Apple sued for not removing Telegram from App Store

A Washington-based non-profit group called the Coalition for a Safer Web has sued Apple for not removing the Telegram app from the App Store. The group alleges that the platform is being used by hate groups and extremists to attack the Capitol.

As per the group, Telegram hosts conversations of “white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other hateful content”. Reportedly, a similar suit will be filed against Google in the coming days. The suit was filed in the US District Court for Northern California.

As per the lawsuit, Apple is failing to follow its own policies and guidelines regarding app content on App Store when it comes to Telegram. And in doing so, Apple allows Telegram’s more malicious users to continue their activities. The group says that the Telegram app’s access has not been removed “despite Apple’s knowledge that Telegram is being used to intimidate, threaten, and coerce members of the public.”

In effect, the lawsuit is pressuring Apple to examine Telegram with a view to removing its access on the App Store.

The coalition president Marc Ginsberg reportedly also write to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking for Telegram to be temporarily de-platformed, due to its role in “inciting extremist violence.”

The lawsuit additionally claims that Telegram is being used to “coordinate and incite extreme violence” before Inauguration Day 2021. “Some users have called on followers to abandon plans for a second protest in Washington in favour of surprise attacks nationwide,” the filing claims.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, in a statement late Monday, thanked “everyone who reported public channels that crossed the line” in the recent weeks, without mentioning the lawsuit.

“Telegram welcomes peaceful debate and protest, but our Terms of Service explicitly prohibit distributing public calls to violence,”
“In the last 7 years, we’ve consistently enforced this rule globally, from Belarus and Iran to Thailand and Hong Kong.”