Whenever I glance at darknet forums, people there always use Telegram for instant messaging. This seems like a strange choice for their use case, considering that Telegram is neither secure nor private[1], being centralized with Russia-controlled servers[2], phone number registration, no encryption for personal chats by default in mobile client and no encryption at all in desktop client[3], etc.
So why do they use Telegram instead of actually secure and private alternatives, like Delta Chat, XMPP+OMEMO, etc.?
Over a billion users, and very popular in old eastern bloc countries already.
Yes central control, and controlled by people who don’t have the most robust encryption or opsec (CEO house arrest in France for example)… But over time they have demonstrated they don’t care too much about most low level crimes.
So it’s in the sweet spot of good enough and convenient but not great and not perfect