Meanwhile WhatsApp and Signal's privacy model ensures everyone you talk to has your phone number which means they have the ability to make your device buzz at any time of the day and night. It also excludes people who do not have a phone number.

On Telegram, I can be in rando messaging groups of people and have a username rather than a hard-to-change, legacy voice traffic routing number that's widely used for tracking.

The only improvement is if they could get rid of the requirement that you use a phone number to sign up for these services, which is a regression from AIM, MSN, ICQ, IRC and Jabber/XMPP.