The Telegram Messenger application has been blocked by multiple countries.
From 27 September 2020, following the start of the war in Karabakh, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies imposed temporary restrictions on the use of social media in the country. Telegram, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Zoom and Skype were completely blocked. Many other unrelated services were also blocked due to a lack of coordination. The restriction was lifted on 10 November 2020. [1]
In June 2016, it was found that some ISPs in Bahrain had started to block Telegram. [2]
Telegram was a key platform for sharing information and coordinating rallies during the 2020–2021 Belarusian protests. [3] Telegram was one of few communication platforms available in Belarus during the three days of internet shutdown that followed the day of the presidential election, which Belarus's president Alexander Lukashenko won amid widespread allegations of election fraud. [4] On the evening of 11 August, while the Internet shutdown continued, 45 percent of people using Telegram protest chats in Belarus were online, despite the government's efforts to block online access. [3] In October 2020, Apple asked Telegram to remove 3 channels that leaked the identities of the people involved in the Belarusian protests. [5] [6] [7]
In February 2022, the Superior Electoral Court announces that 3 Telegram channels, which are allegedly involved in fake news dissemination, had been regionally blocked by their request, under penalty of the Telegram being suspended for 48 hours. [8] [9] [10] [11] This decision includes one of the channels of the far-right journalist Allan dos Santos, who had already had his website ( Terça Livre ) and YouTube channel deleted by a Supreme Federal Court decision. [12] [13] On 18 March, the Superior Electoral Court ordered the suspension of all access to the service, alleging that the platform had repeatedly ignored the court's decisions. [14] Following the Superior Electoral Court's decision, Telegram's founder and CEO Pavel Durov claimed that the court was sending emails to an "old general-purpose email address" that Telegram hadn't been checking, and sought a reinvestigation of the decision. [15] The ban was lifted two days later. [16]
On 26 April 2023, Telegram was temporarily suspended throughout Brazil, and the company was fined R$ 1 million (2023) ( US$ 185,528.76) daily for not complying with an investigation into neo-Nazi activities on the platform. The company only partially fulfilled a court request for personal data on two anti-Semitic Telegram groups, which authorities considered an intentional lack of cooperation. The decision was made after a series of violent school attacks, with at least one incident being linked to exchanges on an anti-Semitic group. [17] A federal court lifted the suspension three days later, but upheld the daily fine. [18]
In July 2015, it was reported that China blocked access to Telegram Messenger. According to the state-owned People's Daily , Chinese human rights lawyers used Telegram to criticize the Chinese Government and the Chinese Communist Party. [19]
In July 2021, the Cuban government blocked access to several social media platforms, including Telegram, to curb the spread of information during the anti-government protests. [20]
Some channels (for example, Russian news channels) are blocked in the Czech Republic.[ citation needed ]
On 11 February 2022, the German government announced that 64 Telegram channels, which reportedly potentially violate German laws against hate speech, had been deleted by their request. This included the channel of Attila Hildmann, a self-described nationalist who shared antisemitic conspiracy theories via his channel. According to the press release, Telegram has agreed to cooperate with the German government and delete channels with potentially illegal content in the future. [21] [22]
During the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, many participants used Telegram to evade electronic surveillance and coordinate their action against the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill. On the evening of 11 June 2019, the Hong Kong police arrested Ivan Ip, the administrator of a Telegram group with 20,000 members on suspicion of "conspiracy to commit public nuisance." [23] He was forced by the police to hand over his Telegram history. [23] The next day, Telegram suffered a "powerful" decentralized denial of service attack. Hackers tried to paralyze the target server by sending a large number of spam requests, most of which came from mainland China. [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]
On 28 August 2019, the Hong Kong Internet Service Providers Association announced that the Hong Kong government had plans to block Telegram. [29]
On 16 May 2022, Privacy Commissioner Ada Chung told a Legislative Council committee that the government remains concerned about doxxing and other violations of personal data privacy, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data is looking at blocking Telegram to address the issue. [30]
