The company maintains that it cannot act against individual or group chats, which are “private amongst their participants,” but it will respond to requests in relation to sticker sets, channels and bots which are publicly available. During the invasion of Ukraine, Pavel Durov has wrestled with this issue a lot more prominently than he has before. Channels like Donbass Insider and Bellum Acta, as reported by Foreign Policy, started pumping out pro-Russian propaganda as the invasion began. So much so that the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council issued a statement labeling which accounts are Russian-backed. Ukrainian officials, in potential violation of the Geneva Convention, have shared imagery of dead and captured Russian soldiers on the platform. Recently, Durav wrote on his Telegram channel that users' right to privacy, in light of the war in Ukraine, is "sacred, now more than ever." But Kliuchnikov, the Ukranian now in France, said he will use Signal or WhatsApp for sensitive conversations, but questions around privacy on Telegram do not give him pause when it comes to sharing information about the war. Telegram, which does little policing of its content, has also became a hub for Russian propaganda and misinformation. Many pro-Kremlin channels have become popular, alongside accounts of journalists and other independent observers. "Your messages about the movement of the enemy through the official chatbot … bring new trophies every day," the government agency tweeted.
from ua
