Dmitry Demenchuk

I don't like Telegram. Not because it's completely terrible, but because it has this weird reputation as the perfect, secure messenger, and I honestly don't get it.

• Basic features work poorly. Telegram has channels, bots, payments, integrations, Stories, crypto and all kinds of social shit, but somehow basic audio and video calls are still bad. Calls often have huge delays, and during video calls Telegram keeps using the earpiece instead of the speakerphone, so I have to hold the phone to my ear. Which kind of defeats the whole point of a video call.

• Telegram's famous security is mostly bullshit in normal use Regular Telegram chats don't use end-to-end encryption. For E2E you have to specifically create a Secret Chat. For me, this completely defeats the purpose. I don't need encryption for underground activity — I need it for everyday life: photos of my kids, passports, documents, personal messages, and all the mundane private stuff. WhatsApp has E2E on by default — an ordinary person doesn't need to think about how it works.

• Multi-device sync is a side effect of a compromise. Telegram's cross-device history sync is convenient, but only because regular conversations are stored in Telegram's cloud and aren't E2E encrypted. Secret Chats don't sync freely across devices. So the argument "at least Telegram works properly on all your devices" isn't a free win — it's paid for with the security model.

• They even managed to monetise emoji. The free sticker set is never enough, and a huge chunk of reactions and emoji are locked behind Premium.

  

• Spam and scam. Bots and strangers regularly message me trying to sell something or run a scam. And there is no way to protect from it, unless buying Premium.

  

• I don't need a "superapp". Payments, public channels, business integrations, Stories, crypto, and more are gradually turning Telegram from a messenger into some kind of super-app monster. Maybe some people want that. I don't. I want a messenger to be really good at messaging.

• Channels are painful to follow. A large Telegram channel or group is an endless firehose. If you go a few days without checking in, you come back to thousands of messages with no way to know what was actually worth reading. For large communities, a forum model like Reddit makes far more sense: topics, threads, discussion, voting — not one infinite stream.

• Bots are one of the few things I genuinely like. Telegram's Bot API is actually quite good. You can use it as a simple interface for home automation — send a command to a bot and toggle something on, check a status, or kick off a job.

• And then there's the Telegram cult. Some people use Telegram exclusively and refuse to install anything else. The result: I end up having to install Telegram just to talk to them. I especially don't understand this fanatical loyalty — when you dig into the specific advantages, most of them turn out to be either compromises or features I don't need at all.

In the end, Telegram is a very functional platform and a fairly mediocre messenger. It has a million features, but the things I consider essential for personal communication — are somehow the parts it does worst.