> Interestingly, if you say that Signal's funding is sketchy and it raised some eyebrows, that would be FUD (see sibling comment). But saying the same about Telegram encryption is for some reason perfectly fine and definitely not FUD.

> Shouldn't we have the same standard for all claims?

Huh? Telegram's protocol has been criticized by cryptographers for making specific "odd" cryptographic choices (see See https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/31418/signal-vs-t...). It's not FUD to bring that up.

However, it is FUD to imply something concrete based for vague, indirect reasons.

So you're saying we should have the same standard while literally giving two different types of allegations that are thrown at Signal and Telegram respectively?

We either consider the funding of both and decide how the funding COULD ultimately impact the product, or we could look at the source code of the applications and the cryptographic theory supporting them and talk about that. If crypto experts aren't finding holes in Signal's protocols [1], I don't think random people on the internet yelling "bUt It WaS fUnDeD bY ..." will make it less secure.

[1] https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013