"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. Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Durov wrote that Telegram was "increasingly becoming a source of unverified information," and he worried about the app being used to "incite ethnic hatred." In 2018, Russia banned Telegram although it reversed the prohibition two years later. Such instructions could actually endanger people — citizens receive air strike warnings via smartphone alerts. But because group chats and the channel features are not end-to-end encrypted, Galperin said user privacy is potentially under threat.
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