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This is the English mirror of @tginfo. Ask Questions & Discuss: @tginfochaten Beta Channel: @betainfoen TON: @infotonen Other Languages: @tginfoall Feedback & Commecrial: @infowritebot
Spain Blocks Telegram Over Distribution of Pirated Content by Users
A Spanish judge has ordered the temporary blocking of the popular messaging app Telegram in response to a lawsuit filed by several local media companies, including EGEDA, Mediaset España, A3 Media, and Movistar Plus. The decision, made by Judge Santiago Pedras of the National Court of Spain, comes as part of an ongoing investigation into allegations that Telegram users have been distributing pirated content.
The court had requested that Telegram provide technical data to help identify the owners of accounts allegedly used to infringe upon intellectual property rights. However, the messaging app failed to comply with this request, leading to the temporary blocking order and a six-month extension of the investigation.
According to the court ruling, the blocking must be implemented within three hours of receiving the official court notice. The order encompasses not only the Telegram apps, but also the Telegram.org website and the web version of the platform.
Telegram has a significant user base in Spain, with a recent survey by the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) indicating that approximately 8.5 million users rely on the messaging app, meaning this ban will affect a vast amount of people that use Telegram as an essential tool for communication on a day to day basis.
For more information about Telegram in Spainish, view @tginfoesp.
Chat for Spain: @tginfochates.
#bans #courts #Spain
Detailed statistics on revenue from Telegram Ads
In the source code of Telegram for MacOS, lines of code were noticed that will supposedly be used on the channel's info page for tracking income from Telegram Ads.
Based on the source code, the user can:
• View their advertising revenue statistics in TON cryptocurrency or in the US dollar equivalent.
• Check the current balance of TON available for withdrawal and its equivalent in US dollars.
• View a list of transactions reflecting advertising earnings and money transfers to a crypto wallet, indicating the time and amount.
• Enter the address of their TON wallet and withdraw some or all of the available funds to the wallet.
#aboutAds
Telegram Desktop has been updated to version 4.15.2
What's new:
• Opening hours 00:00 – 23:59 are now shown as “open 24 hours”.
• Reimplemented fast scrolling of the chat list when holding down the Ctrl or Shift key.
• The color of the “Enable notifications” menu item in their exception settings has been replaced with standard green.
• Fixed saving of empty working hours.
• Fixed display of dates in Recent Actions.
• Fixed account selection for automatic login to Telegram sites.
• Fixed a crash when trying to set an emoji status in the application settings window.
Download: from the official website or from GitHub.
#update #desktop
Pavel Durov revealed that Telegram was valued at $30 billion ahead of a potential IPO
In an interview, Durov clarified that the $30 billion valuation was made by global technology funds, among others. At the same time, the Financial Times noted that he ruled out selling Telegram. The messaging app's audience has grown to 900 million monthly active users. Each Telegram user costs the app $0.7 per year. Annually, around €630 million is required to maintain the service.
"Overall, we see value in an IPO as a means of democratizing access to Telegram's value," - Pavel Durov
Telegram Desktop Has Been Updated to Version 4.15.1
Here's what's new:
• Support for Telegram Business features have been added.
• Shared contacts in chats now have a new style.
• Link previews are now generated for links inside quote blocks.
• Privacy settings that require Telegram Premium now have icons to indicate this.
• When adding a new admin, they will now have admin rights to view chat history by default.
• Support for AVIF, HEIF, and JPEG XL formats has been added for the macOS version of the app.
• Built-in markup is now supported when exporting chats to HTML for replies.
• A character limit counter has been added when editing messages without media.
• An issue with editing long media captions containing emoji has been fixed.
• An issue causing the text about vote counts to be deleted in polls with reactions has been resolved.
• The character limit counter for the bio input field has been fixed.
• An error that occurred when sending .tgs files as stickers has been corrected.
Download: from official website or GitHub.
#update #desktop
Pavel Durov speaks on the reliability and innovation of Telegram in comparison to other platforms
Pavel Durov has made confident remarks upon the outage of Facebook and Instagram, where he states Telegram has "1000x fewer full-time employees than Meta" and that "Millions of people have been signing up and sharing content on Telegram in the last hour" highlighting Telegram's surge in growth due to service outages of other platforms.
He states that Telegram "managed to launch new features and innovate faster." and has additionally "spent several times less on infrastructure per user.", implying Durov's strong belief that Telegram is at forefront of innovation in the messaging market globally, whilst still maintaining their strong monetization strategy. He also states that Telegram has only been down for around 9 minutes for the entirety of 2023. It is assumed this statistic is based on a scenario where all of Telegram's Datacenters experience an outage simultaneously, at one given time.
