I wrote a detailed post explaining why Telegram sometimes has to take unusual actions in content moderation, such as following the policies of Google and Apple when they suspended a voting app last week.

TLDR; Had the position of Apple and Google been different, we could have avoided complying with a local law that prescribed content moderation last weekend. However, picking a fight with these two tech companies AND a government at the same time results in an immediate shutdown of Telegram for millions of users. Such wars have a heavy price and should only be started in cases when the requirement of a law is in direct contradiction with human rights.

Telegram gives its users more freedom than any other app. If Telegram has to temporarily remove some content due to a law, it means that other platforms would have removed it long before us.

If you are in the mood for a long read, check out the whole post.

On Telegram, people can publicly express reasonable concerns about vaccines. Large Telegram channels are one of the few remaining places on the Internet where users can raise their voice against the restrictions of their rights, which they feel took place as a result of the anti-Covid measures taken in various countries.

What Telegram does not allow, however, is the distribution of calls for violence via public channels. Inciting violence has been prohibited by the Terms of Service of Telegram since 2015, so we have to take action every time this line is crossed. Yesterday we had to shut down an Italian channel "stopdittatura", which incited subscribers to harm medical doctors and other public officials related to vaccinations. Unfortunately, the channel admins failed to act even after our team warned them about the violation.

We also had to block a similar German public channel "menschenreise_diskussion", which, just like "stopdittatura", had over 40,000 subscribers and actively incited violence against doctors. Such channels violate Telegram's rules, the rules of Apple and Google and also local laws.

It's OK to fight for your rights.
It's not OK to harm other people.

Yesterday Telegram experienced a record increase in user registration and activity.

The daily growth rate of Telegram exceeded the norm by an order of magnitude, and we welcomed over 70 million refugees from other platforms in one day. I am proud of how our team handled the unprecedented growth because Telegram continued to work flawlessly for the vast majority of our users. That said, some users in the Americas may have experienced slower speed than usual as millions of users from these continents rushed to sign up for Telegram at the same time.

I ask our existing users to say hi to their newly arrived friends, help them unpack, and let them know what we have in stock. Make sure they stick around and see why Telegram is light years ahead of the competition.

For the new users I’d like to say this – welcome to Telegram, the largest independent messaging platform. We won’t fail you when others will.

Messages on WhatsApp were left open to potential attackers for years, as detailed in recent leaks about Boldend – a US cyber-warfare startup (more here).

Since the creation of WhatsApp, there's hardly been a moment in which it was secure: every few months researchers uncover a new security issue in the app. I wrote about this in detail 2 years ago (read here if you missed it). Nothing has changed since then.

It would be hard to believe that the technical team of WhatsApp is so consistently incompetent. Telegram, a far more sophisticated app, has never had security issues of such severity.

Happy Solstice! ☀️✨

🎉 Telegram now has over 700 million monthly users.

We have also launched the Premium subnoscription on most devices.

The beauty of Telegram Premium is that if just 2,5-3% of our users sign up for this subnoscription, Telegram will cover its costs, supported purely by its users. This will herald a new, user-centric era in the history of social media services.

Thank you for loving Telegram! We ❤️ you back.

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.