📣 Following my post 20 days ago, users have sent us hundreds of reports about scams and blackmail. 👮‍♂️

⛔️ Based on these reports, this week we’re banning numerous channels for doxxing and extortion. 🔒

❌ A ban for this reason means we have undeniable evidence that a channel’s admins published defamatory posts, then deleted them in exchange for payment from victims. Some have even been caught selling so-called “protection blocks” — fees victims must pay to avoid being targeted. 💵

❌ Telegram is not a place for doxxing or blackmail. And to those running such channels: don’t waste your time creating clones — we’ll find you. 📡

📰 An upcoming feature in @BotFather - Threaded mode allows bots to see updates in monoforums, or more precisely, direct channels. This commit was discovered by user @yehudalev. This setting is currently not working.

It is expected that with their help you can create autoresponders, filter spam, automatically suggest your own version of a post or publish to a channel, and much more.

Thanks: 💌💌💌

🪙 Good week for TON. Verb, a NASDAQ-listed company that has chosen TON as its primary asset, has successfully raised $558 million to begin buying and stockpiling TON immediately.

Meanwhile, Coinbase Ventures has also started accumulating TON.

Exciting times ahead! 🚀

— @durov.

📰 WhatsApp and Telegram calls have been officially blocked in the Russian Federation! Roskomnadzor has confirmed this. ⚠️🇷🇺 It started on August 1, when calls via foreign messengers were blocked in test mode. ☎️ And on August 10, there was news that the four largest local telecom operators were calling for blocking call communications via messengers in order to adjust finances and return users to mobile calls and SMS to increase profits due to voice traffic. 👮‍♂️The official reason for blocking this method of communication is "the fight against fraudsters." The department reminds that in 2024, the "Antifraud" system will be operating in the country to prevent calls with number substitution.

📞 Symptoms of calls: calls are glitching, there is a high chance of connection breaks, video communications are of "jackal" quality, failures also affect video chats. Peer-2-peer do not help.

It is important to remember that the UAE (and Dubai) also block VoIP calls, and Telegram does not take measures to bypass them. It is not known whether Telegram will try to bypass call blocking in the Russian Federation. 🪂🇷🇺In order for calls to Telegram to work again, Telegram needs to "land", open a legal entity, build interaction with regulators and law enforcement agencies, as well as unquestioningly comply with all other Russian laws.

📰 The Telegram press service responded to the partial restriction of calls in the messenger within the territory of Russian Federation, stating that they are fighting against malicious use (including sabotage, violence, and fraud) and the fact that they were the first to add privacy settings to calls:

Moderators, using special AI tools, actively monitor public sections of the platform and handle complaints to remove millions of malicious messages daily.

So that every user can independently decide from whom to accept calls or completely disable them.

The press service did not express their opinion on blocking of calls within the country to journalists.

Source: 💌💌💌

📰 Due to frequent cases of theft of stars and gifts, Telegram disables the possibility of spending stars and transferring gifts - the channel @telelakel reports.

👨‍🏫 A month ago, my father — a leading expert in Ancient Roman literature — turned 80. I asked what advice I should pass to the next generation. He gave me 3:

👨‍💻 1. Lead by example. People — especially kids — follow what you do, not what you say. Watching my father work tirelessly on numerous books and scientific papers showed me and my brother the meaning of dedication and inspired us to work hard too.

💖 2. Focus on the positive. Growing up in post-war Leningrad, my father learned to control emotions to be a positive force for his family, colleagues and society. He taught me to frame thoughts in ways that bring the most good, even in hard times.

🫡 3. Prioritize conscience. Studying and translating thinkers from Julius Caesar to Seneca, my father saw that morals outlast talent. Moral compass, unlike intelligence or creativity, is the ultimate human quality that will not lose value even in the age of AI.

1️⃣2️⃣ As Telegram turns 12 today, I want it to keep following my father’s advice — and:

🏆 Lead by example, setting trends for the messaging world.

🚀 Be a positive force, bringing joy to our users.

❤️ Prioritize conscience, staying true to our principles.

- @Durov

🕶🕶🕶🕶 Telegram’s birthday/summer gifts sold out in under 3 minutes, grossing over $11M.
To make this round fairer, we limited purchases of Durov’s Sunglasses 🕶 (~$600, max 3 per user) and Resistance Dog 🕶 (~$100, max 5 per user) to Premium users only. Still, both sold out in 15 seconds. 🥹

Should we release 2-3 more gifts on September 1st with even tighter buying restrictions? 🤔

📰 Photo session with Pavel Durov, Manuel Stotz and Andrey Rogozov.

The first one is the CEO of Telegram;
The second is the executive chairman of TON Strategy Co and former president of the TON Foundation;
The third one is the founder and CEO of The Open Platform.

📰 Now you can withdraw your TON! 💎 Update to iOS 11.14.1, 2 months after they were added, was the first to be able 💸 to withdraw your crypt from the settings section "My TON" to your wallet. The procedure takes place in fragment.com, and therefore you will need KYC. ☝️The function may not work for everyone.

🎁 The TON withdrawal will be very useful for those who want to take away unnecessary cryptocurrencies for themselves or no longer use the paid messenger functionality (offers of posts and gifts).

📰 Adding music to profile is a #new feature in beta version 11.15.275131 for macOS (and in the closed ß-version 11.15). 🎶 To add an audio file to your profile, click "Add to profile" in the built-in player; all added files will be in a special playlist of your account, which can be listened to by every(!) user.

Thanks: 💌💌💌

➕ One year ago, the French police detained me for 4 days because some people I’d never heard of used Telegram to coordinate crimes. Arresting a CEO of a major platform over the actions of its users was not only unprecedented — it was legally and logically absurd.

A year later, the ‘criminal investigation’ against me is still struggling to find anything that I or Telegram did wrong. Our moderation practices align with industry standards, and Telegram has always responded to every legally binding request from France.

Ironically, I was arrested due to the French police’s own mistake: before August 2024, they ignored French and EU laws and hadn’t sent any of their queries to Telegram via the required legal process. They could have learned the correct procedure simply by googling it or asking.

One year after this strange arrest, I still have to return to France every 14 days, with no appeal date in sight. Sadly, the only outcome of my arrest so far has been massive damage to France’s image as a free country. 🛠

✊ We’ll keep fighting — and we will win 😎

- @Durov