Telegram

A messenger.

Anti-Features / Problems:

• Surveillance

  Surveillance, also presented sometimes to the user as Telemetry, Analytics or Targeted Advertising - is a feature of collecting personal information, or information about the use of the software by the company that provided the software. Or sometimes even, by a third party like Google Analytics or ID.me. The company may try to justify such a malicious behavior by pointing the user on the immediate benefits of the surveillance. Like: "You will get ads specifically chosen for you". This is just a tactic to ease the fact that you are being watched. More about surveillance you can see on GNU.ORG/MALWARE.

• Requires a Cell-Phone

  Mobile phones are not software but they have inherent anti-features which made a lot of people avoid them like fire. For example, the way mobile phones connect to the mobile network, through towers, by design, makes it a surveillance system. And the SIM card companies keep the data of where the phone goes. Notice how for this surveillance, the software on the phone is irrelevant. It could be Free or it could be Non-Free. Surveillance is done in a different way. So requiring a cell phone is a big issue.

• Some official clients are Non-Free

  Some companies like to lure people into using their software by providing a Free Software client to their service. And then promoting a client which they call "Premium" or "Better" which unfortunately is Non-Free. Sometimes people don't double-check the other offering and believe they run Free Software, when in fact they run Non-Free Software.

• Dependencies on Non-Free Software

  Some features may not work when a specific Non-Free program is not installed on the system. It's usually the case with Android apps which depend on either Google Play Services or Google Maps to be installed. But it could be other things, on other systems too. It could be even a simple fact that the program is only available on a Non-Free operating system. If a program in question is Free, but depends on Non-Free software, there might be a fork ( a different version ) where this dependency is removed, or changed to use something Free instead.

• Non-Free Network

  A lot of software connects to internet servers in order to work. It means that some of the work of this software is done on the server. And not on the user's computer. Meaning, the user looses some control over the computation. The server could be Free Software as well. Meaning, if users don't like something about the server, they can start another one, fixing all their problems. And connect to it instead. But other servers might be proprietary or secret. In this case, you are on the mercy of the server maintainers.