The fight for a freer web continues published : 17 Mar 2021 at 04:00 25 The social media platform Telegram has over 500 million users with over 55 million active every day. Unlike other platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and others, you are free to express your opinion there without being cancelled, shadow banned or throttled in searches. There are other platforms also emerging to compete with the giants but there are problems. Bank and payment gateways are facing pressure to no longer support competitors to the giants. The slickness of the platforms is not quite there yet and others like Rumble still have more and longer ads than YouTube. That said I recently watched a longer clip on YouTube and faced 10 ad breaks averaging four minutes apart. Eventually the competitive platforms will grow as more and more opinions are suppressed by the giants. The previously cancelled Parler is back but some are questioning their longevity on a California-based platform.