[halviti]

This has been going on for a week or more and has gained a decent amount of publicity. Given that telegram is a legitimate service, and they haven't reversed it yet, seems to indicate that this is a direct attack.

In addition, if you are familiar with how whatsapp works, stopping any spam would be much more effective by targeting the phone numbers sending spam, not to mention the difficulty of spamming telephone numbers.. not impossible, but difficult.. which is why whatsapp spam so far has been non-existent AFAIK.