What they say on Telegram

An unnamed employee of Pavla Durov’s company told reporters that the bots were “temporarily disabled due to a malfunction, but were later restored.” It’s unclear what the nature of the error was, as it didn’t provide any additional details.

Let us remind you that by the end of the day on April 28, Telegram blocked a number of bots that Ukraine was using to fight against a large-scale Russian invasion.

Between them:

• “yEnemy” developed by the Ministry of Digital. It allows the Defense Forces to obtain information about the movements of invaders on Ukrainian territory, report on equipment, manpower and more.
• Bot Intelligence from GUR and SBU and Stop the Russian War.
• The boat coordinator with whom the movement of the resistance is coordinated;
• Air defense boat to track the witnesses.

“The administration of the Telegram platform unreasonably blocked a number of official bots opposing Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine,” GUR said. […]. “This happened against the rules and statements made public by Telegram management.”

In the morning, the Ukrainian Strategic Communications Center reported that the three affected bots (YeVorogh, GUR bot and Stop Russian War) were unblocked. It is currently available to users in normal mode.

Last week, the founder of Telegram announced that his company received an official request from Apple regarding some changes to news channels and the presence of a lot of propaganda on the platform offered to Ukrainian users. However, Durov did not say exactly what changes he was preparing and when they would be implemented. We can only assume that this error was the result of unsuccessful attempts to block Russian channels in Ukraine – someone could confuse them. Previously, the company’s president wrote that Telegram “will continue to ban accounts and bots that gather coordinates for attacks or directly post personal information with calls for violence.”