Wondering why Telegram won’t let you search for people nearby? Discover the reasons behind this decision and alternative ways to connect on the platform.
Beyond just a simple messaging app, Telegram offers you a ton of features that make it stand out from WhatsApp. Because of this, today we will explain why Telegram does not let you search for people nearby . So, if you wanted to enjoy this very special feature of the app again, then this information will be of interest to you.
Telegram has become one of the most interesting apps in the history of the mobile universe . However, not everyone knows exactly what to do to take full advantage of its potential. There are several little-explored features that take your experience in the app to another level.
How to fix People Nearby not showing up on Telegram.
Do you want to continue taking advantage of this app’s goodness? Then find out how to fix People Nearby not showing up on Telegram . This section was important for many users, but for some time now it has stopped working properly.
People Nearby is an interesting Telegram feature that offered the possibility of talking to users near your location . This section of the application showed a list of those people who also enabled the People Nearby feature and are located just a few meters away from you. However, at this time things have changed radically.
In case you didn’t know, months ago Pavel Durov (CEO of Telegram) announced that the messaging app would improve moderation on the platform by removing some features that have been used for illegal activities. Unfortunately, Durov was accused of “enabling” criminal activities on the app , stemming from the “People Nearby” feature.
In a post on X, Pavel said that the messaging app was “committed to turning moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism to one of praise.” Because of this, the team proceeded to remove the feature of finding people nearby as it was the source of problems with both bots and scammers. According to Telegram’s CEO, this feature of the app was being misused by anonymous actors .
“While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities creates a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our nearly one billion users at risk ,” he said. As you have just seen, the company’s decision to remove this feature is key to clearing Telegram’s name and preventing bad actors from continuing to do their thing .
Despite this situation, a huge wave of YouTube videos and Internet content explaining a supposed way to re-activate this People Nearby feature on Telegram has emerged over the last few days. However, we have followed the steps of several of these fake tutorials to see if they work and the results have been negative. What does this mean? Well, they are simply people taking advantage of the situation to create content , whether video or written, in order to get clicks or visits.
When situations like this arise where a feature disappears from a popular app, it’s normal for people to want to take advantage of it and turn it into organic traffic. However, there is currently no way to fix this feature on Telegram, so we have to wait for an official announcement from the company to indicate whether it will be available again at some point .