Pavel Durov, the founder of the platform, in the meantime “fully satisfied” the requests of the Supreme Court Judge and put in place measures against misinformation.
Le Monde with AFP
Considering that his requests had been “fully satisfied” and that online messaging had complied with the judicial orders, the judge of the Brazilian Supreme Court finally revoked, Sunday, March 20, “the decision to suspend completely and entirely The operation of Telegram in Brazil “.
Friday, Judge Alexandre de Moraes had asked the National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL) to “the complete and integral suspension of the functioning in Brazil de Telegram”, until the latter “applies orders judicial “who have been imposed on him.
The next day, he granted the platform a period of twenty-four hours after Pavel Durov, the founder of the platform, apologized to the Supreme Court and claimed that it was ‘a simple “communication problem”. “It seems that we have had a problem with the emails between our TELEGRAM.Org business addresses and the Supreme Court of Brazil”, forbidden Mr. Durov, ensuring that he had because of that could not read the requests sent by the Court.
Alexander de Moraes had decided to block the popular online mail, widely used by the extreme right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his networks to the seven months of the presidential election, reproaching him not to do the necessary to fight the Propagation of false information, for refusing to block the account of Allan Dos Santos, Bolsonarist blogger targeted by a survey for misinformation, or not to cooperate in infant pornography cases.
Tools. set up
By Justice Moraes, Telegram has announced since adopting several measures to combat misinformation. Among them, the “manual” monitoring of the 100 most popular chains in Brazil, the possibility of reporting publications deemed inaccurate, the restriction of profiles that diffuse from misinformation and the promotion of verified information.
The judge also requested the removal of a publication by Mr. Bolsonaro dating from August, in which he doubted, without provising, the reliability of the electronic voting system in Brazil, in place since 1996.
Since Saturday, this publication is no longer visible. “This message can not be displayed” because “it violates local laws”, is it written instead.
Very popular in Brazil, especially among president’s sympathizers, Jair Bolsonaro, Telegram is present on 53% of the country’s phones. This application of Russian origin, whose head office is currently based in Dubai, known to exclude almost no moderation, was a keystone of Mr. Bolsonaro’s campaign strategy. His Telegram account thus has more than one million subscribers, compared to 48,000 for his likely opponent in the October election, the former left president Luiz Iñacio Lula da Silva.
Friday, President Bolsonaro had denounced the initial decision of the judge, putting, according to him, endangered the “freedom” of Brazilians. On Saturday, the government had lodged an appeal to another Supreme Court judge, believing that the blocking of the messaging was “disproportionate”.