The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had carried out a similar exercise in 2017 in a matter related to circulation of messages through WhatsApp. Following this, Sebi, in an order passed in January 2022, established that the administrators of a Telegram channel having a large subscriber base enticed the subscribers to act upon recommendations that were circulated by those administrators on the channel, leading to significant price and volume impact in various scrips. 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. Continuing its crackdown against entities allegedly involved in a front-running scam using messaging app Telegram, Sebi on Thursday carried out search and seizure operations at the premises of eight entities in multiple locations across the country. For tech stocks, “the main thing is yields,” Essaye said.
from nl
