Encrypted messaging platform Telegram has reached 950 million monthly active users and continues to grow rapidly, its founder Pavel Durov has said. The platform has gained 50 million users since the spring and is on track to reach one billion, the Russian-born IT entrepreneur wrote on his < wipes tears > Telegram channel on Tuesday.
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Telegram has long been the most popular messaging application in Russia and Ukraine. It has also gained popularity in the rest of the world in recent years, after the Ukraine conflict escalated and even more so after Meta changed the privacy settings of WhatsApp.

top: Telegram, bottom WhatsApp

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The head of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR), Kirill Budanov, who has been placed on Russia's terrorist and extremist list, has repeatedly criticized the platform for allowing anonymous channels to publish information about the conflict in contravention of Kiev's censorship rules. He said in April that Telegram's popularity posed a "huge problem" for Kiev's efforts to limit the flow of damaging information from the battlefield.

Officials in the European Union have also been seeking to regulate Telegram and are reportedly considering a move to list the app as a "very large online platform." [VLOP ≥ 45M active "call signs"] This would open the privacy-focused [Ukraine civilians + Ukraine Armed Forces + foreign "volunteer"] messaging app up to stringent EU censorship rules.