WhatsApp seems to have animated stickers, though. I haven't used them, but they're popular.

>My family hates WhatsApp

Wish I had your family. Telegram's new Group voice chat feature (Push to talk) might push them over though.

But why Telegram over Signal?

But why another walled garden and not distributed Matrix?

signal is a messaging app. telegram is a damn nice platform for a lot of stuff, messaging included :)

Privacy excluded.

Yeah, i thought WhatsApp was the shit until I started using Telegram