Whenever I glance at darknet forums, people there always use Telegram for instant messaging. This seems like a strange choice for their use case, considering that Telegram is neither secure nor private[1], being centralized with Russia-controlled servers[2], phone number registration, no encryption for personal chats by default in mobile client and no encryption at all in desktop client[3], etc.
So why do they use Telegram instead of actually secure and private alternatives, like Delta Chat, XMPP+OMEMO, etc.?
this is probably the actual reason.
telegram doesn’t give a flying fuck about anything that happens in the app, and refuses to moderate much of anything i’m aware of.
paired with the popularity and familiarity people have with it, it makes for a perfect platform provided the cybercriminals take their opsec seriously.