I really wish there was a Telegram like Matrix - esp. Hell, Telegram and Signal both have open source apps (in fact I can make my own in case of Telegram but in case of Signal - naah!) and they both essentially have closed source servers (even if you discount that for a centralized service you don't know what's on the server). It's centralized - a catastrophe waiting to happen (oh wait, a technical one just happened).
(As you've pointed out) Dev model of their server code is very much questionable and for an app that is "Signal", this thing has no reason, no excuse - it's either there in the open, regularly, and latest, or it's not. After a while I literally gave up on trying to make sense of their feature/dev priority and delivery.
It's headed literally by a benevolent dictator, and boy he does benevolent dictator. Having said that Signal does and have always made me very uncomfortable: Because I am pissed and as someone who deleted Fb, Instagram 6-7 years ago, I just don't want to accept that T&C even though I know Fb may get my data or would track me by using other means anyway. Come 6-7 Feb, and I am deleting my WhatsApp account. Besides their apps are a couple of hundred kilometres ahead of others including WhatsApp. Telegram is perfect for casual groups like the ones which form off places like subreddits - e.g. So yeah it had to be Signal because no one was going to move to Wire or Threema. So much that for my recreational and token FOSS IM usage (because for mainstream conversation in my country it all has moved to WhatsApp) with select friends I made it a point to request/convince them to use Matrix.īut when this WhatsApp T&C thingie happened I had to make a choice and ask all my friends and important IM contacts to move to Signal because let's face it Matrix is simply not usable for the average user as of now and I guess they will take forever to figure out Signal/WhatsApp and Slack/IRC/Zoom are not two different types of animals but are aliens to each other, especially from an end user's UX expectation point of view. For the last few years I have always rooted (or rather I hoped) for Matrix/Riot->Element.