[downandout]

This is an extraordinarily bad precedent. Facebook has traditionally bought companies that it felt were competitive threats (Instagram, Whatsapp, etc) even though a significant percentage of their growth came from shares on Facebook products. It now appears that they will deal with competitors by crushing their ability to grow.

Of course, they are going to say that this is because of Telegram's links to terrorism. But any secure messenger can be used by bad actors, so that same excuse could be used for the wholesale blocking of all competing messengers. This is clearly anticompetitive behavior.

[degenerate]

Don't assume FB never offered to purchase. Maybe they did, and Telegram turned them down. Then FB starts the dirty sabotage. We can only speculate if this is a retaliatory move by FB or not, but either way it's NOT ethical - and I'm very glad to hear many people are moving from WatsApp to Telegram against the foul play. Let's hope this is action #1 of FB driving their $19B purchase into the ground. They need to learn a lesson from this.