Edit: I found this [1] table that hopefully simplifies things, I'll see if that works out.

[1]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.8/client-server-api/#mroommember

With federated systems, notifications are a big problem on iOS because the apps don't actually get to run in the background in the traditional sense. They can periodically "refresh", or they can be opened by a user, or they can be woken up by a notification. Notifications can only come from Apple, and can only come via Apple from the app's developer.

Even selfhosted Mattermost pushes notifications to users via the Mattermost organization's centralized APNS notification proxy. It's an annoying form of phone-home, and I think it may even leak message content to the publisher (because the notifications can contain message data).

If you self-host an XMPP server, you can't get realtime notifications of messages on iOS unless you have the app actively open and foregrounded so the app itself can maintain a connection to the server. The moment (or, actually, 15-20 seconds later) you lock your device, poof goes the connection.

XMPP is not end to end encrypted, and is a dying (and weird) protocol. If you're going to selfhost anything, Matrix (via dendrite or synapse or whatever the current state of the art is) is probably the correct answer.

Content can be priced manually by region and currency, falling back to current exchange rate to seller's selected currency. (Of course, more dynamic pricing is possible, but that also has its own ethical issues to be careful of.)

Really, telegram is being naked for 99% of the time, with an optional clothes feature that is limited and mobile only. Whereas signal is fully dressed, all the time.

Signal is 100% encrypted, all groups encrypted, all messages encrypted, all contacts encrypted. The vendor knows when your registered… that is all.

Of course people who don’t understand the sheer dystopia of cleartext coms and visible social graphs — They will say “when I need them “ I will encrypt. No, you must encrypt all the time. Messages must be indistinguishable. You don’t just encrypt the sensitive stuff, you should encrypt everything!

In other words, you want your chats with news and memes E2E by default, so when you chat about something sensitive you a) don't have to do anything, b) won't forget about it until it's too late and c) won't give away the fact that this particular conversation suddenly went private.

Telegram management is weirdly stubborn af in this regard. Which could be either "we know better" syndrome, simple ignorance, or even malice. They, however, undeniably know their ways with UX and marketing, so, once again, as in an old Russian proverb, we end up with a barrel of honey, with a spoonful of tar - the nicest-looking but crappily implemented tech always wins.

In my case it is not rare to prefer my conversations not to be stored in plaintext on someone else's computer

That's why I put Russian in quote marks :)

Yeah, I get the reply was meant to be punny.