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ⓈⒺⓇⒾⒺ Ⓓ︎Ⓡ︎ Ⓗ︎Ⓞ︎Ⓤ︎Ⓢ︎Ⓔ︎ Telegram | DID YOU KNOW?
Date: | ⓈⒺⓇⒾⒺ Ⓓ︎Ⓡ︎ Ⓗ︎Ⓞ︎Ⓤ︎Ⓢ︎Ⓔ︎
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." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces "destroy the invaders wherever we can." Telegram was co-founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the brothers who had previously created VKontakte. VK is Russia’s 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 Russia’s fourth most-visited website, after Yandex, YouTube and Google’s Russian-language homepage. In 2016, Forbes’ Michael Solomon described Pavel Durov (pictured, below) as the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia.” Official government accounts have also spread fake fact checks. An official Twitter account for the Russia diplomatic mission in Geneva shared a fake debunking video claiming without evidence that "Western and Ukrainian media are creating thousands of fake news on Russia every day." The video, which has amassed almost 30,000 views, offered a "how-to" spot misinformation. After fleeing Russia, the brothers founded Telegram as a way to communicate outside the Kremlin's orbit. They now run it from Dubai, and Pavel Durov says it has more than 500 million monthly active users.
ⓈⒺⓇⒾⒺ Ⓓ︎Ⓡ︎ Ⓗ︎Ⓞ︎Ⓤ︎Ⓢ︎Ⓔ︎ from CN