14 DAY TRIAL // The Coalition for a Safer Web (CSW) has decided to file a lawsuit against Apple, claiming the company doesn’t want to remove Telegram from the App Store despite the app being used for various malicious purposes.
In a press release, CSW says it first reached out to Apple last July, asking the company to suspend Telegram and temporarily pull it from the App Store until updates would be implemented to moderate the content on the platform.
“Despite repeated efforts by CSW to obtain a response from Apple headquarters, neither Mr. Cook nor any of his representatives responded to CSW’s correspondence,” the organization explains.
Telegram should have the same fate as Parler, group says
CSW says its 2020 research on Telegram revealed the platform is being used for “hate, incitement, and extremism,” and now that Apple decided to ban Parler for pretty much the same reasons, the messaging service should have the same fate.
“Following extensive research by CSW of TELEGRAM in early 2020 detailing TELEGRAM’s role as a social media conveyor belt of hate, incitement, and extremism, CSW initiated a public call to action urging Congress and other social media watchdogs to place pressure on TELEGRAM’S management to impose reasonable constraints on the application’s use by white supremacist, anti-Semitic extremist groups, including Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, QAnon supporters, and extremist groups based in Russia and Europe inciting violence against Jews and black Americans,” the group says in a press release.
Apple is yet to respond to the new lawsuit.
In the meantime, Telegram is benefitting from a skyrocketing number of users following WhatsApp’s recently announced privacy update. WhatsApp users are moving en-masse to platforms like Telegram and Signal, though the Facebook-owned company has recently decided to delay the release of its privacy update for three months following the negative feedback it received.