Germany pressures Google and Apple to remove Telegram from their app stores

The German Interior Minister has proposed that Google and Apple ban Telegram from their app stores for not fighting disinformation and hate speech.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wants Google and Apple Please remove Telegram from your app stores. The reason: Pavel Durov’s app does not cooperate enough with the authorities to combat and curb extremist speech on his platform.

Faeser advanced his intention on Wednesday in Berlin, after a meeting with the interior ministers of the different German regions. The Social Democrat who is part of the government of Olaf Scholz recalled that the large American platforms have “a social responsibility” with citizens when it comes to protecting them from hate speech and extremism, collects the Spiegel.

Other regional ministers who also participated in the meeting pointed out how Telegram has become “in a powder keg“full of deniers, conspiracy theorists and far-right people. The messaging app is often not as collaborative as other platforms when it comes to stopping groups from which fake news originates.

“What is happening in Telegram groups and channels contradicts all aspects of the compliance rules of Apple and Google, which offer this app in their stores“. However, removing Telegram from these platforms will not fix the problem: Telegram can be downloaded on Android regardless of its presence on Google Play or the App Store.

In Spain there is a similar problem. Telegram has attracted endless groups and channels of coronavirus deniers or stars of the fake news. Experts consulted by Business Insider España What Jose Ignacio Carrillo, the head of Enforcement in Smart Protection, o Big Ear Jungle, CEO of onBRANDING, have explained what it is like to deal with networks like these.

Specialists tend to agree that, contrary to what happens on proprietary platforms such as Meta (Facebook) or Twitter, the authorities usually find more difficulties when it comes to Telegram complying with their requests and remove illegal content (piracy, terrorism). Germany has taken the debate a step further by raising its ban.

In fact, last year it became known that many cybercriminals were migrating to Telegram for the simple reason that the authorities were monitoring the dark web. For weeks it was seen how groups and channels proliferated in which computer criminals stolen data and passwords were shared and sold.

Proof of this is the rise of channels in which even fake vaccination certificates for sale,

All in all, Telegram has been erected in a worthy competitor of WhatsApp. The messaging app market is still dominated by the Facebook platform, but Telegram and Signal have gained a lot of ground. Much of it came when all Facebook platforms went down for hours late last year.

In March last year, Pavel Durov, CEO and founder of Telegram, announced that he had raised 1 billion through the sale of bonds would spend on boosting your monetization strategy for the platform to remain sustainable. A few weeks ago they appeared in the application the first promoted messages in channels.

This article was published in Business Insider Spain by Alberto R. Aguiar.