Telegram founder Pavel Durov has pledged hundreds of thousands of bucks in Bitcoin to VPN companies who withstand attempts to prohibit the app in Russia.
This follows tries via Russian telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor to dam the app, and its banning of over 15 million internet Protocol addresses in the usa.
The bans encompass address blocks belonging to Amazon and Google.
Roskomnadzor’s push to ban Telegram has led to collateral damage to the usa’s retail and banking sectors, which depend on cloud services whose IP addresses were blocked.
“regardless of the ban, we haven’t seen a huge drop in consumer engagement up to now, for the reason that Russians have a tendency to skip the ban with VPNs and proxies,” stated Durov.
Durov thanked Russian customers for their guide, and thanked Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft for not taking part in political censorship.
“Russia bills for round 7% of the Telegram consumer base. although we lose that complete marketplace, Telegram’s natural growth in other regions will catch up on this loss inside more than one months.”
Durov referred to as for others to help the efforts of VPN and proxy companies which assist guard internet freedoms in Russia.
