Comment by flexagoon

I have three Telegram channels with a few hundred subscribers each, and I also use the service daily, as I'm Russian as well.

I generally agree with you that Durov makes a lot of incredibly stupid decisions. I think pretty much everyone in the "Telegram community" (eg. channel administrators, bot/client developers, etc.) would agree that the changes Telegram is introducing are often bad.

The issue, though, is that there isn't any alternative right now - Telegram is the best messenger out there in terms of general usage. So while I do hate what they're doing sometimes, I still use the product and even pay for Telegram Premium. It's bad enough to be mildly annoying, but not bar enough to actually make people leave the platform.

Edit: just as I was writing this, Telegram introduced a new feature. I'm not sure if I love it or hate it to be honest, it's a smart way for them to save money, but it is pretty weird: https://t.me/tginfo/3942