He adds: "Telegram has become my primary news source." "Your messages about the movement of the enemy through the official chatbot … bring new trophies every day," the government agency tweeted. This ability to mix the public and the private, as well as the ability to use bots to engage with users has proved to be problematic. In early 2021, a database selling phone numbers pulled from Facebook was selling numbers for $20 per lookup. Similarly, security researchers found a network of deepfake bots on the platform that were generating images of people submitted by users to create non-consensual imagery, some of which involved children. Although some channels have been removed, the curation process is considered opaque and insufficient by analysts. "And that set off kind of a battle royale for control of the platform that Durov eventually lost," said Nathalie Maréchal of the Washington advocacy group Ranking Digital Rights.
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