"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. "Someone posing as a Ukrainian citizen just joins the chat and starts spreading misinformation, or gathers data, like the location of shelters," Tsekhanovska said, noting how false messages have urged Ukrainians to turn off their phones at a specific time of night, citing cybersafety. 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. Lastly, the web previews of t.me links have been given a new look, adding chat backgrounds and design elements from the fully-features Telegram Web client. 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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