"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." This provided opportunity to their linked entities to offload their shares at higher prices and make significant profits at the cost of unsuspecting retail investors. He said that since his platform does not have the capacity to check all channels, it may restrict some in Russia and Ukraine "for the duration of the conflict," but then reversed course hours later after many users complained that Telegram was an important source of information. Founder Pavel Durov says tech is meant to set you free
from tw
