Mon, Jun 16, 2025
Whatsapp

Brazil bans Telegram ahead of presidential election

Reported by:  PTC News Desk  Edited by:  Shgun S -- March 19th 2022 04:23 PM
Brazil bans Telegram ahead of presidential election

Brazil bans Telegram ahead of presidential election

The Brazilian Supreme Court has banned Telegram across the nation as it failed to comply with orders from Brazilian authorities. Judge Alexandre de Moraes on Friday ordered the internet providers and digital stores to block the messaging application and remove messages found to contain disinformation, The Verge reported. The significant move by the top court comes at the time when President Jair Bolsonaro has been reportedly encouraging his base to follow him on Telegram as he is gearing up to seek re-election in October. Telegram banned in Brazil Following the shutdown in Brazil, Telegram's founder and CEO Pavel Durov issued a statement and said that the ban happened because his company was checking the wrong email address. "It seems that we had an issue with emails going between our telegram.org corporate addresses and the Brazilian Supreme Court. As a result of this miscommunication, the Court ruled to ban Telegram for being unresponsive. On behalf of our team, I apologize to the Brazilian Supreme Court for our negligence. We definitely could have done a better job," said Durov. Also Read | Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskyy calls for restoring territorial integrity, says 'time for meeting has come' He further added, "We complied with an earlier court decision in late February and responded with a suggestion to send future takedown requests to a dedicated email address. Unfortunately, our response must have been lost, because the Court used the old general-purpose email address in further attempts to reach us. As a result, we missed its decision in early March that contained a follow-up takedown request. Luckily, we have now found and processed it, delivering another report to the Court today." The Telegram founder also urged the court to "consider delaying its ruling." Telegram gets new download manager, live streaming with other apps and more "Because tens of millions of Brazilians rely on Telegram to communicate with family, friends and colleagues, I ask the Court to consider delaying its ruling for a few days at its discretion to allow us to remedy the situation by appointing a representative in Brazil and setting up a framework to react to future pressing issues like this in an expedited manner," the company said in a statement; adding "The last 3 weeks have been unprecedented for the world and for Telegram. Our content moderation team was flooded with requests from multiple parties. However, I am certain that once a reliable channel of communication is established, we'll be able to efficiently process takedown requests for public channels that are illegal in Brazil." Also Read | Russia threatens to attack Slovakia's S-300 air defence system supply to Ukraine -PTC News


Top News view more...

Latest News view more...

PTC NETWORK