First off, I consider no e2e enryption by default a big deal, given even WhatsApp does that. In Telegram it's so inconvenient — "they" obviously don't want you

First off, I consider no e2e enryption by default a big deal, given even WhatsApp does that. In Telegram it's so inconvenient — "they" obviously don't want you to use it. So yeah. But for me all these apps are broken on more fundamental level. First, as somebody else already noted that I'm "confusing security and privacy" let me introduce my custom definition (or rather a trait) of "security" for the sake of this argument: no 3rd party can access any data of mine without explicit permission, unless it's absolutely necessary for the app to work. So any messenger that must use a phone number for a log in without giving me any choice is shit, regardless of whether its crypto is broken or not. Any messenger that can non-locally access all of my contacts without asking me which contacts I agree to share — is shit. Any messenger that won't work without Google Services or cannot be installed without Google Play account — is shit. And so on. That said, Matrix/Riot probably is the only messenger out there that has any chance of becoming not-shitty messenger. But nobody uses it.