In 2019, it was reported that some internet service providers in India were blocking Telegram traffic, including its official website. [31] Internet Freedom Foundation, an Indian digital liberties organisation filed an RTI on whether Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had banned Telegram or requested ISPs to block traffic. The response from DoT said that it had no information on why the ISPs were blocking Telegram. [32] The High Court of Kerala asked about the central government's view on a plea for banning Telegram for allegedly disseminating child abuse videos and communicating through it. [33]
On 14 July 2017, eleven domain name servers related to Telegram were banned by the Indonesian Communication and Information Ministry with the possibility of closing all Telegram applications in Indonesia if Telegram did not make a standard operating procedure to maintain content that was considered unlawful in the apps. [34] In August 2017, Indonesian Government has opened full access of Telegram, after Telegram has made self censorship about negative contents mainly radicalism and terrorism. Telegram said that about 10 channels/groups have been deleted from Telegram everyday due to are categorized as negative contents. [35]
Telegram was open and working in Iran without any VPN or other circumvention methods in May 2015. [36] In August 2015, the Iranian Ministry of ICT asserted that Telegram had agreed to restrict some of its bots and sticker packs in Iran at the request of the Iranian government. [37] According to an article published on Global Voices , these features were being used by Iranians to "share satirical comments about the Iranian government". The article also noted that "some users are concerned that Telegram's willingness to comply with Iranian government requests might mean future complicity with other Iranian government censorship, or even allow government access to Telegram's data on Iranian users". [37] Telegram has stated that all Telegram chats are private territory and that they do not process any requests related to them. Only requests regarding public content (bots and sticker packs) will be processed. [38] In May 2016, the Iranian government asked all messaging apps, including Telegram, to move all Iranian users' data to Iranian servers. [39] On 20 April 2017, the Iranian government completely blocked Telegram's new voice calls, a service that allows individuals to make calls via secure, end-to-end encryption, and keep their conversations private. [40] Mahmoud Vaezi, Chief of Staff of the President of Iran said reason for blocking Telegram free voice calls is so Iranian corporations keep revenue from voice calls. [41]
On 30 December 2017, during anti-government demonstrations across Iran, Telegram has shut down a channel of the Iranian opposition that published calls to use Molotov cocktails against the police, after receiving a complaint from the Iranian government. Pavel Durov explained that the reason for the blocking was a "no calls to violence" policy and confirmed that criticizing local authorities, challenging the status quo and engaging in political debate were seen as "OK" by the platform, while "promoting violence" was not. [42] The opposition group promised to comply with Telegram rules and created a new channel which amassed 700,000 subscribers in less than 24 hours. [43] On 31 December, the Iranian government announced that Telegram has been "temporarily restricted" to "ensure calm and security" after the company said it refused to shut down peaceful protesting channels. [44] On 13 January, the app was unblocked by an order of the president Hassan Rouhani, who said that "more than 100,000 jobs had been lost" in Iran as a result of the ban on Telegram. Channels of the opposition remain operational. [45]
In March 2018, Iran's chairman for the Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security Alaeddin Boroujerdi announced that Telegram has been targeted to be fully blocked in Iran by 20 April 2018, [46] citing Telegram's role in facilitating the winter protests and the need to promote local apps. [47] President Rouhani agreed with the need to break Telegram's monopoly in Iran, but maintained that he was opposed to a new blockade and did not see it as an effective measure to promote local apps. [48] Iranian MP Mahmoud Sadeghi noted that during the two weeks that Telegram was blocked in January 2018, 30 million Iranians (75% of Telegram's users in Iran) did not start using local messaging apps, but instead turned to VPN services to circumvent the block, rendering the blockade ineffective. [49]
Telegram was blocked by the government on 1 May 2018. [50]
For until one year from the end of the 2017 riots, the Iranian government made available a customized version of Telegram that was under their domain. [51] [52] [53] [54] In 2019, Tehran's Friday Prayer imam Mohammad-Ali Movahedi Kermani declared that Telegram is haram , and requested National Information Network deployment like the Great Firewall. [55] [56]
On 27 September 2019, Bijan Ghasemzadeh, the Iranian prosecutor who ordered the block on Telegram, was arrested for charges of corruption. It is unclear whether or not the charges were related to the ban on Telegram. [57]
On 6 August 2023, the Ministry of Communications in Iraq blocked Telegram due to leaked official state data and citizens' personal information on the platform. However, the block wasn't applied in the autonomous Kurdistan Region. [58] [59]
On 13 August 2023, the ban was lifted after multiple offending channels were removed. The official statement from Iraq's MoC suggests that the app "responded to the requirements of the security authorities", while Telegram stated that "no private user data was requested from Telegram and that none has been shared". [60] [61] [62]
