Telegram CEO accuses Apple of destroying dreams and crushing entrepreneurs

The CEO of Telegram has accused Apple of destroying dreams and ruining entrepreneurship with its rules on the App Store, specifically the company’s 30% commission on in-app purchases for developers who earn more than a million dollars a year.

Writing on his Telegram channel, Pavel Durov said Apple had informed the messaging platform that it would not be able to allow content creators to use third-party payment methods for sales. Telegram allows content creators to offer access to individual channels or posts through a paywall that users could pay for with a third-party payment method and not Apple’s in-app purchase system.

Durov said Apple is “unhappy with content creators monetizing their efforts without paying a 30% tax” and that Telegram has no choice but to disable paid posts and channels on its app iOS. “This is just another example of how a trillion-dollar monopoly abuses its market dominance to the detriment of millions of users trying to monetize their own content,” Durov continued.

Durov accused Apple of destroying dreams and crushing entrepreneurs with its ‌App Store‌ tax, which charges Apple a 15% or 30% commission for most in-app purchases. Durov called on regulators in the EU, India and around the world to “start acting”. Durov’s full message is below.

Some content creators have started using third-party payment bots to sell access to individual posts on their Telegram channels. This way, content creators could receive almost 100% of whatever their subscribers paid, which was great.

Unfortunately, we learned from Apple that they are not happy with content creators monetizing their efforts without paying Apple a 30% tax. Since Apple has full control over its ecosystem, we had no alternative but to disable these paid posts on iOS devices.

This is just another example of how a trillion-dollar monopoly abuses its market dominance to the detriment of millions of users trying to monetize their own content. I hope regulators in the EU, India and elsewhere start acting before Apple destroys more dreams and crushes more entrepreneurs with a tax higher than any VAT levied by the government.

In the meantime, at Telegram, we will work to provide creators with powerful, easy-to-use tools to monetize their content – outside of Apple’s restrictive ecosystem.

This isn’t the first time Durov has spoken out against Apple. In August, the CEO took on Apple over “obscure” App Store rules.