E(nd to end)ncryption is off by default, that's not an opinion. Gmail (afaik) doesn't have that at all, so saying it's off in Gmail by default is weird. It's not the same thing. (It's like saying a car's radio is off by default versus a bicycle's (non-existent) radio.)
Anyway, I guess that's just semantics. We both understand what is the case, whether you like calling it a default setting or "just not encrypted". I do fully agree that Telegram is shady because it's just a money sink, and that WhatsApp had a great profit model (pre-Facebook of course). I did the math once (though that was just messages, not media) and a euro a year (times a few hundred million users, back then) was plenty to support a chat system with only a few developers as employees. If Telegram would adopt the same profit model, that would be great.
> encryption being off by default and only available on a few clients and not synchronizing between different encryption-supporting clients
This more than implies that Telegram sends messages in plaintext.
Which isn't true.
In your reply now you prove that you are aware of this with this little sentence at the start:
> E(nd to end)ncryption is off by default, that's not an opinion.
E2E encryption is of course better than other forms of encryption but writing in a way that makes people think that something sends data as plaintext instead of encrypted is not acceptable at all IMO.
Edit:
You are also misquoting me:
> Anyway, I guess that's just semantics. We both understand what is the case, whether you like calling it a default setting or "just not encrypted"
That's not what I call it.
I call it encrypted.
The secret chats option I call end-to-end encrypted.
Alright, you got me, I said encrypted instead of end to end encrypted. I did not think it was necessary to specify that level of detail, given that everything is encrypted-to-the-server these days. I see what you mean, there is indeed a difference, but it feels to me like you're trying to trap me on words for the sole reason of being to say that you're right and I'm wrong about something.
> I see what you mean, there is indeed a difference, but it feels to me like you're trying to trap me on words for no reason.
I'm honest, my contact details is in also in my profile like you have in yours, and I'm not trying to trap you on technicalities of the language, but I think we should be very precise about what we mean.
Either communication is cleartext or it is encrypted.
If it is encrypted it is either end-to-end encrypted or it is not.
A number of people keeps repeating this idea that Telegram is not encrypted and while you obviously know the difference we shouldn't continue confusing those who don't.
It would be a shame if someone went with something even less secure because I keep trash-talking Whatsapp and others keep trash-talking Telegram. (I fortunately don't hear many trash-talking Signal, but it doesn't have enough marketshare here to matter yet.)
Anyway, I guess that's just semantics. We both understand what is the case, whether you like calling it a default setting or "just not encrypted". I do fully agree that Telegram is shady because it's just a money sink, and that WhatsApp had a great profit model (pre-Facebook of course). I did the math once (though that was just messages, not media) and a euro a year (times a few hundred million users, back then) was plenty to support a chat system with only a few developers as employees. If Telegram would adopt the same profit model, that would be great.