Telegram Will Only Share Its Ad Revenue in Countries Where Ad Platform Is Newly Introduced
Yesterday, Pavel Durov announced that starting from March of this year, Telegram will share half of its native ads revenue with channel owners. According to the "Durov's Code" channel, citing one of Telegram's advertising partners, payouts will only be made in countries that are new to advertising. For example, Russia is not among them, as the advertising platform in the Russian market was launched earlier.
In the new countries, Telegram will sell ads and reward channel owners only in TON cryptocurrency.
In regions where advertising has been running for a long time, the previous methods of payment for sponsored posts will remain.
Whether the reward system will ever be extended to countries where the advertising platform has already been launched is not reported.
#AboutAds
Ad Income Sharing for Telegram channel owners
Pavel Durov announced that in March Telegram channel owners can start getting paid their work:
Broadcast channels on Telegram generate 1 trillion views monthly. Currently, only 10% of these views are monetized with Telegram Ads — a promotion tool designed with privacy in mind.
In March, the Telegram Ad Platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries. Channel owners in these countries will start receiving 50% of any revenue that Telegram makes from displaying ads in their channels.
To ensure ad payments and withdrawals are fast and secure, we will exclusively use the TON blockchain. Similar to our approach with Telegram usernames on Fragment, we will sell ads and share revenue with channel owners in Toncoin. This will create a virtuous circle, in which content creators will be able to either cash out their Toncoins — or reinvest them in promoting and upgrading their channels.
What to do when my phone number gets banned on Telegram?
Telegram users can often encounter account bans. Sometimes, the ban can happen unexpectedly for the user: all sessions are terminated, and upon trying to log into the account, the app informs the user that the phone number is banned.
We explain what can be done in such a situation in this article: https://tginfo.me/phone-number-is-banned-en/
#FAQ
⭐ Learn More About Premium Features For Business
In the Beta version of Telegram for macOS, @tgcrawl discovered icons for business functions that may appear in the Telegram Premium subscription in the future.
There is currently no exact description of these capabilities, but @tginfo editors assume that each option will work as follows:
• Greeting: The ability to create a welcome message that will be sent to customers when they initiate a conversation with a business account.
• Away: Ability to prepare a message that will be sent to costumers while you are away.
• Hours: Ability to specify your organization's operating hours within the messenger so that customers know when they can access the business account for business matters.
• Location: Option to specify the location of your organization that will be displayed in your business account profile.
• Quick Reply: Ability to use ready-made answer templates for frequently asked questions, applying text formatting, as well as attaching images and videos.
• Bot: Most likely, it will be possible to integrate third-party chat bots to your account, which could process incoming messages and automatically respond to them.
#macOS #premium
Bot API was updated to version 7.1
Custom Emoji
• Bots can now get the custom emoji sticker set chosen by a group and use any custom emoji from it.
Boosts
• Added support for boost_added service messages, about new boosts added to the chat.
• Added the field sender_boost_count to the class Message, counting boosts added by the sender that are active on the message send date.
Stories
• Bots can now check if admins have the rights to post, edit and delete stories in supergroups.
• Added the field reply_to_story to the class Message.
See the full changelog for details on the official website.
#update #BotAPI
⚡ Boosts in Groups
The Beta version of Telegram for Android has introduced boosts in groups.
The @tginfo editors have talked about what features the boosts bring to the group here and here. However, some other features have been found in the Beta version 10.8.0:
• Only supergroups can be boosted. There is no such ability in regular groups.
• The number of boosts a group needs to get each new level is different than in channels. Let us remind you that in channels this number is equal to the total number of subscribers divided by 250. The formula for groups is still unknown, but it is already clear that each level in a group requires much more boosts: probably, for groups the total number of members is divided by 25.
• The number of boosts is displayed next to the messages of those members who have given their boosts to the group. Apparently, it is not possible to disable the display of this information.
• The service message that someone has transferred their boosts is not always displayed in groups.
#boosts
⚡ Boosts in Groups
The @tginfo editors has analyzed new lines discovered by @tgcrawl on the Telegram translations platform, and anticipates that the upcoming update will bring support for a boost system in groups. Boosts in groups will work similar to boosts in channels, but with some differences.
👥 Features Similar to Channels:
• Ability to boost the group
Group members will be able to boost the group to unlock additional features.
• Stories in Groups
Group administrators will have the ability to post a specific number of stories per day in the group, based on the chat's level.
• Boosts for Telegram Premium giveaway
The group will receive boosts for Telegram Premium subscriptions given away among its members.
• Group Customization
Administrators will have the ability to set emoji statuses, wallpapers, and a custom logo for the group header, visible to all chat members.
👥 Group-Specific Features:
• Access to Custom Emojis
Administrators can install a group emoji pack. All members can use emojis from this pack in the group, even without a Telegram Premium subscription.
• Voice Message Transcription
Group members can transcribe voice messages sent in the group, even without a Premium subscription.
