There is no e2e encryption, it has access to everything you do, its often said to be an alternative to WhatsApp, but its mostly worse in privacy, WhatsApp has proven encryption at least, and encrypted backups on android, while on apple its basically a back door.
And the explanation up to now is that durov is paying for everything for the faint of heart, which I really don't believe.
Matrix on paper is a good alternative, but its clients are not even close, and I speak as a daily matrix user.
And aren't supported on desktop either, no body uses them, they are severely limited on purpose.
> Source on operational costs?
Telegram saves everything you do on the platform, every message, every picture, every video, every file with no limit. They market it as a feature, on their twitter they often say you can use it as cloud storage.
This absolutely costs more than WhatsApp or signal, which only use servers as relays.
> Dont they have “telegram premium” thing to earn money now?
Its a very recent thing, and it has a very minimal effect, and the previous years didn't just pay for themselves.
It's founder, Durov, is a billionaire and he has quite clearly stated he's bankrolling it but looking for monetisation avenues for Telegram to become self-sufficient - first it was some token scheme that was shutdown by the SEC, now there's Telegram Premium.
And that VK was a company supposedly taken away from Durov. Also, Telegram's early versions bear the striking similarities with VK own products. As if Telegram was developed internally in VK and then spun away as an independent company.
When Navalny's team tried to employ same tactics, RKN was able to ban their app in both appstores in week or so. Same for LinkedIn.
We need Apple/Google to confirm, if they did ever receive the demands to remove Telegram from their app stores. If not, it is a big big red flag.
And the only downside is that RKN will have an even worse reputation... Which already was beyond worse of the worse, so nothing is really lost.