On 23 March 2023, Norway's parliament, the Storting, officially banned Telegram for MPs on work devices that have access to its systems. [63] [64]
In October 2017, Telegram was inaccessible to users in Pakistan, [65] and as of 18 November 2017, it has been completely blocked on PTCL as per instructions from PTA, Pakistan's largest ISP, PTCL mentioned this in a tweet to a user. [66]
On 16 May 2017, Russian media reported that Roskomnadzor was threatening to ban Telegram. On 13 April 2018, Telegram was banned in Russia by a Moscow court, due to its refusal to grant the Federal Security Service (FSB) access to encryption keys needed to view user communications as required by federal anti-terrorism law. [67] [68] Enforcement of the ban was attempted by blocking over 19 million IP addresses associated with the service. [69] However, they included those used by Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, due to Telegram's use of the providers to route messages. This led to unintended collateral damage due to usage of the platforms by other services in the country, including retail, Mastercard SecureCode, and Mail.ru's Tamtam messaging service. Users used VPNs to bypass the ban as a result. [70] [71] On 17 April 2018, Russian authorities asked Apple and Google to pull the service from their stores as well as APKMirror, however, Apple and Google refused the request. [72] [73] On 28 March 2018, Roskomnadzor reportedly sent a legally binding letter to Apple asking it to remove the app from the Russian version of its App Store and block it from sending push notifications to local users who have already downloaded the app. [74] On 27 December 2018, the largest search engine in Russia, Yandex, removed telegram.org from their search results.[ citation needed ] On 18 June 2020, the Russian government lifted its ban on Telegram after it agreed to "help with extremism investigations". [75]
On 20 August 2023, the Somali government announced a ban on the messaging app Telegram, along with the video-sharing platform TikTok and the online betting website 1XBet. The ban, which was set to go into effect on 24 August, targeted internet service providers and threatened legal action if they did not comply. Jama Hassan Khalif, the Minister of Communications and Technology, justified the ban by claiming that these platforms were being used by "terrorists and immoral groups" to "spread constant horrific images and misinformation to the public". [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] In the period leading up to the ban, explicit content, including sexual material, was widely posted in Telegram groups, causing concerns about online safety in Somalia, a conservative Muslim-majority country. These concerns were particularly strong regarding unsupervised youths. Moreover, this decision came shortly before the government planned to launch a second military offensive against al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group that has been waging war against the Somali government for over 15 years. Al-Shabaab frequently uses TikTok and Telegram to post about their activities.
The ban was met with criticism from Somali citizens, particularly those who rely on those platforms for income. Many Somali users expressed concern that the ban would negatively impact their livelihoods. Some content creators argued that the government should have addressed their concerns by targeting individual users who violate platform guidelines instead of resorting to "collective punishment". Others highlighted that the platforms provided them with job opportunities and a source of income in a country facing high unemployment rates. There were also concerns that the ban would limit freedom of expression and access to information for Somali youth. Somali federal lawmaker and TikToker, Abdirahman Abdishakur, argued that the ban lacked due process and called for regulations and collaboration with social media companies instead of an outright ban. He emphasized the importance of these platforms for engaging with young people and understanding their perspectives on national issues. [78]
On 22 March 2024, Audiencia Nacional judge Santiago Pedraz issued the suspension of Telegram in the country as a "precautionary measure" after officials in the Virgin Islands reportedly failed to answer back a court request dating from July 2023. [81] The rationale behind this decision was a request made by media companies including Atresmedia, EGEDA, Mediaset and Telefónica [82] who argued that Telegram was being used to share copyrighted content. [83] On 25 March 2024, Pedraz revoked his previous decision as it would turn out to be "excessive and not proportionate". [84] [85]
On 19 October 2020, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission was ordered to block Telegram due to its use in the 2020–2021 Thai protests. [86]
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States, it is the second-most visited website in the world, after Google Search. In January 2024, YouTube had more than 2.7 billion monthly active users, who collectively watched more than one billion hours of videos every day. As of May 2019, videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and as of 2023, there were approximately 14 billion videos in total.