• Removal of restrictions for those who boosted the group
Administrators will have the ability to lift group restrictions for those who have boosted a certain number of times for the chat. For example: in a group where media sending is prohibited, users who have boosted 4 times for the chat will be able to send media.
• Real-Time Translation
Every group member will have the ability to translate all messages in the chat in real-time.
#boosts
Telegram X Has Been Updated to Version 0.26.3.1674
What's new:
• Set the link preview location and its media size. Selecting the desired preview if there are multiple links in the text.
• Customizing the profile picture display when reacting.
• Display the reaction to the last message in the chat list.
• Added new "Stickers and Emoji" settings to the display.
• Display large emoji if the message only contains them.
• Animated profile pictures of people in messages.
• Voting in polls and responding to messages on the channel's behalf.
• Archive settings management.
• Selecting and editing profile picture in the app.
• Updated screen resolution for users.
• Display the timer in a group with enabled slow mode.
• Send allowed media types in chats where text messaging is not allowed.
• Unread message count on the Chats tab.
• Privacy settings for public profile pictures, bio and adding to channels/groups.
• Improved notifications.
• Install and manage installed custom emoji sets.
• Full-screen message reaction selection panel.
Download from Google Play, or from official channel @tgx_log.
#Android #TelegramX #update
⭐ Limit Who You Can Receive Private Messages From
• Users that are subscribed to Telegram Premium now choose from two options to limit who is able to message them: "Everybody" or "My Contacts and Premium Users".
• If the second option is chosen, users who are not in your contacts and don't have an active Premium subscription, will not be able to initiate a private chat with you.
⚠️ Note: if you have ever sent at least one message to someone in the past, they are still able to message you, even if they are not subscribed to Premium and not in your contacts.
More on this update can be found here.
DC2 Media Downloading Issues
Our users are reporting that DC2 is currently experiencing issues related with downloading media, whereas the download speed has dropped significantly due to issues on the server.
#outages
New Telegram Bond Issued for $330 Million
Pavel Durov announced last week that Telegram has issued bonds worth $330 million to accelerate the development of the messenger. The applications for bonds placement were oversubscribed, and on top of this, the majority of the buyers consisted of high-tier, high priced funds.
Telegram has previously issued bonds on:
• March 2021: The first bond placement for $1 billion.
• April 2021: Bonds placed for an additional $750 million.
• July 2023: Bonds were issued for $270 million, about a quarter of which were purchased by Durov himself.
#bonds
Disruptions in Telegram's Services
Users are reporting that there are disruptions within operating and using Telegram. In particular, issues are being experienced with the global search function, sending messages, loading chats, and interacting with bots. This post will be updated as more details become available.UPD: This was already fixed.
UPD 17:02 UTC: Some users are still experiencing connection issues.
#outages
Biometrics in Mini Apps
A function named BiometricManager has been discovered in the source code of Telegram Mini Apps tools.
Presumably, this function will allow mini apps to request verification from the messenger to confirm your identity as the device owner. This will enable services to enhance the protection of your data or assets.
The @tginfo editorial team believes that mini apps will not receive any data related to biometrics. The tool will be able to process a response from the Telegram client, which has methods for biometric confirmation.
#BotAPI
Telegram's Co-Operation with Malaysia
On Saturday, March 2, Malaysia's Minister of Communications held a personal meeting with Pavel Durov in Dubai. The news was brought to attention by Durov's Code.
The main topics of the meeting were platform regulation and the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence. Durov expressed interest in further discussions about opportunities for cooperation with the Malaysian government to optimize the regulatory aspects of the platform and promised to expand Telegram's activities in the country.
Pavel Durov also stated their platform's readiness to collaborate with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to improve regulation and join forces in combating fraud and gambling.
Last May, Malaysia's Minister of Communications reported that Telegram "did not want to cooperate" with the ministry, despite numerous requests for a meeting.
Statistics for 2022 indicate that Malaysia has 32 million Internet users, of which 28 million are social media users. Telegram is used by 56% of Internet users in the country, providing a rough estimate of between 15-18 million users in Malaysia.
#Malaysia
🏪 Telegram Business Features
In the upcoming Telegram update, users with a Premium subscription will gain access to a set of business oriented features.
Users will be able to specify the location and opening hours of their business, prepare welcome messages, messages to be sent automatically to clients while you are away, and use quick replies.
Read more about new business features in our Beta Info channel.
#premium
⭐ Option to Set Colors for Folder Tags in Chat List
The Telegram translation platform has new lines mentioning customization of chat folder colors.
It is assumed that in the chat list, the names of all folders to which chats are added will be displayed. For the name of each folder, you can choose a separate color.
The lines also indicate that the new feature will be available only to Telegram Premium subscribers. This option can be enabled in the settings.
