Telegram and Twitter/X have become the two leading platforms for communication and information sharing. However, as the arrest of Pavel Durov shows, these platforms come with inherent limitations that hinder true freedom of expression and user privacy.
First, I believe that what has led to the prosecution and arrest of Pavel Durov was much less about the one-to-one or group messaging features of Telegram. The discussion on the strength and utility of Telegram’s proprietary end-to-end encryption is distracting from what I think made Telegram and Pavel Durov a target of governments: censorship- and algorithm-free one-to-many communication channels.
Telegram established itself as a crucial source for uncensored and real-time information during any critical world event; during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ukraine war, and now Israel-Palestine.
Twitter has always been the preferred platform for one-to-many communication. And as X, under new ownership, free speech has improved drastically. Yet, X still faces issues of algorithmic bias and manipulation of public discourse.
In contrast to X and other social networks, Pavel Durov choose a non-algorithmic approach without a timeline for Telegram. Instead, users follow channels where the content is shown – like in a chat – in a chronological form without any censorship.
However, Telegram still relies on centralized servers for message storage and delivery. This centralization makes the platform vulnerable to political attacks, government pressures, potential censorship, shutdowns, and data breaches.
On the other hand, X, despite its wide reach and real-time nature, is plagued by its algorithmic nature and lack of privacy. For most, X’s algorithm dictate what content users see, often creating echo chambers and limiting exposure to diverse perspectives. Its centralized structure allows for arbitrary changes in policies and features, at the expense of user experience and privacy. Additionally, X’s data collection practices for targeting advertising and training the LLM Grok s concerning from a user privacy perspective.
Most crucially, the centralized nature of these platforms requires users to trust these platforms not censor content, suspend accounts, and enforce arbitrary rules. It also gives governments through political pressure – as we experience with the arrest of Pavel Durov – to enforce censorship or even a shut-down of the service. The centralized nature also means users have little control over their own data and no ownership of their social graphs.
While decentralized social networks like Farcaster or Bluesky have paved the way for decentralized social networking, they still largely mimic traditional social media structures with feeds and follower systems. Telegram’s channels are a case study for effective one-to-many communication, yet they are centralized and vulnerable to government pressure and censorship.
There is a need for a truly decentralized, censorship-resistant platform focused solely on one-to-many communication without the distractions of feeds, likes, and algorithms.
How could such a decentralized communication network look like?
A Decentralized, Algorithm-Free Communication Platform
I’m envisioning a platform that (like Telegram) moves away from the algorithmic and chronological feeds – let’s call it Beacon for now.
At the heart of Beacon is a hybrid architecture that combines the strengths of blockchain technology with an advanced Distributed Hash Table (DHT) system. The combination could address the scalability issues that plague pure blockchain solutions, while maintaining the integrity and immutability that blockchain provides. The lightweight blockchain layer would handle user authentication, channel metadata, and access control, while the advanced DHT layer would manage content storage and distribution.
The most important feature of Beacon is the focus on pure one-to-many communication. Users can reach their audience directly, without intermediaries or algorithmic interference. Instead of relying on feeds or algorithms to surface content, Beacon would employ a push-based system where users receive direct notifications from the channels they follow, called “Beacons”.
To ensure that content remains accessible indefinitely, users contribute local or self-hosted storage to the DHT system and/or purchase storage on a decentralized blockchain. Users automatically host not only their own posts but also all posts they interact with – these are the posts they like – and all Beacons they subscribe to and receive. This way, even if the original creator goes offline, the content would persist through the collective storage of its followers. The more followers a user has, the more decentralized and uncensorable the posts become.
Furthermore, think of adaptive content replication using AI to predict popularity and access patterns, zero-knowledge subscriptions for anonymous yet personalized content delivery, and quantum-resistant cryptography to future-proof the platform against emerging threats to become an integral part of Beacon.
From a user perspective, I believe Beacon should – just like Telegram – offer an intuitive interface that abstracts away the underlying complexity of the decentralized system. Users could easily create and manage multiple Beacons, set up tiered access levels, and incorporate interactive elements like polls, voice messages, and live-streaming. The goal would be to make decentralized communication accessible and appealing to the masses.
Beacon, or a platform like it, could offer a truly open, efficient, and user-controlled communication ecosystem that reshapes how communities, creators, and organizations interact in the digital age.