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ᴍᴀᴄʜɪɴɪᴄ ᴇᴍʙᴏᴅɪᴍᴇɴᴛ Telegram | DID YOU KNOW?
Date: | ᴍᴀᴄʜɪɴɪᴄ ᴇᴍʙᴏᴅɪᴍᴇɴᴛ
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched Russia's invasion of Ukraine in the early-morning hours of February 24, targeting several key cities with military strikes. The original Telegram channel has expanded into a web of accounts for different locations, including specific pages made for individual Russian cities. There's also an English-language website, which states it is owned by the people who run the Telegram channels. The company maintains that it cannot act against individual or group chats, which are “private amongst their participants,” but it will respond to requests in relation to sticker sets, channels and bots which are publicly available. During the invasion of Ukraine, Pavel Durov has wrestled with this issue a lot more prominently than he has before. Channels like Donbass Insider and Bellum Acta, as reported by Foreign Policy, started pumping out pro-Russian propaganda as the invasion began. So much so that the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council issued a statement labeling which accounts are Russian-backed. Ukrainian officials, in potential violation of the Geneva Convention, have shared imagery of dead and captured Russian soldiers on the platform. 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." Since its launch in 2013, Telegram has grown from a simple messaging app to a broadcast network. Its user base isn’t as vast as WhatsApp’s, and its broadcast platform is a fraction the size of Twitter, but it’s nonetheless showing its use. While Telegram has been embroiled in controversy for much of its life, it has become a vital source of communication during the invasion of Ukraine. But, if all of this is new to you, let us explain, dear friends, what on Earth a Telegram is meant to be, and why you should, or should not, need to care.
ᴍᴀᴄʜɪɴɪᴄ ᴇᴍʙᴏᴅɪᴍᴇɴᴛ from JP