🇲🇩 About a year ago, while I was stuck in Paris, the French intelligence services reached out to me through an intermediary, asking me to help the Moldovan government censor certain Telegram channels ahead of the presidential elections in Moldova.

After reviewing the channels flagged by French (and Moldovan) authorities, we identified a few that clearly violated our rules and removed them. The intermediary then informed me that, in exchange for this cooperation, French intelligence would “say good things” about me to the judge who had ordered my arrest in August last year.

This was unacceptable on several levels. If the agency did in fact approach the judge — it constituted an attempt to interfere in the judicial process. If it did not, and merely claimed to have done so, then it was exploiting my legal situation in France to influence political developments in Eastern Europe — a pattern we have also observed in Romania 🇷🇴

Shortly thereafter, the Telegram team received a second list of so-called “problematic” Moldovan channels. Unlike the first, nearly all of these channels were legitimate and fully compliant with our rules. Their only commonality was that they voiced political positions disliked by the French and Moldovan governments.

We refused to act on this request.

Telegram is committed to freedom of speech and will not remove content for political reasons. I will continue to expose every attempt to pressure Telegram into censoring our platform. Stay tuned. 🤝

The new Telegram update is here — with 12 features added in one month:

💬 E2E Comments & Reactions in Calls
✍️ Notes for Contacts
🎂 Suggested Birthdays
🤖 Threads & Streaming for AI Bots
💡 Bugs & Suggestions Mini App
🎨 New Profile Styles
🎁 Improved Gift UI
🔗 On-chain NFTs on Profiles
🗑 Gift Signature Removal
💧 Liquid Glass Input Field & 🗂️ Tabs

All demos and details 👇
telegram.org/blog/comments-in-video-chats-threads-for-bots

🇪🇺 Telegram sent this message to all its users in France regarding Chat Control. People must know the names of those who try to steal their freedoms:

Today, the European Union nearly banned your right to privacy. It was set to vote on a law that would force apps to scan every private message, turning everyone’s phone into a spying tool.

France led the push for this authoritarian law. Both former and current Interior Ministers, Bruno Retailleau and Laurent Nuñez, supported it. Last March, they declared that police should see French citizens’ private messages (more info here). The Republicans and Macron’s Renaissance group voted for it.

Such measures are supposed to “fight crime”, but their real target is regular people. It wouldn’t stop criminals — they could just use VPNs or special websites to hide. Officials’ and police messages wouldn’t be scanned either, since the law conveniently exempts them from surveillance. Only YOU — ordinary citizens — would face the danger of your private messages and photos being compromised.

Today, we defended privacy: Germany’s sudden stand saved our rights. But freedoms are still threatened. While French leaders push for total access to private messages, the basic rights of French people — and all Europeans — remain in danger.

🕷 Someone made a game about me escaping a French prison — and fighting off all sorts of shady characters along the way. Try it out!

Only on Telegram could independent developers pull this off. The Mini App platform gives them absolute freedom — and the results are wild.

🎃 Happy Halloween!

P. S. I had zero involvement or even knowledge about this before it launched. Respect to the creators!

😋 We’re starting to test new Telegram features such as live-streaming in Stories and auctions for gifts.

🍸 Before we auction gifts from superstars and megacelebrities, we’re testing the auction mechanics with the exclusive 🎁 Telegram Plane gift.

🏆 It will be auctioned in 50 rounds, each distributing 20 Telegram Planes to the top 20 bidders. The first round will last 1 hour, while the remaining 49 rounds will last only 5 minutes each.

🔜 The auction starts in half an hour. Make sure you have the latest version of Telegram installed, otherwise you won’t be able to take part. Good luck! 🍀

A demo of how auctions for rare gifts work 🎈

👉 t.me/auction/TelegramPin

💪 Khabib‘s legendary papakhas — collectibles symbolizing Tradition, Freedom, and Respect — are going on auction on Telegram tomorrow at noon EST (9pm Dubai time).

🌟 As the 29–0 undefeated champion himself puts it:

“Some gifts carry more than value — they carry meaning ☝️”

🏆 Khabib’s gift auction on Telegram is live.

29,000 papakhas dropping across 290 fast 5-minute rounds — 100 unique items in each round. 🎁

t.me/auction/KhabibsPapakha

🐣 It happened. Our decentralized confidential compute network, Cocoon, is live. The first AI requests from users are now being processed by Cocoon with 100% confidentiality. GPU owners are already earning TON. https://cocoon.org is up, with docs and the source code.

🤔 Centralized compute providers such as Amazon and Microsoft act as expensive intermediaries that drive up prices and reduce privacy. Cocoon solves both the economic and confidentiality issues associated with legacy AI compute providers.

🚀 Now we scale. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be onboarding more GPU supply and bringing in more developer demand to Cocoon. Telegram users can expect new AI-related features built on 100% confidentiality. Cocoon will bring control and privacy back where they belong — with users. 🤖