Telegram Temporarily Removed from the App Store Due to Prohibited Content — Reuters
On the night of August 4, Apple temporarily removed the Telegram messaging app from the App Store after discovering material depicting child sexual abuse within it. The app was reinstated in the store only after Telegram removed the prohibited content and blocked the user who posted it.
The company did not specify in which section of the messaging app the prohibited material was posted, how long it remained available, or how it was discovered.
Telegram declined to comment on the details of the incident, limiting itself to an announcement that the app had been reinstated in the App Store.
According to App Store guidelines, services that host user-generated content are required to moderate prohibited material, provide a way to report it, and block violators. If these requirements are not met, Apple may temporarily remove the app from the store until the violations are resolved.
As Reuters notes, the reason for Telegram’s brief removal was not a technical malfunction of the app, but the presence of prohibited content and the need to remove it.
While Telegram was unavailable in the App Store, copies of the messaging app already installed on users’ devices continued to function, but new users were unable to download the app.
This was reported by Reuters.
As a reminder, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) of the Russian Federation has opened an antitrust case against Apple. The reason was Apple’s failure to comply with the requirement to pre-install the Russian app store RuStore and the spyware-laden messenger Max on iOS devices.
In Russia, there have been service disruptions for the South Korean messaging app KakaoTalk and the Turkish app BiP, both of which gained popularity following restrictions on Telegram. This was reported by the Center for Countering Disinformation.
