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." The fake Zelenskiy account reached 20,000 followers on Telegram before it was shut down, a remedial action that experts say is all too rare. On February 27th, Durov posted that Channels were becoming a source of unverified information and that the company lacks the ability to check on their veracity. He urged users to be mistrustful of the things shared on Channels, and initially threatened to block the feature in the countries involved for the length of the war, saying that he didn’t want Telegram to be used to aggravate conflict or incite ethnic hatred. He did, however, walk back this plan when it became clear that they had also become a vital communications tool for Ukrainian officials and citizens to help coordinate their resistance and evacuations. Also in the latest update is the ability for users to create a unique @username from the Settings page, providing others with an easy way to contact them via Search or their t.me/username link without sharing their phone number. The last couple days have exemplified that uncertainty. On Thursday, news emerged that talks in Turkey between the Russia and Ukraine yielded no positive result. But on Friday, Reuters reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin said there had been some “positive shifts” in talks between the two sides.
from fr
