Telegram was co-founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the brothers who had previously created VKontakte. VK is Russiaâs 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 Russiaâs fourth most-visited website, after Yandex, YouTube and Googleâs Russian-language homepage. In 2016, Forbesâ Michael Solomon described Pavel Durov (pictured, below) as the âMark Zuckerberg of Russia.â 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." "The argument from Telegram is, 'You should trust us because we tell you that we're trustworthy,'" MarÊchal said. "It's really in the eye of the beholder whether that's something you want to buy into." You may recall that, back when Facebook started changing WhatsAppâs terms of service, a number of news outlets reported on, and even recommended, switching to Telegram. Pavel Durov even said that users should delete WhatsApp âunless you are cool with all of your photos and messages becoming public one day.â But Telegram canât be described as a more-secure version of WhatsApp. The War on Fakes channel has repeatedly attempted to push conspiracies that footage from Ukraine is somehow being falsified. One post on the channel from February 24 claimed without evidence that a widely viewed photo of a Ukrainian woman injured in an airstrike in the city of Chuhuiv was doctored and that the woman was seen in a different photo days later without injuries. The post, which has over 600,000 views, also baselessly claimed that the woman's blood was actually makeup or grape juice.
from vn