About 25 million users have signed up for the Telegram messaging platform in the past 72 hours, Russian founder Pável Dúrov said on Tuesday in response to his WhatsApp competitor’s announcement that he will share more data with parent company Facebook . .
(You may be interested: the creator of Telegram suggests you use mobile phones with Android and not iPhone)
“In the first week of January, Telegram exceeded 500 million monthly active users. After that, it continued to grow: 25 million new users have come to Telegram in the last 72 hours“, assured Dúrov in his network channel.
“This is a significant increase from last year,” he continued, adding that Telegram already had sudden waves of recordings during its “seven years of experience in protecting the privacy of its users,” but, “this time it’s different.” .
(You may be interested in: Telegram’s mockery of WhatsApp for its new privacy policy)
“People no longer change their privacy for free services. They no longer want to be held hostage by technological monopolies,” the 36-year-old billionaire added.
Telegram was launched in 2013.
Not to mention his competition, he refers to WhatsApp, under fire from critics last Thursday after asking the two billion subscribers to accept new terms of use.
Users who reject them will not be able to access their accounts as of February 8. In this way, the group seeks to make its platform profitable, allowing advertisers to contact their customers via WhatsApp and even sell their products directly, as is already happening in India.
(Read also: What changes with the new WhatsApp privacy policies?)
This announcement also had consequences for another messaging application, Signal, which since last week is on the list of the most downloaded on the Apple Store and Google Play platforms in several countries.
Founded in 2013 by brothers Pável and Nikolai Dúrov, creators of the Russian popular social network VKontakte, Telegram says security is its priority and generally refuses to cooperate with the authorities, which has led to attempts to blockade in some countries. all in Russia.
You may also be interested in:
– Signal, the messaging app recommended by Elon Musk and used by Snowden
– WhatsApp has responded to criticism for changing the policy
– Parler, the social network used by Trump supporters
AFP