Telegram is still at "open a secret chat" with worst UX
But definitely
I switched to Matrix though
There has been a lot of work on it but the smart thing to do would have been to copy Wire or Signal and build on an existing thing if you don't have the manpower to start from scratch and want to be a mainstream alternative.
I'd rather recommend Threema (best UX, not so great in features or encryption tech), Signal (network effect, best privacy, reasonable UX), or Wire (like Signal but slightly better desktop experience).
I started pulling people to it only a few months ago when I thought it was good enough (includes almost no encryption issues happening in all day usage)
My mom uses it as well. It works fine. I had to install the app though, like all the other apps.
The reasons why I found Matrix interesting, were:
- Telegram like syncing messages across all devices while adding a new device is as simple as setting up WhatsApp Web
- It's a standard for interoperability - I got sick of telling others what to use and being told so by the network effect
Copying Wire or Signal just wouldn't work for technical reasons. I also wouldn't want a copy.
I got all of your recommendations over time (including buying Threema with all my friends), but they just haven't been good enough for us and me. In practice, no one cares about Electron. It seldomly VScode or Teams are used at work
What I think you're underappreciating is that Telegram was built on the premise of privacy and they've neglected that from day one. It was better than the status quo on day one (at release), but have fallen further and further behind ever since.
Telegram was launched when Whatsapp sent messages without transport encryption over port 443 (this was fun on public wifi!) and got big when Whatsapp was bought by Facebook because Telegram was independent and had proper end to end encryption (with air quotes around "proper" if you like; it wasn't OTR-grade but at least it was better than the status quo). Since then, nothing happened whatsoever on the privacy front. Even the legal compliance is a complete joke (gdpr data exports only work in a few clients and not very well at that), but more importantly to me, they need gdpr data exports because the servers still know everything. Whatsapp moved on, Signal got a lot more mature, Wire has also come onto the playing field, and Telegram has done nothing since before Snowden told us to turn on https basically.