#premium
Get Premium for Helping Telegram Send SMS Codes
Telegram has launched a program which allows users to get Premium for sending SMS messages with OTP codes to other users. A user from Indonesia shared screenshots of the feature with @tginfo.
Terms of Service have appeared for the new program, which is called “Peer-to-Peer Login Program”.
On the page Telegram informs that only users from some countries can participate. Telegram will be using user’s phone to send no more than 150 SMS codes monthly, at the user’s expense. When the user reaches the minimum quota, they will be rewarded with a transferable gift code that grants access to a monthly Telegram Premium subscription. The messenger won't compensate carrier rates and fees for sending the messages.
Telegram warns that theoretically program participants can see phone numbers of the users who receive the OTP codes. The same way, receivers will know the codes are sent from other Telegram users.
@tginfo confirmed existence of the feature in Telegram for Android 10.8.1 (4404) code. The Terms of Service point out that the program is only available to Android users.
We speculate that the program will be used in countries which have high SMS fees, like Indonesia.
#P2PL #Premium
Telegram’s DC2 Is Unstable
Around 11:30 UTC, users experienced connection issues, as well as issues with sending and receiving messages.
UPD 11:44 UTC: DC2 is partially back
#outages
Telegram Has Been Updated to Version 10.8
The messenger received the first update for February of this year.
In the new version, the boost system for groups has been added. Let us tell you more about it:
• Opportunity to boost group: Users can now boost a group to unlock new features like public voice message transcription and real-time translation.
Features are unlocked as the group level grows. To reach each level you need to get boosts in the amount of 1/25 of the total number of chat members, which is 10 times more than in channels.
• Customize appearance settings for the group: Groups now have a Appearance and Emoji tab where administrators can set a personal color for the profile, select the group's emoji pack and emoji status, and set a custom wallpaper. To unlock a feature, a group will need to reach a certain level.
• Group custom emoji: There is now an ability to set custom emoji that will be available to each member in that group.
• Removing limits for boosts: Select the number of boosts a member should give to the group in order to not be limited by the limits set for all chat members in the permissions section.
• Stories from groups: Administrators can now post stories on behalf of the group. The number of stories per day is equal to the chat level.
• Giveaways in groups: Chat owners can organize a giveaway among members. In return, the group will receive 4 boosts for each giveaway.
Android: Google Play, APK from the official website or verified channel.
iOS: App Store.
Desktop: the official website or GitHub.
macOS: App Store, the official website or verified channel.
Unigram for Windows 10+: Microsoft Store | Direct download | Installation instructions
#update #Android #iOS #Desktop #macOS #Unigram #boosts
⭐ Telegram Is Developing Premium Features for Business
Lines have been noticed in the source code of the Beta version of Telegram for Android that point to the release of business features in the Telegram Premium subscription:
• Your business opening hours: Entrepreneurs will be able to specify opening hours of their organization inside the messenger so clients know when they can contact for business issues.
• Prepared replies: It will be possible to send pre-prepared messages using text, image and video formats. The new feature will help business people reply faster to their clients' requests using prepared response templates for FAQs.
It is important to note that now only mentions of these features have been found in Telegram's code and that these updates have not been officially announced yet, so the final version of the features may have some changes.
#Premium
⚡ Features of the Boost System in Groups
The @tginfo editors discovered new images on Telegram's translation platform and noticed the following features that are related to the ability to boost groups:
• Updated screen with group level and number of active boosts.
• In addition to the special link, it will be possible to give your boost using the three-dot menu.
• When one of the users gives the group their boosts, a system message will appear in the group.
• The giveaway message will be sent to chat on behalf of the administrator who organized this giveaway.
• The ability to set a public emoji pack in group will be available in Group Settings › Appearance
• All group members will see a note that they can use the chat emoji pack even without a Telegram Premium.
We talked about what features will be available to groups with the addition of the boost system in this post.
#boosts
Telegram X in AppGallery
Telegram X is now available in the Huawei app store. The client was added to the AppGallery earlier, but only recently received support for Huawei services, which allows you to use notifications on devices without Google Mobile Services.
You can download the app from AppGallery here.
#TelegramX #Android
Telegram for Android Has Been Updated to Version 10.6.4
In this version, the developers have simplified access to the chat search. Now users can tap and hold the chat header to make an input field appear.
Earlier, the ability to quickly open a search was only available to users of Telegram for iOS.
In addition, some bugs have been fixed in the new version.
#update #Android
Read Time in Private Chats
• In private chats, you can now see the exact time the message was read.
• A separate private setting was also added which can be found in Privacy > Read Time.
• If you have hid your last seen from certain users, you are also able to hide the message read times from them.
• For privacy reasons, read times in both private chats and groups are kept only for 7 days.
More on this update can be found here.