Pavel Durov Unofficial

😎 If I had to give one piece of advice to people in their 20s who want to build something great, it would be: “Never drink alcohol.” 🍸

🤮 I haven’t drunk alcohol in nearly 20 years, but I’ve seen many successful people ruin themselves with it. Alcohol clouds your mental clarity and intuition for days after consumption. While it might lift your mood temporarily, it’s like taking out a loan — you’ll pay it back with interest. The short-term pleasure brings long-term misery 😵‍💫

🍔 I know it’s hard not to yield to social pressure: humans have evolved to copy the behaviors of those around them. But the habits of the majority are self-destructive — most people around us drink alcohol, eat fast food, and have passive lifestyles. And that’s fine. If you want to achieve something extraordinary, however, you’ll boost your chances by keeping both your mind and body healthy 😼

➕ Turning 40 today. Exactly 18 years ago I launched my first large project and grew it from zero to 100,000,000 users 👨‍🦳

Should I tell you how it happened in another “life stories” post? Feel free to vote in the meaningful poll below 🔽

🔥 I love the Telegram team. Just yesterday, I suggested 10 improvements to our apps. We had mockups ready the same day, and today, we already have fully functional builds with these features implemented 😳

🆕 These updates include 5 improvements to gifts, 3 to hashtags, the ability to add media to a message after it’s been sent, and the ability to view the time a message was edited 🔜

⚡️ All in just one day. It’s no surprise that the Telegram team has shaped how most messaging apps work today, contributing to nearly every innovation in communication 😒

Due to the recent events in the Middle East, particularly in Israel, Lebanon, and Iran, Telegram experienced unprecedented loads. In the past few days, some users may have faced temporary connection issues and difficulties accessing media. Thanks to our technical team's efforts, Telegram remained available in most countries, and all issues are now fully resolved. We apologize for any inconvenience.

📰 My previous post may have seemed to announce a major shift in how Telegram works. But in reality, little has changed.

🌐 Since 2018, Telegram has been able to disclose IP addresses/phone numbers of criminals to authorities, according to our Privacy Policy in most countries.

⚖️ Whenever we received a properly formed legal request via relevant communication lines, we would verify it and disclose the IP addresses/phone numbers of dangerous criminals. This process had been in place long before last week.

🤖 Our @transparency bot demonstrates exactly that. This bot shows the number of processed requests for user data.

✉️ For example, in Brazil, we disclosed data for 75 legal requests in Q1 (January-March) 2024, 63 in Q2, and 65 in Q3. In India, our largest market, we satisfied 2461 legal requests in Q1, 2151 in Q2, and 2380 in Q3.

📈 In Europe, there was an uptick in the number of valid legal requests we received in Q3. This increase was caused by the fact that more EU authorities started to use the correct communication line for their requests, the one mandated by the EU DSA law. Information about this contact point has been publicly available to anyone who viewed the Telegram website or googled “Telegram EU address for law enforcement” since early 2024. 

🤝 To reduce confusion, last week, we streamlined and unified our privacy policy across different countries. But our core principles haven’t changed. We’ve always strived to comply with relevant local laws — as long as they didn’t go against our values of freedom and privacy.

🛡 Telegram was built to protect activists and ordinary people from corrupt governments and corporations — we do not allow criminals to abuse our platform or evade justice.

🔎 Search on Telegram is more powerful than in other messaging apps because it allows users to find public channels and bots. Unfortunately, this feature has been abused by people who violated our Terms of Service to sell illegal goods.

💪 Over the last few weeks, a dedicated team of moderators, leveraging AI, has made Telegram Search much safer. All the problematic content we identified in Search is no longer accessible. If you still manage to find something unsafe or illegal in Telegram Search, please report it to us via @SearchReport.

🚫 To further deter criminals from abusing Telegram Search, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, ensuring they are consistent across the world. We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.

☝️ These measures should discourage criminals. Telegram Search is meant for finding friends and discovering news, not for promoting illegal goods. We won't let bad actors jeopardize the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users.