Here are 50+ great Telegram sticker sets for you. Made by winners of the sticker competition I held earlier this year. ENJOY! 👍

https://telegram.me/addstickers/JeanBaptistePlagouille
https://telegram.me/addstickers/JessAndJack
https://telegram.me/addstickers/BornVillain
https://telegram.me/addstickers/HuskCool
https://telegram.me/addstickers/ThisCat
https://telegram.me/addstickers/BowWow
https://telegram.me/addstickers/AstroKitty
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Dog_Collection
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Orange_Sparrow
https://telegram.me/addstickers/FunnyJerboa
https://telegram.me/addstickers/ArchieDog
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Bunny_Boo
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Albrecht
https://telegram.me/addstickers/LoriBoy
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Zac_the_Pug
https://telegram.me/addstickers/BlueRobots
https://telegram.me/addstickers/UnicornStella
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Goosy
https://telegram.me/addstickers/JoeIsSadTurtle
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Violet_Crabbit
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Lisushka
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Kotey
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Manool
https://telegram.me/addstickers/CrazyDogz
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Spitz
https://telegram.me/addstickers/KokoBoy
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Haley
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Bulljoy
https://telegram.me/addstickers/MouseArnold
https://telegram.me/addstickers/MarseyCat
https://telegram.me/addstickers/RickyPanda
https://telegram.me/addstickers/MisterFrogo
https://telegram.me/addstickers/AudreyGlamour
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Little_Ant
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Tvorozhok
https://telegram.me/addstickers/GusTheDuck
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Racoon_Jessie
https://telegram.me/addstickers/FunnyImps
https://telegram.me/addstickers/USPresidents
https://telegram.me/addstickers/SuperPepe
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Little_Bear
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Vicky
https://telegram.me/addstickers/harry
https://telegram.me/addstickers/theBunny
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Animals
https://telegram.me/addstickers/AlligatorHarold
https://telegram.me/addstickers/ArtistBoy
http://telegram.me/addstickers/Hot_grandpa
https://telegram.me/addstickers/MartyTheBear
https://telegram.me/addstickers/FattyYeti
https://telegram.me/addstickers/Fima_Rooster
https://telegram.me/addstickers/RussianMinds
https://telegram.me/addstickers/FunnyFox

For the past several years, we’ve been fighting the spread of terrorist content on Telegram. We’ve been doing it in a way that is consistent with our values and Privacy Policy. While some pundits quite irresponsibly suggested that absolute privacy and counter-terrorism efforts are mutually exclusive, the success of our regular anti-terror actions prove that this is not the case.

Yesterday Europol recognized our continuous efforts in their statement:

“Telegram is no place for violence, criminal activity and abusers. The company has put forth considerable effort to root out the abusers of the platform by both bolstering its technical capacity in countering malicious content and establishing close partnerships with international organisations such as Europol. 

Thanks to this collaboration, the already-existing content referral tools available to Telegram’s users have been strengthened and expanded. Now, any user is able to refer and classify the content they find inappropriate and violent via the referral feature in public groups and channels. In addition, new technical developments, such as the advanced automated content detection system, continue to strengthen Telegram’s effort in obliterating extremism on the platform even further.”

This follows another Europol report dedicated to the Referral Action Day, in which several tech companies including Telegram took part:

“Whilst Google and Instagram deployed resilience mechanisms across their services, Telegram was the online service provider receiving most of the referral requests during this Action Day. As a result, a significant portion of key actors within the IS network on Telegram was pushed away from the platform. 
 
In the past year and a half, Telegram has also put forth considerable effort to root out the abusers of the platform by both bolstering its technical capacity in countering malicious content and by establishing a close partnership with Europol.”

As I have made clear before, ISIS and their likes will have a hard time on Telegram if they continue to spread their message of violence and hatred. After the ISIS attacks in Europe we have zero tolerance for their propaganda on our platform. At the same time, we’ll continue to defend our users' absolute right to privacy like no other service, proving that you don’t have to sacrifice privacy for security. You can – and should – enjoy both.

In April 2018, Russia’s telecom regulator Roskomnadzor blocked Telegram on the country’s territory. We knew it was coming, so by the time the block went live, we had already upgraded the Telegram apps with support for rotating proxy servers, ways to hide traffic and other anti-censorship tools. We were joined by thousands of Russian engineers that set up their own proxies for Telegram users, forming a decentralised movement called Digital Resistance.

The first week of the ban was challenging, and many of our users in Russia had connection issues. In an attempt to prevent users from accessing Telegram, Roskomnadzor blacklisted millions of IP addresses. However, thanks to Digital Resistance, after May 2018 Telegram became largely accessible in Russia.

