Artem Kliuchnikov and his family fled Ukraine just days before the Russian invasion. Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Durov wrote that Telegram was "increasingly becoming a source of unverified information," and he worried about the app being used to "incite ethnic hatred." Messages are not fully encrypted by default. That means the company could, in theory, access the content of the messages, or be forced to hand over the data at the request of a government. He adds: "Telegram has become my primary news source." Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, said: "Back in the Wild West period of content moderation, like 2014 or 2015, maybe they could have gotten away with it, but it stands in marked contrast with how other companies run themselves today."
from ms