Bot API 4.8 is live.

• Supported explanations in polls for Quizzes 2.0.
• Supported timed polls that close automatically at a predetermined moment. Use the new open_period and close_date fields.
• Supported new 🎯 animation for the Dice minigame.

Full change log:
https://core.telegram.org/bots/api-changelog#april-24-2020

400 Million Users, 20,000 Stickers, Quizzes 2.0 and €400K for Creators of Educational Tests

Telegram has reached 400 million active users! 🎉

Sticker Directory
• Access a catalog of over 20,000 stickers made by professional artists from the updated Sticker Panel by clicking the ‘+’ icon.
• Use sticker search to find the stickers you're looking for – or scroll from the latest packs all the way to the classics.

Quizzes 2.0
• Add explanations that appear after users respond to a quiz question.
• See how much time you have left to answer a question from @QuizBot with the new countdown animation.

Quiz Creator Contest
• Participate in Telegram's €400,000 contest by using @QuizBot to create and publish an educational test on any subject.

Animated Darts
• Send a single dart 🎯 emoji to see if you hit the bullseye.

More about this update:
https://telegram.org/blog/400-million

Today is a sad day for us here at Telegram. We are announcing the discontinuation of our blockchain project. Below is a summary of what it was and why we had to abandon it.

https://telegra.ph/What-Was-TON-And-Why-It-Is-Over-05-12

Bot API 4.9 is ready for you.

• Added the via_bot field to show through which bot a message was sent.
• Supported video thumbnails for inline GIF and MPEG4 animations.
• Supported the 🏀 animation for dice (in addition to 🎲 and 🎯).

Full change log:
https://core.telegram.org/bots/api-changelog#june-4-2020

In April 2018, Russia’s telecom regulator Roskomnadzor blocked Telegram on the country’s territory. We knew it was coming, so by the time the block went live, we had already upgraded the Telegram apps with support for rotating proxy servers, ways to hide traffic and other anti-censorship tools. We were joined by thousands of Russian engineers that set up their own proxies for Telegram users, forming a decentralised movement called Digital Resistance.

The first week of the ban was challenging, and many of our users in Russia had connection issues. In an attempt to prevent users from accessing Telegram, Roskomnadzor blacklisted millions of IP addresses. However, thanks to Digital Resistance, after May 2018 Telegram became largely accessible in Russia.

As a result, Telegram’s user base in Russia hasn’t decreased – in fact, it has doubled since 2018. In May 2020, out of 400 million monthly active users of Telegram, at least 30 million were from Russia. It means that our growth in Russia has been in line with our growth in other countries. To put it simply, the ban didn’t work.

Last week, Roskomnadzor, which has a new director as of two months ago, decided to reflect reality by announcing that Telegram is no longer blocked in Russia. In their announcement, they referenced my June 4 message where I explained why the ban didn't make much sense.

This change should be welcomed – and I hope it will last. If it doesn’t, however, we hope few users will notice any difference.

Over the course of the last two years, we had to regularly upgrade our “unblocking” technology to stay ahead of the censors. I am proud of what we achieved – it is unique among social media apps.

We don’t want this technology to get rusty and obsolete. That is why we have decided to direct our anti-censorship resources into other places where Telegram is still banned by governments – places like Iran and China. We ask the admins of the former proxy servers for Russian users to focus their efforts on these countries. They should also stand ready for new challenges: as the political situation in the world becomes more unpredictable, more governments may try to block privacy-focused apps like Telegram.

The Digital Resistance movement doesn’t end with last week’s ceasefire in Russia. It is just getting started – and going global.

Telegram is among the top 10 most downloaded and most used apps in the world.

Thank you for loving us and for telling your friends about Telegram.

With every new Telegram user, the power flows back from the corporations to the people.

Today's update adds Video Ca... (ah, no, not yet) Profile Videos, improved People Nearby features, 2 GB file uploads and much more.

Preview media from mini-thumbnails in your chat list and notifications, view detailed statistics for large groups, and send over 20 new animated emoji like ⚽️, 🙊 and 😱.

Android users can now crop and rotate videos, and the music player was redesigned with a new layout and icons.

I can understand why the US gov threatens to ban TikTok unless its US assets are sold to US investors. After all, China bans pretty much every non-Chinese social media app on its territory. Why should the rest of the world, including the US, let a Chinese app have a free ride in their markets? If you want to access the markets of other countries, you should also open your market to them – that would be fair.

