Continuing its crackdown against entities allegedly involved in a front-running scam using messaging app Telegram, Sebi on Thursday carried out search and seizure operations at the premises of eight entities in multiple locations across the country. In the United States, Telegram's lower public profile has helped it mostly avoid high level scrutiny from Congress, but it has not gone unnoticed. In 2014, Pavel Durov fled the country after allies of the Kremlin took control of the social networking site most know just as VK. Russia's intelligence agency had asked Durov to turn over the data of anti-Kremlin protesters. Durov refused to do so. Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, said: "Back in the Wild West period of content moderation, like 2014 or 2015, maybe they could have gotten away with it, but it stands in marked contrast with how other companies run themselves today." In addition, Telegram's architecture limits the ability to slow the spread of false information: the lack of a central public feed, and the fact that comments are easily disabled in channels, reduce the space for public pushback.
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