How to hide Telegram BOT commands when it is part of a group?

Question

I'm trying to use a Telegram BOT to send messages to a group. First, I thought that it'd be enough to know the group chat id to accomplish that, but it's not. The BOT MUST be part of that group. OK, it kind of make sense, but the problem is: When you add a BOT into a group (a large group in this case) everyone start seeing a new icon on their devices, a "slash" icon. And what do they do ? They click on it, see the list of commands, choose one of them, and all of a sudden everyone is getting a new message from the group: a "/something". Imagine dozens of people doing that ? It's pretty annoying. So, any of these would work for me:

1) Can I send messages from a BOT to a group without having that BOT in the group ? 2) Can I have a kind of "no methods" BOT, that only send messages ? 3) Can I disable "slash" icon from clients so I won't have a "bot method war" in the group ?

Thank you

Answer 1

1. No, you cannot have bots send messages to a group without being a part of that group.
2. You can simply not set commands with BotFather, and then clients will have no commands to display.
3. It is always there if a bot is in the current chat, but here is what it does with no commands set in BotFather: