Wednesday January 13th 2021
25 million new users
Telegram registered an enormous influx
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Telegram has experienced a miraculous increase in users over the past three days. Trump supporters looking for alternatives? Probably also. In addition, the big competitor Whatsapp pissed off many users with new data protection guidelines.
The messenger service Telegram has gained around 25 million new users within 72 hours. As the Russian app founder Pawel Durow announced on Tuesday, the platform currently has around 500 million monthly active users. This brings Telegram closer to its US competitor WhatsApp, which recently had two billion users worldwide.
One reason for the increase could be that Twitter also condemned tens of thousands of QAnon followers’ accounts from the platform after the account of Donald Trump was blocked. At the same time, the Parler service, popular with right-wing extremists, is offline after Amazon no longer hosts the site. So many users are looking for alternatives.
But it is also noticeable that the rush of users on Telegram coincides with the introduction of new data protection conditions on WhatsApp. The new regulations stipulate that more data may be passed on to the parent company Facebook. The changes have caused criticism because users outside Europe who do not agree to the terms before February 8th will be banned from the app.
“People no longer want to give up their privacy for free services,” said Durow, without referring specifically to WhatsApp. Telegram is the “greatest haven” for those looking for a private and secure communication platform, he added. Durow assured users that his team “takes this responsibility very seriously”.
The messaging app was founded in 2013 by the brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, who also started the Russian online network VKontakte. Because Telegram refuses to cooperate with authorities and pass on encryption, the app is banned in Russia, among other places.
Facebook bought Whatsapp in 2014. At that time, the group stated that an automatic data comparison between the two services would not be technically possible – a false statement for which the EU Commission fined Facebook a million three years later. The EU Commission had expressly forbidden such data exchange during the takeover. Whatsapp’s new data protection guideline is therefore not valid in the EU – EU citizens still have to agree if they want to continue using the messenger.
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