Telegram founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, has announced that he recently started issuing bitcoin grants to individuals and companies that ran socks5 proxies and VPNs, and that he plans to donate millions of dollars this year alone in order to fund such technologies which circumvent government bans on his Telegram messaging service.
Following a ban issued by a Russian court last week, Durov took to his Telegram channel and announced:
“To support internet freedoms in Russia and elsewhere I started giving out bitcoin grants to individuals and companies who run socks5 proxies and VPN. I am happy to donate millions of dollars this year to this cause, and hope that other people will follow. I called this Digital Resistance – a decentralized movement standing for digital freedoms and progress globally.”
Durov made several other points in his post; firstly, he thanked Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft for not “taking part in political censorship” – presumably because they kept Telegram available for download in Russia through their app stores. He also stated that Russians make up 7% of the entire Telegram user base and if they do get forced off the service, that other regions growth would replace the lost users in just a couple of months.
Are you in a country which bans Telegram? How do you bypass the ban?
Source: Pavel Durov (requires Telegram)
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