False news often spreads via public groups, or chats, with potentially fatal effects. Some people used the platform to organize ahead of the storming of the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, and last month Senator Mark Warner sent a letter to Durov urging him to curb Russian information operations on Telegram. WhatsApp, a rival messaging platform, introduced some measures to counter disinformation when Covid-19 was first sweeping the world. Although some channels have been removed, the curation process is considered opaque and insufficient by analysts. In 2018, Russia banned Telegram although it reversed the prohibition two years later.
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