How do notifications work in the official Telegram Android app (Play Store vs Site version maybe)? Does it have the same mechanism as Signal, which only recognizes the presence of notifications via Google services, but sends them via its web socket service?
Signal does not use google if it is not available, so no. If you think about privacy, stop using apps like Telegram and please stop using google services
I still want to communicate with normal, normal people, play normal games. i don’t want to put myself in complete isolation from the world, so i can’t throw away google services yet).
Normal people do care about their privacy, they just don’t know enough about tech to understand what services to use—which is why they trust the surface level privacy marketing from Apple. But if you are someone that does understand the tech, then you should feel empowered to help these folks out on their messaging front. If you host it & give them accounts, many come. You could set up an XMPP server for messaging & a Mumble server for voice coms & folks will be happy to chat with you regardless. My longer-term experience is folks are happy wdth how much lighter weight these 10±year-old technologies are that they start to prefer it.
Youd be surprised how little its actually needed. I’ve been free for about a year now, some games complain about not having it but then work anyway.
I’ve been using microG for about a year, but there have been problems here and there with games and apps. and accordingly, I realize how many apps need Google services (especially notifications). so for now, through Root rights and App Ops, I’ve just restricted Google services access to the camera/microphone etc. this is an acceptable compromise for me.