welwala

Honestly, that's not true. Anyone can make a facebook/instagram/whatsapp alternative and the world is full of them. Anyone can even install mastodon and set up their own social network, as America's president has even done: https://www.pcmag.com/news/trumps-social-media-site-quietly-... so it doesn't even require 'software talent'.

What American companies succeeded at was marketing and growth hacking, some of their techniques used are illegal in the EU but they used their network effect of being massive in the US to gain a foothold here. But this has nothing to do with software engineering. Even in the time of facebook's rise Europe was full of competing social networks like hyves.

> Any talent they do have immediately runs for the SF Bay Area of the United States at the first opportunity.

Only those who care about raw salary over everything else. Quality of life, welfare and cost of living is much higher in the EU. The cost of life is huge in silicon valley and that's more a reason why salaries are so high; otherwise people just wouldn't be able to live there.

Edit: I see your edit, yes employers in the US provide free healthcare but only as long as you work there, and you can be fired at any moment and have to pay top dollar suddenly. Not cool when you have a family to support. These are the welfare benefits that make the EU a much more relaxed place to live.

It is just a bit clumsy to use because it offers quite good protections. Because of it, it only works between two people and on one device of each participant. They also must be online at the same time for the key exchange/generation protocol to work. This makes it a hassle and nobody uses it. But what is there does meet the requirements of E2EE even more so than WhatApp or Signal where for example an extra party can be added to an encrypted chat. The police have used this feature to snoop in Germany: https://cybernews.com/privacy/police-telegram-whatsapp-signa...

With Telegram Secret Chats they wouldn't be able to do this. On the other hand, because it's so clumsy nobody uses it and thus people use the much worse off alternative of no E2EE at all in the regular Telegram which the police have also monitored. So it's arguable that whatsapp/signal's compromise was a good one. If you put up too many hurdles in security the people will stop using it.

But I wouldn't call Telegram's secret chats "not real E2EE".

They had a huge moderation centre in the city operated by a company called Telus, which incidentally happened to be located in the iconic Glories tower - formerly Torre Agbar - which is shaped like a huge vibrator. I always thought it was ironic that Meta towered over the city's skyline like a huge dick. In fairness they had no hand in its construction (it was made by the water company) and they only rented some of its floors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_Gl%C3%B2ries

But one day to the next they fired all the more than 2000 moderators in search of cheaper pastures like Colombia. They are now being sued for allegedly trying to avoid unionisation and a lawsuit of psychological harm by the moderators: https://www.thelocal.es/20260916/meta-faces-lawsuit-in-spain...

So Barcelona does not love Meta (anymore). I doubt this factors into this but it is a pretty sad coincidence.