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Telegram is riding high, adding tens of million of users this year. Now the bill is coming due.Telegram is one of the few significant social-media challengers to Facebook Inc., FB -1.90% on a trajectory toward one billion users active each month by the end of 2022, up from roughly 550 million today.

Mr. Durov launched Telegram in late 2013 with his brother, Nikolai, just months before he was pushed out of VK, the Russian social-media platform he founded. Mr. Durov pitched his new app—funded with the proceeds from the VK sale—less as a business than as a way for people to send messages while avoiding government surveillance and censorship.