The social media platform notified its users on Tuesday that the app surpassed 500 million monthly active users during the first week of January, with 25 million new users joining just in the previous 72 hours alone.
Founder Pavel Durov said there was a massive increase in new users compared to the same time last year when roughly 1.5 million new users were signing up daily.
“We’ve had surges of downloads before, throughout our seven-year history of protecting user privacy but this time it is different,” Durov is quoted as saying on his official “Durov’s channel.”
Most of the platform’s new users appear to be out of Asia at 38 percent, along with 27 percent from Europe and 21 percent from Latin America. Eight percent come from the Middle East and North Africa.
“[People] no longer want to be held hostage by tech monopolies that seem to think they can get away with anything as long as their apps have a critical mass of users,” Durov added. “We take this responsibility very seriously, and our users have been and will always be our only priority.”
Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Telegram does not have shareholders or advertisers to report to. It also does not mine data for marketers or deal with government agencies.
“Since the day we launched in August 2013, we haven’t disclosed a single byte of our users’ private data to third parties,” Durov reassured.
If you use an Apple device, the following instructions will ensure that Apple does not remove Telegram or any other app from your smartphone without your expressed permission:
• Go to “Settings”
• Press “Screen Time”
• Select “Content & Privacy Restrictions”
• Activate the button at the top right corner
• Select “iTunes & App Store Purchases”
• Make sure the “Deleting Apps” option is set to “Don’t Allow”....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...
