Getting into debt with highest interest rate in decades doesn't bode well for the future. On the other hand, VC funding seems to have dried up as well. Between rock and a hard place.
Telegram is one social network that has a huge potential for growth today. It is a dominant platform for War reporting from both sides. And it is not compromised by history of censorship, and CIA connections, like other social networks.
We will probably see it growing in US, as we get closer to elections, and censorship tightens!
Chinese chat apps have monetised really well through e-commerce. Admittedly this success hasn't be achieved by WhatsApp etc, so it not trivial to replicate.
the revenue comes from the future acquirer of the company paying out to the current shareholders. I don't really believe consumers of telegram are willing to pay for it. It's in the same boat financially as twitter - but got better PR atm.
I don’t know what you’re implying exactly but Telegram does collaborate with local laws in countries they operate, and that’s counting takedowns and criminal investigations when illegal content is being shared, as every business entity should do.
Telegram is based in UAE, a country famous for Totok, a social network designed to spy on you.
The UAE is an absolute monarchy, and the law is a little more openly a tool if the state than in the west. A company with legal challenges exists there because the state wants it to.
The UAE looks unaligned but in a real way it is part of a Chinese Russian axis when it comes to this sort of thing. For example totok was based on Chinese spyware.
For those of us who don't share truly sensitive information, I'm sure it's fine, but Ukrainian war reporters probably shouldn't have it installed.
That’s pure conspiracy thinking. Their service has been more or less blocked countrywide in Russia multiple times in the past, without too much success. Pavlov Durov has been publicly anti Putin since 2014 and exiled himself following euromaiden. Telegram has never been a Russian company, it was Berlin based, and is now in Dubai.
All of this has been public information since years, there isn’t any proof of anything malevolent happening with the service.
Durov's worth more than 10 billion and he bought a quarter of the bonds himself, so at the end of the day he can keep the lights on for a long time. That's basically how Telegram has been financed up until now.
We will probably see it growing in US, as we get closer to elections, and censorship tightens!