Telegram has become more interventionist over time, and has steadily increased its efforts to shut down these accounts. But this has also meant that the company has also engaged with lawmakers more generally, although it maintains that it doesn’t do so willingly. For instance, in September 2021, Telegram reportedly blocked a chat bot in support of (Putin critic) Alexei Navalny during Russia’s most recent parliamentary elections. Pavel Durov was quoted at the time saying that the company was obliged to follow a “legitimate” law of the land. He added that as Apple and Google both follow the law, to violate it would give both platforms a reason to boot the messenger from its stores. As a result, the pandemic saw many newcomers to Telegram, including prominent anti-vaccine activists who used the app's hands-off approach to share false information on shots, a study from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue shows. Two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, an account on the Telegram messaging platform posing as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged his armed forces to surrender. 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. 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.
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