WhatsApp blocks links with ‘telegram’ in them

It turns out that WhatsApp does not convert links where ‘telegram’ is followed by a period and at least two letters into a clickable link. As far as we know, it is at least the last version of WhatsApp that came out on November 24.

It is not clear whether the blocking has also worked since then. On a forum on Reddit, several users with different versions confirm that the ‘problem’ does not exist there. Whether this is a conscious action or something else is not clear, but it is that every sentence with the word ‘telegram.’ followed by a domain name of at least two characters in it is not acceptable according to WhatsApp.

It is also not possible to share or copy a message with ‘telegram.xx’ in it, which seems to be possible with any other message. It is not known why the term appears to be on a ‘blacklist’ or whether there are other words where this is the case. WhatsApp has not yet responded to the report. Telegram is a competitor of WhatsApp. After WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook, many users on the internet indicated that they would switch to Telegram, among others. Indeed, competing chat services grew after that, but WhatsApp itself did so afterwards.

Left: Telegram link not clickable Middle: Telegram.org message cannot be copied or forwarded Right: Boe.org message can be forwarded or copied