Telegram starts to look like a super app, echoing WeChat

Signal has Stories too, tbh. All apps are beginning to integrate them. Still, they suck.
The worst thing about Telegram was and still is that End to End encryption is a special add on feature and not the default. Group chats aren't secure either. The only reason why Telegram is used as more secure for illegal activities is that it does not cooperate with law enforcement well and has its HQ in Dubai. That does not prevent any hacks or leaks tho.

100% agree. Plus the random cryptocurrency thing.

Sounds like it’s time for me to start investigating a move to a different cross-platform chat app. The enshitification continues.

You are not wrong, but I feel that the way that so many users have stayed active on Twitter despite all the controversies under Musk proves that a non-authoritarian audience can potentially sleepwalk itself into a super-app with a mixture of user complacency, shortsightedness, and unwillingness to deal with even a bit of inconvenience to support a competitor.
It's a really small chance, but I think that it is there.

I use and love Telegram. I use almost all of its features. All of its clients are open source. It has an incredible API for writing bots (which I also do). Their desktop Linux app is native! When I'm traveling I use Stories to share the experience with friends and family. I love the new topics to separate group discussions. It's the one app I've been able to onboard absolutely everyone to. I was never able to do the same when I tried to with Matrix and you only get so many chances before people stop moving.

What is crufty garbage to you?

Matrix is looking a lot better moving forward.

Especially that their clients are becoming usable even without limiting yourself in how many rooms have you joined.

but some features like stories can't be disabled at all,

That's worrying. Hopefully the FOSS fork will add a toggle for it, or a new fork will appear

What 3rd party app would you recommend to use telegram? I'm getting really annoyed by the stories thing at the top.

It's a good chat app overall. You just have to treat it like sms and assume there's no real privacy.

Also, they're very generous with file transfer size. It makes shifting things between people so much easier.

In other words, it's the features rather than the supposed privacy. If I want privacy, there's way better options, same for security. But those options suck with some of the more useful things at times.

Mind you, if they keep going with this shit, it'll be so bloated that it'll cease to be a good pick for the stuff I use it for, but there are actually plenty of users that are hyped about the shit whatsapp is doing, and the same goes for telegram.

It treats desktop clients as first-class citizens. That's a huge, huge advantage over Whatsapp, for me.

My colleague likes it and use it all the time. He doesn't really care about privacy and he often brings up cool features telegram has, like simple photo/video editor, shrink tool for media, newsfeed, etc. Which all seems quite polished and very usable. If only it wasn't such a mess in its core.