It’s interesting, out of Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, SMS it just seems to be Telegram that I get any scammers on these days. Messenger (Facebook) used to have them too but haven’t got any messages in a year or so.
I’m ok with the folks really in to Telegram managing these risks for themselves. They tend to be bootstrap pullers-upper-by so they shoule be just fine
Imo, it is a kind of trade-off between speech of freedom and easy automation/integration and all this spam. I’m ok with it, just a couple of marks in settings (like only my contacts can send me messages). If one wants to have a spam-free space, they can go to Facebook Messages or something like this. I can not imagine how Telegram can fight all this spam without hiring a lot of moderators like Facebook. Even to hire moderators, Telegram needs to change the business model and start selling user data for advertising.
Maybe my opinion is biased. But in Russia where I was living until the beginning of 2022, only in Telegram you was able to find channels on independent media and bots, like “smart vote” (the project of russian opposition about coordinate voting against ruling party). And I understand that if opposition leader can easily create bot that would be very hard to block, then anyone, including spammer, can easily create such a bot that would be very hard to block. That is the reason why I still like Tg and thier approach to the business, when they allow almost everything to almost everyone on their platform.
OP was clearly referring to speech of freedom though, not freedom of speech as described in the 1st amendment. Speech of freedom is a stricter subcategory relating to remarks about your freedom or perceived freedom, and is generally allowed per the TOCs of most popular online platforms today where truth claims are permitted.
It’s not very convenient to use “safely” (for a grandma with nothing to hide, not for a usual person) even only for DMs, phone number requirement and channels and massive group chats and sponsored ads make it kinda dangerous.
Telegram is crap. It’s as “free” as WhatsApp, technically inferior, has unfounded pretense at being somehow connected to privacy, and its owners are no less malicious than Facebook.
Now for a targeted professional attack it doesn’t matter much what you use, they’ll likely still succeed.
I much prefer XMPP to Matrix, but if there’s a choice between Matrix and TG, it’ll be Matrix 100%.
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