Despite the fact that Instagram is currently the world's most popular photo-sharing platform, the Facebook-owned company wants to play hard ball with its competitors. Instagram recently announced that it is blocking deeplinks to two of its biggest competitors, Telegram and Snapchat.

A couple of months ago, Telegram claims that its users are experiencing censorship issues on WhatsApp, another Facebook owned application. To make matters worse, Instagram will start blocking Telegram links on its platform.

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Telegram have built-in photo editing features that closely resembles that of Instagram. On the other hand, Snapchat is the most preferred tool used for sending or sharing photos.

Before the new censorship order, Instagram users can link their profile to Telegram. Following the update, should users try to perform the same action, they will receive a notification message that reads, "Links asking someone to add you on another service aren't supported on Instagram."

Telegram representatives went on to Twitter to voice their concern about the latest censorship move. A tweet posted on the company's official Twitter account reads, "Another Facebook tentacle closes on users' ability to share a link to their Telegram profile. #hypocrisy."

Following Telegram's publicized tirade on the new Instagram rule, Facebook officials issued a statement claiming that the "add me" links do not correlate with their vision for the platform. The social networking giants added that the feature is rarely used by its users.

It appears that while the option was disables, other links are still active on Instagram. According to The Verge, users of the photo-sharing application can still add links to their websites, Facebook profiles, YouTube channel, Twitter or even blogs.

According to The Guardian, links to Snapchat and Telegram are more single-purpose compared to other networks which focused largely on adding to contacts. The recent scuffle between Instagram and Telegram is reminiscent of what transpired in 2012 between the photo-sharing application and Twitter. The microblogging platform decided to block Instagram from using the "find friends" feature on its API.

As it appears, Twitter was right about its concerns regarding Instagram. The photo-sharing application is has now surpassed Twitter in terms of user number which is now estimated to be around 400 million compared to Twitter's 320 million user base.