⛔️ We’ve removed the People Nearby feature, which was used by less than 0.1% of Telegram users, but had issues with bots and scammers.
🛍 In its place, we will be launching “Businesses Nearby”, showcasing legitimate, verified businesses. These businesses will be able to display product catalogs and accept payments seamlessly.
✂️ We’ve also disabled new media uploads to Telegraph, our standalone blogging tool, which seems to have been misused by anonymous actors.
☝️ While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk.
✊ That’s why this year we are committed to turn moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise.
⛔️ We’ve removed the People Nearby feature, which was used by less than 0.1% of Telegram users, but had issues with bots and scammers.
🛍 In its place, we will be launching “Businesses Nearby”, showcasing legitimate, verified businesses. These businesses will be able to display product catalogs and accept payments seamlessly.
✂️ We’ve also disabled new media uploads to Telegraph, our standalone blogging tool, which seems to have been misused by anonymous actors.
☝️ While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk.
✊ That’s why this year we are committed to turn moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise.
But Kliuchnikov, the Ukranian now in France, said he will use Signal or WhatsApp for sensitive conversations, but questions around privacy on Telegram do not give him pause when it comes to sharing information about the war. Although some channels have been removed, the curation process is considered opaque and insufficient by analysts. At this point, however, Durov had already been working on Telegram with his brother, and further planned a mobile-first social network with an explicit focus on anti-censorship. Later in April, he told TechCrunch that he had left Russia and had “no plans to go back,” saying that the nation was currently “incompatible with internet business at the moment.” He added later that he was looking for a country that matched his libertarian ideals to base his next startup. In December 2021, Sebi officials had conducted a search and seizure operation at the premises of certain persons carrying out similar manipulative activities through Telegram channels. 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.
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