The application "Telegram" has nearly 900 million users and is expected to pass 1 billion users by the end of the year. At least such are the expectations of its co-founder Pavel Durov, notes France Press. In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson in April, Durov added that people value the independence of the "Telegram" platform, as well as the fact that it respects their privacy and freedom.
Some channels in "Telegram", created in 2013, have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, such as the Russian channel "Ribar" or the Ukrainian channel "Deep State". This partly explains the success of "Telegram" from the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022
But at "Telegram" users have to manually enable encryption, making it an insecure app, said Stephanie Liu, a privacy expert at consulting firm Forrester.
According to Damien Bankal, cyber security expert and author of the specialized blog "Zataz", "Telegram" is also a platform used for illegal activity. There, for example, cyber pirates can resell stolen data in it.
And with its discussion groups that can host up to 200,000 people, "Telegram" is also accused of spreading false information and hate speech, neo-Nazi, pedophile, conspiratorial and terrorist content, notes France Press.
In an interview with "Financial Times" in March, Durov stated that he plans to improve the content moderation mechanisms in "Telegram" this year, particularly through artificial intelligence. "But if the content doesn't cross the red lines, I don't think we should be policing how people express themselves," he added.
In the past, Durov has said that the idea of "Telegram" came to his mind after being pressured in his native Russia. He says that he developed "Telegram" while traveling. He tried to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore, San Francisco. Finally, in 2017, he chose to settle in Dubai because, according to him, the emirate was neutral at a time when the EU and the US were putting pressure on internet platforms.
Over the years "Telegram" was subject to blocking attempts in Iran and Russia in 2018, respectively, for harboring violent opposition groups and for not providing authorities with encryption codes, in Brazil in 2023 for not providing authorities with data on neo-Nazi groups, and in March in Spain for violating intellectual property rights.
"Telegram" there are about 50 full-time employees. In 2021, the app opened up to ads, but assured that it would not use users' personal data to target advertising. This was followed by the introduction of a subscription for the premium version of the application in 2022
Durov does not rule out the possibility of displaying "Telegram" on the stock exchange.
In March, the platform also introduced a revenue sharing system with its content creators.