Telegram was co-founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the brothers who had previously created VKontakte. VK is Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, a social network used for public and private messaging, audio and video sharing as well as online gaming. In January, SimpleWeb reported that VK was Russia’s fourth most-visited website, after Yandex, YouTube and Google’s Russian-language homepage. In 2016, Forbes’ Michael Solomon described Pavel Durov (pictured, below) as the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia.” 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. Unlike Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Twitter, which run very public anti-disinformation programs, Brooking said: "Telegram is famously lax or absent in its content moderation policy." Recently, Durav wrote on his Telegram channel that users' right to privacy, in light of the war in Ukraine, is "sacred, now more than ever." The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 230 points, or 0.7%. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.3% and 2.2%, respectively. All three indexes began the day with gains before selling off.
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