Telegram Founder Pavel Durov Says They Will Never Force Users to 'Watch 30-Second Ads'

Following WhatsApp's privacy policy tweaks, rival companies Signal and Telegram has seen a huge increase in demand with more users signing up for the messaging apps after criticizing WhatsApp's changes.

Telegram Founder Assures Users

With the demand and attention both companies are getting, Telegram founder Pavel Durov reassured its users that they will never monetize private data and force users to watch 30-second ads.

"We will never force you to view 30-second ads on Telegram. If we ever introduce ads, the ads will be shown only in large one-to-many channels which are expensive to run due to server and traffic costs (like my channel @durov) and not targeted based on any private data (unlike Facebook)," Durov said, as per LiveMint

Durov further guaranteed that Telegram won't be collecting private data and will not do user profiling, as there is no need for that.

This applies to any and all Telegram users who are not using the app's unique one-to-many channels and are instead using peer-to-peer private communications.

Talking About Signal

Besides Telegram, Signal, a rival company that is also seeing an increase in demand after the WhatsApp change, has also reassured its users the same thing: there will be no ads on the app, so there will be no private data collection and user profiling involved.

Speaking of Signal, Durov has also taken the time to talk about its rival.

"Signal represents one feature of Telegram, which is Secret Chats. If you think you need a separate app for that feature only, installing it might make sense for you," Durov said about its rival.

He also said that he personally found Secret Chats "more usable and secure."

The reassurance from Telegram and Signal are important for its new users amid the WhatsApp changes, so many may find these promises appealing.

From Millions to Billions?

However, experts do have questions, particularly on how these messaging apps will monetize in the future and ultimately how they would handle user privacy, especially if they start gaining a massive following like WhatsApp--but that doesn't mean they're extremely unpopular.

According to the online magazine, Telegram currently has around 500 million users, while Signal has over 10 million users, but what remains unclear is the number of active monthly users.

It won't be surprising to see Signal reach more people, especially with the endorsement of Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX founder and CEO, and the world's richest man as of date.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp has over two billion users, according to Strait Times, so while Telegram is popular, the Facebook-owned messaging app is still ahead of its competitors, but with the way things are going, the number might decrease significantly.

For those who are unaware of the issue, WhatsApp has recently updated its privacy policy.

Basically, the company is asking its users to allow the app to access their Facebook Messenger information, and failure to do so before February 8 will lead to the termination of their WhatsApp account.

Furthermore, the company will also be rolling out advertising and e-commerce on the platform.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by: Nhx Tingson