Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov accused Apple of crushing dreams and ruining entrepreneurship with its App Store policies.
In a post on his Telegram channel, Durov said that Apple Inc. is abusing its ‘market dominance at the expense of millions of users who are trying to monetise their own content.’
According to 9to5Mac, Apple rejected updates to Telegram’s iOS app multiple times for violating some of the company’s guidelines, including replicating the iOS emoji design.
Telegram removes paid posts from its iOS app
Earlier reports revealed that Telegram had been quietly testing paid posts on channels and that the app is using its payment system on iOS to bypass Apple’s in-app purchases. Telegram is not testing a paid post feature, according to a spokesperson reported by 9to5Mac. Some creators started using third-party payment bots to sell access to individual posts on Telegram channels.
“Unfortunately, we received word from Apple that they were not happy with content creators monetising their efforts without paying a 30 per cent tax to Apple,” Durov wrote.
“We had no alternative but to disable such paid posts on iOS devices,” he added.
Here’s his full statement:
The platform recently slashed the subscription cost of its premium tier in India from ₹469 to ₹179.