Andrey, a Russian entrepreneur living in Brazil who, fearing retaliation, asked that NPR not use his last name, said Telegram has become one of the few places Russians can access independent news about the war. Perpetrators of such fraud use various marketing techniques to attract subscribers on their social media channels. 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. This provided opportunity to their linked entities to offload their shares at higher prices and make significant profits at the cost of unsuspecting retail investors. Investors took profits on Friday while they could ahead of the weekend, explained Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report Research. Saturday and Sunday could easily bring unfortunate news on the war front—and traders would rather be able to sell any recent winnings at Friday’s earlier prices than wait for a potentially lower price at Monday’s open.
from fr