🏆 Telegram is launching a $200,000 contest for content creators.

🎬 Create a video about digital freedom using ideas and footage from this speech — plus any content or ideas of your own.

📈 Pass 10,000+ organic views for a chance to win a share of the prize fund.

📣 Full details in the @contest channel.

⛔️ The UK government wants to ban social media for children under 16.

But banning social media for kids only puts them in greater danger.

They will be pushed to use VPNs — and unlock far worse illegal content.

We’ve seen this before.

When the Russian government banned Telegram, 95% of Russian teenagers kept using it. They just moved to VPNs. Same in Iran.

Parents already have the tools to restrict their kids’ digital habits: parental controls, screen-time limits — or no smartphone at all.

🤦‍♂️ Instead, many parents give toddlers iPads just to keep them quiet.

No amount of government regulation will fix that.

Under the new law, all social media users in the UK will have to “prove” they’re over 16 — with an ID, face scan or bank card.

🚨 Thousands in the UK are already arrested for political posts every year.

Is this really about protecting children — or identifying more people to arrest?

P. S. More about digital freedom in my speech — the source material for our $200,000 clipping contest.

🚫 India’s IT ministry banned Telegram for one week because some users shared leaked exam questions.

This punishes 150 million ordinary Telegram users in India — not the insiders who leaked the exam materials.

And the ban hasn't stopped anything. The leaks just moved to other apps.

🛡 We’ve done a lot to help fix the problem — even though its source is not Telegram.

Over the past few weeks, we removed hundreds of channels sharing leaked exam materials and related scams in India.

We’ve also been making the “edited” label more visible to prevent backdating scams.

🏳️ Telegram is a force for good. Banning it — even temporarily — is a mistake.

⚠️ Indian telecom Reliance is sabotaging access to Telegram for millions of users OUTSIDE India (including the UAE) via a rogue method called BGP hijacking.

🧨 The sabotage seems intentional, as Reliance has ignored multiple reports.

😞 This may be part of a competitive war, as Reliance is partially owned by Meta — the company behind WhatsApp.

🌐 Network operators are advised to reject unauthorized BGP announcements from Reliance (AS18101) to prevent route hijacks and ensure stable Internet access for their users.

🤔 Such abuse of global Internet routing is suspicous. I wouldn’t be surprised if Reliance/WhatsApp were also behind the recent lobbying effort to ban Telegram in India.

🔄 UPDATE: 4 hours after this post, Reliance had to stop the malicious routing. Thanks for the public support, everyone! 🙏