WhatsApp, a rival messaging platform, introduced some measures to counter disinformation when Covid-19 was first sweeping the world. "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. The War on Fakes channel has repeatedly attempted to push conspiracies that footage from Ukraine is somehow being falsified. One post on the channel from February 24 claimed without evidence that a widely viewed photo of a Ukrainian woman injured in an airstrike in the city of Chuhuiv was doctored and that the woman was seen in a different photo days later without injuries. The post, which has over 600,000 views, also baselessly claimed that the woman's blood was actually makeup or grape juice. The picture was mixed overseas. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 1.6%, under pressure from U.S. regulatory scrutiny on New York-listed Chinese companies. Stocks were more buoyant in Europe, where Frankfurt’s DAX surged 1.4%. Now safely in France with his spouse and three of his children, Kliuchnikov scrolls through Telegram to learn about the devastation happening in his home country.
from br
