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1⃣ Let's start with the debut of Group Help on Telegram. You created Group Help out of necessity or passion. Was there a particular event that convinced you to do so?
Group Help was born in April 2016, just a few days after Telegram released the update that allowed bots to ban users from groups. Previously, this wasn't possible, so there were only group management userbots.
I had already started developing bots a few weeks earlier and was also frequenting various Telegram groups, so I realized it would make sense to create a group management bot that could replace the userbots used at the time. So I started testing it in the groups I frequented, and then it spread on its own, group after group.
2⃣ You are now a Telegram veteran, many users back in 2016 weren't on Telegram yet, what was the moderation bot situation like back then?
The situation was very critical: there were no protection tools on either the bot or Telegram side, so even a storm/flood attack was very effective at seriously damaging groups. There were indeed some protective userbots, but they were not widespread. Even after the birth of Group Help, it was still difficult to contain these types of attacks effectively and automatically, since bots still couldn't delete messages.
One of the most secure countermeasures was blacklisting malicious users/userbots to ban them before they could do any damage. In collaboration with IATA (a very popular group network at the time), I implemented a well-designed blacklist that was successful and helped spread Group Help.
3⃣ Are you currently feeling competition from bots like Rose, GladOs, and Combot? Do you know their respective developers, or are you more reserved?
I often talk with the owner of Rose and occasionally with the owner of Combot: ours is a common front "against" Telegram, there's no war between us. I don't know anyone from GladOS, but Russians tend to be more closed-minded in their language network.
In the past, I think I felt more competition, but today I'm just concerned about offering a good product and I don't worry about whether others are more or less successful than me. Of course, we all observe each other, as is normal; competition pushes us to improve and helps us come up with new ideas.
Those who have taken an aggressive approach often haven't achieved great results; a recent case was that of T22 (Mee6).
4⃣ If I asked you to make a top 5 of the bots you are most proud of having created/participated in the development of, what would it be?
It's hard to classify them; I'm very proud of all three of my main bots for different reasons.
Group Help was obviously my first major project, Chelp has given me a lot of satisfaction since I took it over four years ago, and Modular is my latest gem and the one I use most on a daily basis.
I've created other smaller bots, both public and private, but nothing as noteworthy as the three main ones.