"And that set off kind of a battle royale for control of the platform that Durov eventually lost," said Nathalie Maréchal of the Washington advocacy group Ranking Digital Rights. After fleeing Russia, the brothers founded Telegram as a way to communicate outside the Kremlin's orbit. They now run it from Dubai, and Pavel Durov says it has more than 500 million monthly active users. Stocks closed in the red Friday as investors weighed upbeat remarks from Russian President Vladimir Putin about diplomatic discussions with Ukraine against a weaker-than-expected print on U.S. consumer sentiment. The account, "War on Fakes," was created on February 24, the same day Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a "special military operation" and troops began invading Ukraine. The page is rife with disinformation, according to The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, which studies digital extremism and published a report examining the channel. 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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