Telegram is neither private nor secure. Its not encrypted bu default. Normal texts as well as group chat is stored unencrypted on its servers.
For everyday use with friends, family and work (assuming these folks already have your number), Signal may be the best thing out there as its open source both on server and app levels. Signal is also end to end encrypted (E2EE) with decryption keys stored on device.
For anonymous communications Session and SimpleX may be better as they are both E2EE and doesnt requie a phone number as an identifier.
Just chuck out Whatsapp, Telegram and all the other closed sourced garbage apps.
If you are reffering to Signal then both app and server are open source. Just that the server is centralised.
For community building, try checking out SimpleX. Its open source and has an interesting take on anonynity. Plus it doesnt require phone numbers to create a user identity.
As for either being censorship resistant, I am unsure how we'll they'd cope. But my guess is they would perform just fine in most scenarios.
Telegram is neither private nor secure. Its not encrypted bu default. Normal texts as well as group chat is stored unencrypted on its servers.
For everyday use with friends, family and work (assuming these folks already have your number), Signal may be the best thing out there as its open source both on server and app levels. Signal is also end to end encrypted (E2EE) with decryption keys stored on device.
For anonymous communications Session and SimpleX may be better as they are both E2EE and doesnt requie a phone number as an identifier.
Just chuck out Whatsapp, Telegram and all the other closed sourced garbage apps.