Sorry, no. Although Telegrams has encryption it's by default Client-Server, you have to explicitly start a secret chat with individual people. Additionally group chats are not encrypted except between client and server.
I'm not sure of a good alternative as simple as Signal
By default it's not e2ee, but this makes the distributed app model sooo much more user friendly. All your history is instantly available on the web client for example. Try that with Signal. The web client works if your phone is out of battery. Try that with WhatsApp.
But I don't want my entire history to be available on a website? Who would even want that, what's the use case? Who looks at their months or years old messages?
If my message is over two weeks old, I'd prefer it not to be on anyone's server. I can keep a local backup if I wish to do so.
Then you're not a person who values their message history. That's OK, you do you but there's many users out there, myself included who deeply value a searchable index of their chats from all time. I use it as a Memex or outboard brain I can tag and search. It's been in invaluable to digging up old quotes, pics, links, ebooks, etc. I wanted to re-surface either to share to someone else than the original recipient or for my own reference. Because you can search by broad types, it's doubly easy to find that archived data.
The problem isn't the message log itself, it's the fact you pay for the privilege of having the cloud backup of conversation history, by giving that history to Telegram as a company.
It doesn't have to be this way, as WA's planned feature of client-side encrypted cloud backups[1] shows, disproving Durov's implied claim that Telegram must have access to messages to provide such feature.
And Win/Linux desktop chats are groups are not E2EE even if you want, so it's not just about it not being default, it's about the complete lack of E2EE for those.
"but this makes the distributed app model sooo much more user friendly."
It does not. It forces you to either drop E2EE, or whip out your phone hundreds of times a day.
"All your history is instantly available on the web client for example."
You obviously can't because a) it's a security risk as per above and b) you don't need to as you can have native Signal client on your phone and your laptop and your desktop. Try having just one E2EE chat with Telegram across all three devices. You can't, even if you want to.
"The web client works if your phone is out of battery. Try that with WhatsApp."
Yeah, WA's system is shit, but at least they're working on a native desktop client (that also works on tablets), and that too, will feature E2EE for everything. Can't say that for Telegram.
