I dislike the phone number requirement too. Do you disagree with having to use it to register/activate an account or with having to expose it to other people yo

I dislike the phone number requirement too. Do you disagree with having to use it to register/activate an account or with having to expose it to other people you may want to communicate with directly or in groups? For the former, you can use Wire, which allows you to sign up using an email address (from the desktop). It also syncs conversations across devices and is end-to-end encrypted. You can just share your name or username with others for them to find you. For the latter, Telegram uses a phone number for registration/activation, but you can set a username and send that to others (or better, share a https://t.me/<username> https://t.me/<username> link). Anyone who's not in your contacts list would never be able to see your phone number, even if you're in the same group chat. They can use your username to tag you in chats or message you privately. (General commentary about Telegram's encryption is out of scope for the point)