[rozhok]

Telegram is a publishing platform. It's a big deal in the post-soviet countries. The "channels" thing is widely used for publishing by media, gov and bloggers. It's more like social network than plain messenger for a long time already.

I did similar rss-like implementation for my own needs because of frustration of reading and experience, also there is a bunch of similar services.

The reason for not using microblogging is engagement. No one will read it and no one comment on it. Telegram had built-in comments for channel post and people actively interacting here.

I'm somewhat popular blogger in my niche and so far telegram is the best channel I have. I repost all stuff to my own site and medium, but it gain a fraction of views and interactions I get on telegram.

[xcdzvyn]

Yeah, this is correct. Even the Ukrainian government have a Telegram channel for announcements.

edit: Unsurprisingly, the author of this repo is Belarusian :)

[gleb_the_human]

You are right, Telegram is VERY popular media platform in Eastern Europe. In particular it's very popular tool to resist government's censorship and propaganda in such dictatorship's states like Russia or Belarus. People are put in jail even if they just read some opposition telegram channels, so using bridges like this one is an attempt to mitigate those risks.