So, uh, whenever I hear about Telegram, it’s always in relation to something bad. What gives? For Oleksandra Tsekhanovska, head of the Hybrid Warfare Analytical Group at the Kyiv-based Ukraine Crisis Media Center, the effects are both near- and far-reaching. The S&P 500 fell 1.3% to 4,204.36, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.7% to 32,943.33. The Dow posted a fifth straight weekly loss — its longest losing streak since 2019. The Nasdaq Composite tumbled 2.2% to 12,843.81. Though all three indexes opened in the green, stocks took a turn after a new report showed U.S. consumer sentiment deteriorated more than expected in early March as consumers' inflation expectations soared to the highest since 1981. Given the pro-privacy stance of the platform, it’s taken as a given that it’ll be used for a number of reasons, not all of them good. And Telegram has been attached to a fair few scandals related to terrorism, sexual exploitation and crime. Back in 2015, Vox described Telegram as “ISIS’ app of choice,” saying that the platform’s real use is the ability to use channels to distribute material to large groups at once. Telegram has acted to remove public channels affiliated with terrorism, but Pavel Durov reiterated that he had no business snooping on private conversations. Unlike Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Twitter, which run very public anti-disinformation programs, Brooking said: "Telegram is famously lax or absent in its content moderation policy."
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