Telegram was founded in 2013 by two Russian brothers, Nikolai and Pavel Durov. After fleeing Russia, the brothers founded Telegram as a way to communicate outside the Kremlin's orbit. They now run it from Dubai, and Pavel Durov says it has more than 500 million monthly active users. 'Wild West' WhatsApp, a rival messaging platform, introduced some measures to counter disinformation when Covid-19 was first sweeping the world. In 2018, Russia banned Telegram although it reversed the prohibition two years later.
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