Apple Sued for Allowing Telegram on App Store Despite Violent, Hateful Content

By Dana Cruz First Posted: Jan 19, 2021 05:44 AM EST

(Photo : Carl Court/Getty Images)
A close-up view of the Telegram messaging app is seen on a smart phone on May 25, 2017 in London, England.

Telegram and the calls of violence on it became a sticking point for former U.S. ambassador Marc Ginsburg who filed a lawsuit against Apple for hosting the messaging app on its App Store.

Ginsburg claimed that he experiences emotional distress over Apple continuing to have Telegram under its wing, as stated in the lawsuit, reported Mashable.

Ginsburg referred to the increasing rate of calls for violence seen on Telegram's chat service, as Endgadget reported. Ginsburg filed the lawsuit alongside his anti-extremism advocacy group, The Coalition for a Safer Web.

Under the suit, he wants Apple to boot off Telegram from the App Store and pay at least $75,000 in damages for the calls for violence.

Telegram Clampdown on U.S. Channels Advocating Violence

Telegram has seen promising download numbers over the past couple of weeks. It had more than 25 million new users in the app.

People started looking for alternatives to Facebook-owned WhatsApp that recently had policy changes and right-wing site Parler that clashed with Google and Apple.

Mashable noted that after Parler getting booted from the App Store, Telegram remained firmly on service despite seeing posts from several far-right groups like the Boogaloo Bois and Proud Boys.

These groups started showing up more on the chat service after the Capitol riot on January 6, sharing hate messages and using it to recruit new members.

Even though these kinds of groups aren't new to Telegram, the increase was still noticeable recently.

In a post to his public channel, Telegram founder Pavel Durov clarified that it supports peaceful debates and protests but strictly prohibited distributing calls for violence, reported The Verge.

In light of this, the app's team "acted decisively" by clamping down on U.S. channels that pushed people to commit violent acts.

Durov said that outside of the "hundreds" of channels with this mission, Telegram managed to stop its spread or filter out "tens of thousands" of other subscribers.

Public Telegram Channels Only Part of Problem on Calls for Violence

Even though the chat service has made efforts to stop calls for violence on its site, moderation on public channels is just one part of the app's problem.

Telegram users can be a part of both private and public channels, although they would need to be invited to be part of a private group.

They can also send one-on-one messages to each other. This is where Telegram's end-to-end encryption becomes a tricky part of their efforts, an aspect that even Durov failed to discuss in his message.

Telegram talked about its efforts to stop public communities that call for violence, but it refused to discuss any complaints about private one-on-one group chats, as per its FAQ.

This caused many concerns not just because of calls for violence on the app but also because it became an avenue for other illegal activities like sharing child sexual abuse material.

Ginsburg also referenced messages on racism and anti-Semitism that was happening in the app. It can be recalled that in 2018, Telegram faced similar issues with Apple after it was kicked out of the App Store for proliferating child sexual abuse material.

The app had since promised to improve its moderation and was returned to the App Store shortly after.