Telegram has stolen my channel's username to sell it on auction

Today Pavel Durov just announced the launch of their dedicated platform to sell/buy premium Telegram usernames. Checking that list, I've searched my channel's username and it says is coming soon: https://fragment.com/?query=%40kissfm Going back to my channel to make sure this username belongs to me (my channel), I've noticed that the channel was transformed into a private channel, without username!

So telegram just literally stole my channel's username to sell it! Durov, what you were saying about privacy and security in Telegram? You just dropped its level yourself!

P.S. check if your usernames still yours!

I know several users who've had their names and channels stolen by this absolutely fucking asinine idea from Durov

It comes off the back of him trying to fuck over users with NFT's of all things, which received something like 30K "thumbs down" emojis (to about 800 "thumbs up") before having the counter removed

I don't know why Durov can't just do what Discord does and offer Premium. Premium garnered a less than stellar reception, but comes with actual features that users might want (increased GIF cache, bigger file download limits etc)

I am interested to hear telegram's side of this - they generally have a decent track record, i wonder if this is the case of someone screwing up and not intentional malice

if you are not paying, you are a product

It happened to channels and groups that were inactive for a long time. Durov did mention this in a message a few months ago that username squatters were becoming a problem.

And I was mad at first but it was equally my fault for leaving my public group inactive for more than 10 months, which is probably why the username disappeared.

It's a real problem on other social media websites too. For example, a totally inactive account on GitHub claimed an org name and it has no repositories, no information, It's totally empty and I can do nothing about it. Not even report it so that GitHub can look into it and unfreeze the username.

EDIT: I just checked the dates and the channel was inactive from November 10, 2021 to August 26, 2022. So basically 9-10 months. Previously, I wrote 3 months but time flies I guess.