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Bored, so I graphed 2M Telegram users by their gifts

Bored, so I graphed 2M Telegram users by their gifts

by dmpyatyi·Feb 26, 2026·4 points·2 comments
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AI Analysis

○Pass

Scraped 2M Telegram users without consent; privacy violation posing as a data viz novelty.

Strengths
  • •Achieved high scraping throughput (8k accounts/hour) using telethon + psql—technically competent data engineering.
Weaknesses
  • •Violates Telegram ToS and user privacy by mass-scraping profile gifts without consent; no opt-in or anonymization.
  • •Zero value proposition beyond novelty—'0.2% in our db' emphasizes how sparse and unrepresentative the data is.
  • •No insights, no analysis, no tool—just a graph UI; this is a dataset presented as a project, not a product.
Category
Social
Target Audience

Telegram enthusiasts, social graph researchers, network analysis hobbyists

Post Description

Telegram added gifts last year. Almost every gifts is shown on profile.

Anyone can map a graph by follow gift sender to recipient to their gifts and so on.

I used telethon and psql for this.

Scraping speed per one account - 8k/hour

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