Internet censorship in India is done by both central and state governments. DNS filtering and educating service users in suggested usages is an active strategy and government policy to regulate and block access to Internet content on a large scale. Measures for removing content at the request of content creators through court orders have also become more common in recent years. Initiating a mass surveillance government project like Golden Shield Project is an alternative that has been discussed over the years by government bodies.
Iran is known for having one of the world's most restrictive internet censorship systems. The Iranian government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have blocked access to 70 percent of the internet, many popular websites and online services, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Telegram. Internet traffic in the country is heavily restricted and monitored. Internet Filtering Committee (Iran) headed by Prosecutor-General of Iran decides which websites must be censored and implements this vast censorship.
The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as Roskomnadzor (RKN), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. Its areas of responsibility include electronic media, mass communications, information technology and telecommunications, supervising compliance with the law, protecting the confidentiality of personal data being processed, and organizing the work of the radio-frequency service.
Facebook is a social networking service that has been gradually replacing traditional media channels since 2010. Facebook has limited moderation of the content posted to its site. Because the site indiscriminately displays material publicly posted by users, Facebook can, in effect, threaten oppressive governments. Facebook can simultaneously propagate fake news, hate speech, and misinformation, thereby undermining the credibility of online platforms and social media.
Censorship of Twitter refers to Internet censorship by governments that block access to Twitter. Twitter censorship also includes governmental notice and take down requests to Twitter, which it enforces in accordance with its Terms of Service when a government or authority submits a valid removal request to Twitter indicating that specific content published on the platform is illegal in their jurisdiction.
Instagram is an American photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 32 languages including English, Hindi, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese.
WhatsApp is an instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content. WhatsApp's client application runs on mobile devices, and can be accessed from computers. The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to sign up. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client.
WeChat or Weixin in Chinese ; lit. 'micro-message') is a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.
Censorship by Apple refers to Apple Inc.'s removal, omission, or disruption of the spread of content or information from its services or subsidiaries, such as the iTunes Store and the App Store, in order to comply with Apple's company policies, legal demands, or various government censorship laws.
Telegram Messenger, commonly known as Telegram, is a cloud-based, cross-platform, social media and instant messaging (IM) service. It was originally launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android on 20 October 2013. It allows users to exchange messages, share media and files, and hold private and group voice or video calls as well as public livestreams. It is available for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, and web browsers. Telegram offers end-to-end encryption in voice and video calls, and in optional private chats, which Telegram calls Secret Chats.
Discord is an instant messaging and VoIP social platform which allows communication through voice calls, video calls, text messaging, and media. Communication can be private or take place in virtual communities called "servers". A server is a collection of persistent chat rooms and voice channels which can be accessed via invite links. Discord runs on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, iPadOS, Linux, and in web browsers. As of 2024, the service has about 150 million monthly active users and 19 million weekly active servers. It is primarily used by gamers, although the share of users interested in other topics is growing. As of March 2024, Discord is the 30th most visited website in the world with 22.98% of its traffic coming from the United States. As of March 2022, Discord employs 600 people globally.
ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
Deplatforming, also called no-platforming, is a form of Internet censorship of an individual or group by preventing them from posting on the platforms they use to share their information/ideas. This typically involves suspension, outright bans, or reducing spread.
TikTok, whose mainland Chinese and Hong Kong counterpart is Douyin, is a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. It can be accessed with a smart phone app or the web.
On April 16, 2018, the Russian government began blocking access to Telegram, an instant messaging service. The blocking led to interruptions in the operation of many third-party services, but practically did not affect the availability of Telegram in Russia. It was officially unblocked on June 19, 2020.
The Telegram instant messaging service has had more than 50 million users in Iran.
Many countries have imposed past or ongoing restrictions on the video sharing social network TikTok. Bans from government devices usually stem from national security concerns over potential access of data by the Chinese government. Other bans have cited children's well-being and offensive content such as pornography.
There are reports of TikTok censoring political content related to China and other countries as well as content from minority creators. TikTok says that its initial content moderation policies, many of which are no longer applicable, were aimed at reducing divisiveness and were not politically motivated.
highlighting the use of the popular messaging app for sharing information.
Though it is claimed by many that the Telegram is banned, but it is operating normally in Iran.
A top official with the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) confirmed reports on Monday that the agency had been ordered to block access to Telegram.