“Respect your users”: Telegram founder Pavel Durov slams Facebook

Pavel Durov, Founder and CEO of Telegram on Saturday slammed Facebook amid rising concerns related to data privacy following a privacy policy update by WhatsApp.

WhatsApp this week began notifying users across the globe regarding its new privacy policy and terms of service which will take effect on February 8. The Facebook-owned messaging platform has started to notify users regarding the change.

Users are required to accept the new terms in order to continue using the app.

Amid rising concerns regarding WhatsApp’s new privacy policy where it mentioned that it would share user data with Facebook in certain cases, apps such as Telegram and Signal saw a significant surge in new downloads.

Also read: WhatsApp to update terms of service, privacy policy from February 8

“Millions of people are outraged by the latest change in WhatsApp Terms, which now say users must feed all their private data to Facebook’s ad engine. It’s no surprise that the flight of users from WhatsApp to Telegram, already ongoing for a few years, has accelerated,” Durov wrote in a blog post posted to his Telegram channel.

The platform has nearly 500 million users and “growing,” Durov said. “I hear Facebook has an entire department devoted to figuring out why Telegram is so popular. Imagine dozens of employees working on just that full-time. I am happy to save Facebook tens of millions of dollars and give away our secret for free: respect your users,” wrote Durov.

The Telegram founder further said that the platform has detected bots spreading “inaccurate” information about Telegram on social media and clarified various “myths” related to the messaging platform.

The Telegram co-founder said that all Telegram client apps are open source and that “every chat on Telegram has been encrypted since launch.” He further addressed concerns related to the app being Russian.

Also read: WhatsApp’s new privacy policy: Know it all

“Telegram has no servers or offices in Russia and was blocked there from 2018 to 2020,” wrote Durov.

A Facebook spokesperson in a statement to The Verge said that the update to its terms is meant to address data sharing between Facebook and WhatsApp with regard to messaging with businesses. The new terms will not effectively change anything with regard to consumer chats, the spokesperson said as per the report.