"Someone posing as a Ukrainian citizen just joins the chat and starts spreading misinformation, or gathers data, like the location of shelters," Tsekhanovska said, noting how false messages have urged Ukrainians to turn off their phones at a specific time of night, citing cybersafety. Given the pro-privacy stance of the platform, it’s taken as a given that it’ll be used for a number of reasons, not all of them good. And Telegram has been attached to a fair few scandals related to terrorism, sexual exploitation and crime. Back in 2015, Vox described Telegram as “ISIS’ app of choice,” saying that the platform’s real use is the ability to use channels to distribute material to large groups at once. Telegram has acted to remove public channels affiliated with terrorism, but Pavel Durov reiterated that he had no business snooping on private conversations. In a message on his Telegram channel recently recounting the episode, Durov wrote: "I lost my company and my home, but would do it again – without hesitation." Telegram users are able to send files of any type up to 2GB each and access them from any device, with no limit on cloud storage, which has made downloading files more popular on the platform. Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Kyiv-based lawyer and head of the Center for Civil Liberties, called Durov’s position "very weak," and urged concrete improvements.
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