"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. It is unclear who runs the account, although Russia's official Ministry of Foreign Affairs Twitter account promoted the Telegram channel on Saturday and claimed it was operated by "a group of experts & journalists." Perpetrators of such fraud use various marketing techniques to attract subscribers on their social media channels. Stocks dropped on Friday afternoon, as gains made earlier in the day on hopes for diplomatic progress between Russia and Ukraine turned to losses. Technology stocks were hit particularly hard by higher bond yields. On Feb. 27, however, he admitted from his Russian-language account that "Telegram channels are increasingly becoming a source of unverified information related to Ukrainian events."
from ru
