this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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The second I went to sign up and learned a phone number was absolutely required, I knew that their privacy was pure bullshit. That little declaration at the end here is an absolute slap to the face.
Signal requires that as well. Their privacy is definitely not bullshit. As far as I can tell, it's a spam mitigation method. But yeah, Telegram is pretty much the very bottom of privacy. Even Meta now encrypts all messages across all platforms.
It's bad for privacy no matter how you sell it. Unless you have a good amount of disposable income to buy up burner numbers all the time, a phone number tends to be incredibly identifying. So if a government agency comes along saying "Hey, we know this account sent this message and you have to give us everything you have about this account," for the average person, it doesn't end up being that different than having given them your full id.
Guys like you see privacy as a monolith, that it never is. Unusable privacy is meanigless as email had shown. Privacy of communications does not mean privacy of communicators and usable authentication can be more important then anonymity.
And all this has to be realised on real-world servers, that are always in reach of real world goverment.