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Central Asian Brief 🇺🇿🇹🇲🇰🇬🇰🇿🇹🇯 Telegram | DID YOU KNOW?
Date: | Central Asian Brief 🇺🇿🇹🇲🇰🇬🇰🇿🇹🇯
As the war in Ukraine rages, the messaging app Telegram has emerged as the go-to place for unfiltered live war updates for both Ukrainian refugees and increasingly isolated Russians alike. Pavel Durov, a billionaire who embraces an all-black wardrobe and is often compared to the character Neo from "the Matrix," funds Telegram through his personal wealth and debt financing. And despite being one of the world's most popular tech companies, Telegram reportedly has only about 30 employees who defer to Durov for most major decisions about the platform. 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. He floated the idea of restricting the use of Telegram in Ukraine and Russia, a suggestion that was met with fierce opposition from users. Shortly after, Durov backed off the idea. 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.
Central Asian Brief 🇺🇿🇹🇲🇰🇬🇰🇿🇹🇯 from NL