"The argument from Telegram is, 'You should trust us because we tell you that we're trustworthy,'" Maréchal said. "It's really in the eye of the beholder whether that's something you want to buy into." Despite Telegram's origins, its approach to users' security has privacy advocates worried. The fake Zelenskiy account reached 20,000 followers on Telegram before it was shut down, a remedial action that experts say is all too rare. On February 27th, Durov posted that Channels were becoming a source of unverified information and that the company lacks the ability to check on their veracity. He urged users to be mistrustful of the things shared on Channels, and initially threatened to block the feature in the countries involved for the length of the war, saying that he didn’t want Telegram to be used to aggravate conflict or incite ethnic hatred. He did, however, walk back this plan when it became clear that they had also become a vital communications tool for Ukrainian officials and citizens to help coordinate their resistance and evacuations. "We as Ukrainians believe that the truth is on our side, whether it's truth that you're proclaiming about the war and everything else, why would you want to hide it?," he said.
from ar
