. They have always been sketchy af.

I've heard good things about Signal, maybe try that?

If you get rid of Telegran, at least you'd only have one shitty messenger instead of two.

Also I don’t think it’s worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.

My friend, just set up Signal on their phones, put it in place of the Telegram app and watch them not even notice anything changed.

Here’s another comment endorsing Signal.

https://signal.org/

I really distrust telegram. There are some many dark patterns around it and the server is closed source so I'd say the distrust is very well deserved.

I personally avoid telegram for anything sensitive or personal. Because there is no end to end encryption. You should move to Signal.

If you care about these things best would be to use a chat application like Jami which won't end up like WhatsApp.

Despite being in the hands of the zuck, whatsapp is more private and secure than telegram, and not because of any collaboration with X/twitter, it's been that way forever... so go ahead and use it (but if you can, signal is even better on that front).

Threema. And don’t forget, real privacy and security, with centralized services, is never free. The app is tested by third party and is open source. And, you don’t have to share your phone number, unlike with Signal.