It isn't strictly speaking better. It has pros and cons compared to other systems just like any other service. You and your messaging partners must decide what trade offs you are willing to make.

Personally Signal is nearly unusable for me (check my posting history for why, this has been coming up a lot recently). I think Telegram has the highest quality UX of any modern IM, yet I still mostly use Facebook Messenger because everyone is on it.

Definitely. Telegram wins all with their UX with a ways sometimes you wouldn't expect from an IM app. Light native apps everywhere is a very big plus too.

I'm aware it is not secure as I would like to but I'm gonna use whatever my friends use anyway.

Most people I know uses about 3 IM apps and they don't bother caring about privacy anyway (by using products of Facebook and Google, where Telegram, despite it's problems is still better choice for privacy).

I hope Telegram resolves issues everyone is concerned about.

Or all my friends switch to Signal.

Or something.

I would argue Telegram is more of a social network than IM, especially with the channels feature. Its successful growth can be attributed to its viral/network features, and certainly not its crypto.

WhatsApp is even better than Telegram.

In terms of UX I beg to differ. Everyone I've been in contact with likes WhatsApp because it's sort of "iMessage for Android" or "Skype, only less worse" and use it mostly because their contacts are using it. The moment they have enough contacts on Telegram they just don't look back and find it a much more pleasant experience.

But it shares all the metadata with Facebook which sucks. Threema and Signal are better in that respect and you loose almost no features.

It shares your full _contacts_ with Facebook.

This doesn't just "suck", it's completely unacceptable.

While bad I think it's worse that the location available through your IP is available to facebook. Further they can guess with which contacts you work with, are good or not so good friends with. And it will be kept forever at Facebook and at companies like Cambridge Analytica.

How do you think Telegram plans to monetize? I realize they had an ICO that raised $850M, but that is not a sustainable revenue mechanism in and of itself.

Until you try to install it on your tablet and finding out you can't use it there.