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Headline is terrible. The big red flags are that they don’t do end-to-end encryption by default, the servers are in Dubai, and use a proprietary algorithm.
Last part should be clarified further. They didn’t reinvent AES or anything. It’s more like a protocol that puts together existing algorithms. It means they can use transport layers without TLS or anything else that wraps your messages in crypto otherwise.
https://core.telegram.org/mtproto
I’d still say this is a red flag. How you wrap encryption around your messages has several pits you can fall into. It’s not as bad as reinventing AES, though.
TLS already has quantum-hardened algorithms in it.