False news often spreads via public groups, or chats, with potentially fatal effects. 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." On Telegramโs website, it says that Pavel Durov โsupports Telegram financially and ideologically while Nikolai (Duvov)โs input is technological.โ Currently, the Telegram team is based in Dubai, having moved around from Berlin, London and Singapore after departing Russia. Meanwhile, the company which owns Telegram is registered in the British Virgin Islands. "And that set off kind of a battle royale for control of the platform that Durov eventually lost," said Nathalie Marรฉchal of the Washington advocacy group Ranking Digital Rights. On Feb. 27, however, he admitted from his Russian-language account that "Telegram channels are increasingly becoming a source of unverified information related to Ukrainian events."
from fr