As a result, Telegram’s user base in Russia hasn’t decreased – in fact, it has doubled since 2018. In May 2020, out of 400 million monthly active users of Telegram, at least 30 million were from Russia. It means that our growth in Russia has been in line with our growth in other countries. To put it simply, the ban didn’t work.

Last week, Roskomnadzor, which has a new director as of two months ago, decided to reflect reality by announcing that Telegram is no longer blocked in Russia. In their announcement, they referenced my June 4 message where I explained why the ban didn't make much sense.

This change should be welcomed – and I hope it will last. If it doesn’t, however, we hope few users will notice any difference.

Over the course of the last two years, we had to regularly upgrade our “unblocking” technology to stay ahead of the censors. I am proud of what we achieved – it is unique among social media apps.

We don’t want this technology to get rusty and obsolete. That is why we have decided to direct our anti-censorship resources into other places where Telegram is still banned by governments – places like Iran and China. We ask the admins of the former proxy servers for Russian users to focus their efforts on these countries. They should also stand ready for new challenges: as the political situation in the world becomes more unpredictable, more governments may try to block privacy-focused apps like Telegram.

The Digital Resistance movement doesn’t end with last week’s ceasefire in Russia. It is just getting started – and going global.

Apple released a statement saying they didn't want us to take down the 3 channels run by the Belarusian protestors, but just specific posts "disclosing personal information."

This sly wording ignores the fact that channels like @karatelibelarusi and @belarusassholes consist entirely of personal information of violent oppressors and those who helped rig the elections – because that is why those channels exist.

By hiding their demands with vague language, Apple is trying to avoid the responsibility of enforcing their own rules. It is understandable: according to this poll, over 94% of Belarusian users think the channels that made Apple worry should be left alone.

Previously, when removing posts at Apple’s request, Telegram replaced those posts with a notice that cited the exact rule limiting such content for iOS users. However, Apple reached out to us a while ago and said our app is not allowed to show users such notices because they were “irrelevant”.

Similarly, when Facebook wanted to inform its users that 30% of the fees users were paying for online events went to Apple, Apple didn’t let Facebook do it saying this information was (once more) “irrelevant”.

I strongly disagree with Apple’s definition of “irrelevant”. I think the reason certain content was censored or why the price is 30% higher is the opposite of irrelevant.

Apple has the right to be greedy and formalistic (or maybe not – that’s something for the courts and regulators to decide). But it’s time Apple learned to assume responsibility for their policy instead of trying to hide it from users – they deserve to know.

Happy Halloween everyone! 🎃

I hope you liked yesterday’s Telegram update with multi-pins, proximity alerts, playlists and other features.

I just realized I've been using the Android Halloween theme for most of this year, as it goes well with the general mood of 2020.

If you're also on Android, check it out using this link – or choose a similar theme in your Chat Settings among the Dark Theme presets. It works best with the Halloween-inspired side bar, which users of Telegram for Android should be seeing today.

For iOS and Mac, this link should install the Halloween theme.

Do you like this month's trending sticker packs? My personal favorites so far are HalloweenUtya and ShadowKitty (but only because the creator of PepeVampire didn’t come up with enough stickers to get featured).

Feel free to share your favorite Telegram themes and sticker packs in the comments.

Telegram is launching Sponsored Messages – a tool that allows anyone to promote their channels and bots. Here is what you should know:

1. There will be no ads in chats on Telegram. If you use Telegram as the messenger that we launched in 2013 – you will never see a sponsored message. Sponsored messages can't appear in your chat list, private chats or groups.

2. User data will not be used to target ads. As with everything we do, our main priority is protecting the private data of our users. That's why unlike other apps we will not use your private data to display ads.

Sponsored messages on Telegram are shown only in large public one-to-many channels with 1000+ members – and are based solely on the topic of the public channels in which they are shown. This means that no user data is mined or analyzed to display them.

3. Sponsored messages will be unobtrusive. Official sponsored messages are limited to 160 characters of text – without media or external links. You may see a maximum of one sponsored message per channel – and only after you’ve finished reading any new posts.

4. We are fixing ads that are already here. Some admins of one-to-many channels on Telegram already post ads in the form of regular messages. We hope that Sponsored Messages will offer a more user-friendly and less chaotic way for people to promote their channels and bots.

