It is unclear who runs the account, although Russia's official Ministry of Foreign Affairs Twitter account promoted the Telegram channel on Saturday and claimed it was operated by "a group of experts & journalists." "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. But because group chats and the channel features are not end-to-end encrypted, Galperin said user privacy is potentially under threat. He adds: "Telegram has become my primary news source." False news often spreads via public groups, or chats, with potentially fatal effects.
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