Yeah, I think this is more likely to be the case. People who don't understand encryption but used Signal as their SMS messenger were at least getting opportunistic encryption with any of their contacts who were using Signal. Now they'll probably just uninstall it (like every iOS Signal user I've ever known).
A few years ago I would have agreed, but right now Signal is doing just fine taking users from WhatsApp (FB TOS changes + ads + social group analysis)and Telegram (sketchy non-e2ee, Russian owned, based in the middle east).
Weird, I am in the southeast U.S. and telegram is eating signal's lunch in the social networks here.
It’s a big pie, they’re also fairly different. And to be honest it’s only a matter of time before Telegram has a (public) security incident that drives much more people to E2EE messaging.
I'm curious how long it will be before that public incident - they rolled their own cryptography right? With that, I would imagine that if it hasn't been pwned yet, then there would be a disproportionate amount of people trying to break it.
Rolled their own and off by default.
What people are concerned enough about a Terms of Service change to leave Whatsapp, but struggle with the unlocked icon next to "Insecure SMS" in Signal?
What people know that Telegram isn't end-to-end encrypted, but think SMS is?