Sponsored messages are currently in test mode and are not available to everyone. Once they are fully launched and allow Telegram to cover its basic costs (such as equipment and data centers that are used by channel admins to deliver their content to our hundreds of millions of users), we plan to start sharing ad revenue with the admins of the channels where Sponsored Messages are displayed – because it is fair.

5. With Telegram you're more ad-free than with WhatsApp. WhatsApp already shares user data with advertisers [1] [2] – even though they don’t show ads themselves. On Telegram, however, advertisers will never get your private data. Besides, if you use Telegram the way you use WhatsApp, you will never see a single ad. Sponsored messages can only appear in channels, which are a unique social networking feature Telegram added several years after launch. If WhatsApp introduces a similar feature, they are likely to also display ads there, like their parent company already does on Instagram and Facebook.

Online ads should no longer be synonymous with the abuse of user privacy. We'd like to redefine how a tech company should operate by setting an example of a self-sustainable platform that respects its users and content creators.

Telegram Web provides an extraordinary experience on desktops, but it also works great on mobile devices. It is prevented, however, from reaching native-app-level quality on iOS, because Apple limits web developers in terms of what they can do on iPhones and iPads.

In April, the developer of Telegram Web shared a 10-point list of issues in the iOS Safari browser that Apple has been unwilling to fix or improve for years (check it here for technical details). Other developers have even complained that Apple's Safari is killing the web.

We suspect that Apple may be intentionally crippling its web apps to force its users to download more native apps where Apple is able to charge its 30% commission (I wrote about why it is harmful here).

Fortunately, regulators have started to realise what is going on. This week, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), a UK regulator, concluded:

"Apple bans alternatives to its own browser engine on its mobile devices; a restriction that is unique to Apple. The CMA is concerned this severely limits the potential for rival browsers to differentiate themselves from Safari (for example, on features such as speed and functionality) and limits Apple’s incentives to invest in its browser engine.

This restriction also seriously inhibits the capability of web apps – apps that run on a browser rather than having to be individually downloaded – depriving consumers and businesses of the full benefits of this innovative technology."

I think it's an accurate summary and hope that regulatory action will follow soon. It's sad that, more than ten years after Steve Job's death, a company that once revolutionized mobile web turned into its most significant roadblock.

I'm really impressed by the success of the auction TON recently conducted for their domain/wallet names. Wallet.ton was sold for 215,250 Toncoin (~$260000) while casino.ton was sold for ~$244000.

If TON has been able to achieve these results, imagine how successful Telegram with its 700 million users could be if we put reserved @ usernames, group and channel links for auction. In addition to millions of catchy t.me addresses like @storm or @royal, all four-letter usernames could be made available for sale (@bank, @club, @game, @gift etc).

This would create a new platform where username holders could transfer them to interested parties in protected deals – with ownership secured on the blockchain via NFT-like smart-contracts. Other elements of the Telegram ecosystem, including channels, stickers or emoji, could later also become part of this marketplace.

When it comes to scalability and speed, TON probably has the best technology to host such decentralized sales. Our team can write bullet-proof smart contracts for TON (since it was us who invented its smart-contract language), so we are inclined to try out TON as the underlying blockchain for our future marketplace.

Let's see if we can add a little bit of Web 3.0 to Telegram in the coming weeks.

The blockchain industry was built on the promise of decentralization, but ended up being concentrated in the hands of a few who began to abuse their power. As a result, a lot of people lost their money when FTX, one of the largest exchanges, went bankrupt.

The solution is clear: blockchain-based projects should go back to their roots – decentralization. Cryptocurrency users should switch to trustless transactions and self-hosted wallets that don't rely on any single third party.

We, developers, should steer the blockchain industry away from centralization by building fast and easy-to-use decentralized applications for the masses. Such projects are finally feasible today.

It took only 5 weeks and 5 people including myself to put together Fragment – a fully decentralized auction platform. We were able to do this because Fragment is based on The Open Network, or TON – a blockchain platform that is fast and efficient enough to host popular applications (unlike Ethereum, which unfortunately remains outdated and expensive even after its recent tweaks).

Fragment has been an amazing success, with 50 million USD worth of usernames sold there in less than a month. This week, Fragment will expand beyond usernames.

Telegram's next step is to build a set of decentralized tools, including non-custodial wallets and decentralized exchanges for millions of people to securely trade and store cryptocurrencies. This way we can fix the wrongs caused by the excessive centralization, which let down hundreds of thousands of cryptocurrency users.

The time when the inefficiencies of legacy platforms justified centralization should be long gone. With technologies like TON reaching their potential, the blockchain industry should be finally able to deliver on its core mission – giving the power back to the people.