> We do have at least some empirical evidence that WhatsApp is properly encrypted

so do we. Telegram's MTProto 2.0 has been audited multiple times by independent researchers, compared to WhatsApp's closed-source claims of E2EE.

I'd rather trust a company with a proven track record of no security incidents and fight for user privacy than a corporation which lies through its teeth time and again.

What is stopping Telegram from signing in as you and reading all of your past messages by changing how the authentication logic is handled for specific targeted users? Not saying they have done this, but they obviously could.

We can agree on the statement "Telegram does not cooperate with law enforcement authorities".

This is however something completely different from and largely orthogonal to "Telegram does not have access to their users' message contents".

The fact that they are consistently claiming the former and the latter makes them seem extremely untrustworthy to me.

Gaining my trust requires truthfulness and transparencies about the capabilities and limits of a service provider's technology (but of course is in no way sufficient).

basing your assurance that whatsapp is secure because meta didn't care about a Brazilian judge misconstrued wiretap request is wild.

It's not really an "assurance". I don't fully trust them. I do trust them a lot more than others that haven't been put on trial.

The point is moot anyway. Everyone in Brazil uses WhatsApp. They will not use anything else. I'd be ostracized if I refused to use it.

> WhatsApp's cryptography has made judges in my country foam at the mouth with rage

Oh wow, they need to get that checked, could be pulmonary edema.