I never replied as you simply restated plainly obvious information about Telegram. I'm intimately familiar with, and would not trust Bruce Schneier. It's not my first day in cryptography.
What you've counterpointed doesn't exactly negate what I said. There are no Belarus state controlled or regionally located Telegram servers. I fully understand and take that risk that server side code is manipulable, and I also fully know they are able to edit open conversations from the server and this has been done. Still a better alternative to choose a foreign state adversarial network these days and to choose E2E and do as best you can to use a throwaway number than to choose something that's been gamed by your own state, for fun and for profit to eavesdrop all conversations out of the gate, or use backdoored WhatsApp. Choose all throwaway, blend in, and don't talk too much.
