Yes this is a Telegram client and yes it will break the Lemmy’s downvote world record but I still find this one very nice and “actively” maintained. There are not many good Telegram FOSS forks without Google integrations and similar stuff out there.
That would require the other user to use the same app as you right? Could be interesting.
because Telegram’s UI/UX is second to none; possibly iMessage or whatever it’s called is close, albeit with way limited functionality. Signal and friends look like a PoC from 2015 in comparison. also the apps, on mobile and on desktop, have a low memory footprint with no bloated electron crap, the cross-device sync is phenomenal and there’s the virtually unlimited cloud storage. if an addon could piggyback off of that, that would be spectacular.
however, OP’s insight as to this being against ToS is obviously a deal breaker. seeing as how they’re adamant about leaving all your shit unencrypted in the cloud I’m looking for other havens, begrudgingly; I’ve been a user from the early days.
The options are basically:
Matrix if you want a Discord-like experience
XMPP if you want a whatsapp/google talk like experience (both of those are based on XMPP)
Signal if you want hyper-secure chat and don’t mind some mild inconveniences in things like registration or desktop apps.
All three support or can support E2EE.
well yeah, just a simple private/public key solution for encrypting chat and cloud. transfer your private key to a forked desktop app and access your encrypted chat history from there as well.
just basic stuff, not something for people running from nation-state actors, but to prevent LLM ingestion and mass surveilance. but OP says that’s against Telegram’s ToS, so no dice here.