The encryption is often cited as its primary selling point here, but I don't think that's too representative. Certainly it isn't for me and most other Telegram users I know. I don't care much about that as I don't really trust any messaging app enough to send really confidential information through them.

For me, for example, he selling point is having an interface as slick as Whatsapp's, but not being tied to the phone, not having to necessarily give your phone number, sending whatever attachments you want, and getting a searchable log in the cloud.

Bots are also a popular feature with many users.

?

I - and I guess many with me - don't trust the encryption at all.

I assume the crypto might be broken, NSA and FSB and aliens might be listening but I don't care.

My reasons to use it:

Desktop support is way better than Whatsapp.

More possibilities (bots, channels mostly).

And because I don't want to support Whatsapp by being part of the network effect that keeps people on that platform.

The reasons I use private chats sometimes is just to use autodelete to protect my conversations with my wife against my kids.

You should try Wire [1] for multi-device sync and multi-OS use that has all chats encrypted end-to-end (like secret chats). It's not yet on par with the Telegram speed and UX, but it's quite good.

[1]: https://wire.com

I'm confused, how are there no secret chats? I use them all the time from Desktop.. but maybe you mean Windows? I don't recall trying them from Windows - i use the OSX version.

Secret chats on OSX has the same UX as secret chats on my Android client, fwiw.