In 2018, Russia banned Telegram although it reversed the prohibition two years later. Telegram was co-founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the brothers who had previously created VKontakte. VK is Russiaโs 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 Russiaโs fourth most-visited website, after Yandex, YouTube and Googleโs Russian-language homepage. In 2016, Forbesโ Michael Solomon described Pavel Durov (pictured, below) as the โMark Zuckerberg of Russia.โ WhatsApp, a rival messaging platform, introduced some measures to counter disinformation when Covid-19 was first sweeping the world. Some privacy experts say Telegram is not secure enough Although some channels have been removed, the curation process is considered opaque and insufficient by analysts.
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