As you might've noticed, Telegram has been getting a lot of criticism lately regarding Telegram premium, usernames, and keeping their promises. As everyone else here, I have an opinion on that which I'd like to share here

Revoking usernames, just to then sell them on a blockchain.

Probably the most controversial change that telegram has introduced in recent memory was their username exchange platform, which allows you to buy certain usernames to then have them available under your Telegram account. These are mostly short or memorable usernames, things like @duck for example. However right before this platform was introduced, a lot of older usernames were revoked and made publicly accessible due to a lack of activity in affected channels. Put these two together and you essentially got the entire "We revoked your usernames and are now selling them on a blockchain" claim that everyone is making laid out right in front of your eyes.

Removing features and moving them to Premium-Only

Another controversial change was Telegram's decision to lock "Send as Channel" behind Telegram premium, with their reasoning being that this would assist in keeping spam/scam content down, as many scammers use "send as channel". However, this goes against their previous promise of not removing features or making them paid when they were already freely available for everyone before.

Introducing more Premium-Only features than normal features or improvements

something else that they have been criticised for is how almost every feature they seem to add nowadays is entirely Premium-Exclusive in one way or another, without even a free tier available. The best example of this would be the recent introduction of Custom Emoji packs, which are exactly what the name implies. They allow you to embed custom emojis into your message, even animated if you want, and have them show up for others, or even react using them. The problem with this is that the only "free trial" of this that we have is quite literally the ability to use Premium emoji within saved messages. There are no pre-made telegram official packs which are free or anything, just the ones you have to pay for monthly.

Inavailability in some countries

Some countries still don't have access to Telegram premium, even those where you would totally expect it to be available, like Germany for instance, meaning most of the changes above won't even show up to users with phone numbers from those regions, and even if they show up, they're unable to even purchase premium in any capacity. This means they cannot even buy themselves the features which are exclusive.

Conclusion

In a way, I understand why they are doing this. After all, they need to keep up server costs too, but promising something and then blatantly not keeping your promise really is (for lack of better words) a dick move. It really just spells diseaster for Telegram as a platform, as more and more people which have used it for a long time are slowly moving away from it. And who's to say they won't continue doing this despite the backlash? After all, that's what they have done up until this point. I can really just hope that Telegram realises that they're slowly ruining their reputation like this, and revert at least some of the changes.

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Thanks for reading! I wish you a good rest of the day, evening, night, or whatever other time you're reading this!