I’m from Mexico, and the most used chat application is WhatsApp. It’s used for EVERYTHING. I use Telegram only for contacting my family members (both my parents and my brother). They also use it only for this family chat. All my (and their) contacts use WhatsApp instead.
Now with the news that Telegram will collaborate with Twitter, I feel that I should delete it. Not that Zuck is any better than Musk, but still…
Also I don’t think it’s worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
but how to find groups?
For public groups you probably want something like Matrix.org instead. Also open source, also supports E2E encryption
There’s a search bar which will filter your conversations, and you can create a new group with new message (pen icon) ->new group