"Russians are really disconnected from the reality of what happening to their country," Andrey said. "So Telegram has become essential for understanding what's going on to the Russian-speaking world." NEWS Messages are not fully encrypted by default. That means the company could, in theory, access the content of the messages, or be forced to hand over the data at the request of a government. False news often spreads via public groups, or chats, with potentially fatal effects. Unlike Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Twitter, which run very public anti-disinformation programs, Brooking said: "Telegram is famously lax or absent in its content moderation policy."
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