That’s a valuable Idea. If I force them to use the secret chats option, then they maybe notice that Telegram is worthless without all the flashy stuff and is not private at all. And it’s at least a step forward into the right direction.

I don’t think WhatsApp is a good option. Their clients are not Open Source, so it’s unknown if they really implement all the privacy features of the Signal client. Also, Facebook and WhatsApp are known to collect every single bit of Metadata they can get, it’s really bad. I wouldn’t touch it again, under any circumstances. I’m glad that nobody I know uses it, at least inside my circle of friends. Some still use it for outside connections or family members.

And they have some weird crypto scams running in the background as well.

I know, but their server doesn’t. And since everyone uses it without the secret chats feature, they could read every message we exchange.