[elastolin]

> ~1$/month, I don't do anything heavy, text messaging only

Won't work. The vast majority people don't pay for messaging service, and without people, there's no messaging app. Ads are the only way forward.

Will they offer an optional ad-free subscription? Maybe, but I wouldn't count on that, and it's likely to be higher than $1/month.

> So, the day I get ads in Telegram I'm leaving

Nobody cares.

[qwerty456127]

> Nobody cares

I have stimulated many people to switch to Telegram because it is the best and all you have is to try it, realize that and motivate your friends to switch with you. Obviously many of these people will go with me once I find a better alternative. The situation probably is the same for many other people.

[skinnymuch]

Nobody cares is an exaggeration, but correct spiritual point for the grandstanding a minority of HN users make about always leaving X or Y or never joining Z because of situations like you mentioned. Yet nothing actually changes in the real word because of how much of a niche minority these people are.

[elastolin]

> Obviously many of these people will go with me once I find a better alternative.

People will go only if there's another service that's good enough and has enough user density. You may find the best privacy-oriented, ad-free messaging app, but if it's empty or if it's hard to use, it's essentially useless.

By this point, it's hard to compete with the behemoths like WhatsApp or Telegram and people will not care about this nearly as much as you do. So, no, it's not 'obvious' at all.