The next Telegram update not being available in the PlayStore yet has nothing to do with the app listing that permission in its manifest. I'm not entirely sure about what this article is trying to imply though: is it trying to say that Telegram has decided to leave that runtime permission there so Google will purge third-party forks from the PlayStore? Is it implying that Telegram's trying to push Google to remove their app from the store so they can blame it and use it as a marketing selling point? Is it simply blaming Telegram for not complying with Google's best practices, eventually leading to some controversies with Google? Telegram for Android's codebase is well known to be a mess developed by a couple of people who apparently are the only ones who can properly navigate that giant amount of code, I'm not surprised at all that there's leftovers of storage APIs meant to be used on old android versions. That's what happens when you self-impose yourself monthly deadlines for major updates. So, to me, this looks like an example of a developer improperly adapting their app to the relatively new scoped storage system. Which is a good reason to be pissed off at Telegram as a fork maintainer, but it has nothing to do with privacy. All other implications sound like conspiracies