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Telegram | DID YOU KNOW?
In 2014, Pavel Durov fled the country after allies of the Kremlin took control of the social networking site most know just as VK. Russia's intelligence agency had asked Durov to turn over the data of anti-Kremlin protesters. Durov refused to do so. DFR Lab sent the image through Microsoft Azure's Face Verification program and found that it was "highly unlikely" that the person in the second photo was the same as the first woman. The fact-checker Logically AI also found the claim to be false. The woman, Olena Kurilo, was also captured in a video after the airstrike and shown to have the injuries. The message was not authentic, with the real Zelenskiy soon denying the claim on his official Telegram channel, but the incident highlighted a major problem: disinformation quickly spreads unchecked on the encrypted app. The Security Service of Ukraine said in a tweet that it was able to effectively target Russian convoys near Kyiv because of messages sent to an official Telegram bot account called "STOP Russian War." Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images
from FR