However, the US move against TikTok is setting a dangerous precedent that may eventually kill the internet as a truly global network (or what is left of it). Before the US-TikTok saga, only autocratic countries like Iran, China or Russia were known for bullying tech companies into selling parts of their businesses to investors with close ties to their governments. It’s not surprising, for example, that Uber had to sell both their Russian and Chinese branches to local players.

I am proud that, unlike Uber, we at Telegram have always declined offers to sell our operations in specific countries. A few years ago we received letters from two funds with ties to countries that later attempted to block Telegram. Both letters expressed the same idea: “Telegram is going to get blocked in our country soon, so your only option is to sell us the local part of your business”. My response to those offers has been along the lines of my 2011 middle finger photo: we are not in the business of betraying our users. We are not selling Telegram – neither in part, nor in full. This will always be our position.

The problem with the US-TikTok case is that it legitimises an extortion tactic previously employed only by authoritarian regimes. For decades, the US has been perceived as the defender of free trade and free speech. But now that China has started to replace them as the main beneficiary of global trade, the US (or at least the Trump administration) seems to have become less enthusiastic about those values. This is regrettable, because billions of people on this planet still like the idea of an open and interconnected world.

Last week, Turkey introduced a bunch of laws limiting social media companies. A few years ago, the US would have had the moral right to criticise such efforts, citing freedom of speech and free trade as ideological foundations for their concerns. Today it’s less clear whether the US still has that right. Authoritarian leaders all over the world are already using the TikTok case as justification in their attempts to carve out a piece of the global internet for themselves. Soon, every big country is likely to use “national security” as a pretext to fracture international tech companies. And ironically, it’s the US companies like Facebook or Google that are likely to lose the most from the fallout.

It's Telegram's birthday today ✌️

The iPhone app hit the store exactly seven years ago: August 14, 2013.

The alpha version of Telegram for Android officially launched on October 20, 2013.

ℹ️ @geeksChannel

"Videocalls update is supposed to go live today".

ℹ️ @geeksChannel

Some users asked whether comments will become the default mode for channels. While we think it’s fun to comment on channels, most channels don’t need commenting, so it will remain optional and disabled by default.

That said, native comments are a great upgrade for channels that had been previously relying on the web comments bot. Native comments are faster, more feature-rich for posting and moderating, and have built-in reply notifications.

Some users rightly pointed out that Telegram native comments look like chats rather than the two-level comments you can find on social networks. That’s exactly the point - Telegram is not a social network, but a messaging app.

While many people successfully use Telegram to distribute information among millions of users (posts broadcasted by channels generate over 350 billion views monthly), Telegram will remain an easy-to-use minimalist tool, with chats at the center of the user experience.

Apple is requesting that we shut down 3 channels used by the people of Belarus to expose the identities of their oppressors.

@karatelibelarusi
@chatpartizan
@belarusassholes

Their concern is that publishing the personal information of law enforcers and propagandists may incite violence.

I think this situation is not black and white and would rather leave the channels be, but typically Apple doesn’t offer much choice for apps like Telegram in such situations. Unfortunately, I assume these channels will end up getting blocked on iOS, but remain available on other platforms.

P. S. Everyone is welcome to express their views and comment on this post provided they stay on-topic and use English. Thanks!

Introducing Bot API 5.0

• Support for the football and slot machine animated emoji.
• Run your own Bot API server.
• Transfer Bot ownership to another account.
• New options for Webhooks.
• New method copyMessage to send a copy of any mesage.
• Support for Live Locations, including the latest changes.
• Support for Multiple Pinned Messages
• Support for File Albums
• Support for Anonymous Admins.
• Support for ⚽️ and 🎰 animated emoji.
• And much more, read the full changelog here:

https://core.telegram.org/bots/api-changelog#November-4-2020

Today's update adds Voice Chats, creating a seamless integration of text and talk in groups. Members can join and leave these open conference calls at any time for a bit of spontaneous conversation alongside their usual text messages and media.

As the calendar turns over to 2021, we'll be busy taking in your feedback and improving Voice Chats with features like video and screen sharing at the top of our list.

To read about all the features in this update, like SD Card Storage for Android and more, check out the full post on our blog:
https://telegram.org/blog/voice-chats

The end of the year is normally a time to look back at the past 12 months. Instead, our founder Pavel Durov has just announced his strategy for making Telegram sustainable, to continue providing you with great features for decades to come.