The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had carried out a similar exercise in 2017 in a matter related to circulation of messages through WhatsApp. Telegram has become more interventionist over time, and has steadily increased its efforts to shut down these accounts. But this has also meant that the company has also engaged with lawmakers more generally, although it maintains that it doesn’t do so willingly. For instance, in September 2021, Telegram reportedly blocked a chat bot in support of (Putin critic) Alexei Navalny during Russia’s most recent parliamentary elections. Pavel Durov was quoted at the time saying that the company was obliged to follow a “legitimate” law of the land. He added that as Apple and Google both follow the law, to violate it would give both platforms a reason to boot the messenger from its stores. Also in the latest update is the ability for users to create a unique @username from the Settings page, providing others with an easy way to contact them via Search or their t.me/username link without sharing their phone number. Telegram users are able to send files of any type up to 2GB each and access them from any device, with no limit on cloud storage, which has made downloading files more popular on the platform. "He has kind of an old-school cyber-libertarian world view where technology is there to set you free," Maréchal said.
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