“We’ve had surges of downloads before,” said Pavel Durov, Telegram’s chief executive, in a message on the app on Tuesday. Signal added nearly 1.3 million users on Monday alone, after averaging just 50,000 downloads a day last year, according to estimates from Apptopia, an app-data firm. On Tuesday, Telegram said it added more than 25 million users over the previous three days, pushing it to over 500 million users. The result was a mass migration that, if it lasts, could weaken the power of Facebook and other big tech companies.

The notification set off a wave of anxiety, fueled by viral chain messages that falsely claimed that Facebook could read WhatsApp messages. In response, conservatives sought out new apps where they could communicate.Īt the same time, privacy worries rose over WhatsApp, which last week reminded users in a pop-up notification that it shares some of their data with its parent company. Amazon, Apple and Google also cut off support for Parler, a social network popular with Mr. Tech companies including Facebook and Twitter removed thousands of far-right accounts - including President Trump’s - after the storming of the Capitol. Their sudden jump in popularity was spurred by a series of events last week that stoked growing anxiety over some of the big tech companies and their communication apps, like WhatsApp, which Facebook owns. Telegram offers some encrypted messaging options, but is largely popular for its group-based chat rooms where people can discuss a variety of subjects. Signal allows messages to be sent with “end-to-end encryption,” meaning no one but the sender and receiver can read its contents. Over the past week, tens of millions of people have downloaded Signal and Telegram, making them the two hottest apps in the world.

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