I wondered how long it’d take before we got ads in #Telegram.

The timeline (made from memory so it’s probably not 100% accurate):

1. Shitcoin no-one asked for (which later got canned)
2. Telegram Premium (with ‘exclusive stickers’)
3. Purposely taking username handles to be resold
4. Stories
5. Chat group ‘boosting’
6. Ads in feeds (we are here)
7. ???
8. It sinks, then users flood the next VC funded chat app and cycle repeats

(edit: apparently this has been a thing in larger channels since 2021)

(originally posted at flawbee.net/s/n23-54t)

@flaw The ads have been around for a long while as far as I remember, in publicly visible channels.

@drawingdog That’s interesting to me because I did some searching and apparently it was announced around 2021? I must not have been in any feeds popular enough that met the ad threshold.

It still leaves a bitter taste considering a lot of online platforms are headed towards that phase where they start squeezing their users—usually with ads.

@flaw Yea, absolutely agreed. I'm more and more glad these days to have discovered self-hosted social media, it's fairly comfortable existing here without financial incentives!