Following a Supreme Court ruling, Telegram has been suspended in Brazil for two days to fight misinformation. According to the manager of the messaging service, this incredible situation occurred because the latter did not check his e-mails correctly… Explanations.
A decision directly against the president
This Friday, March 18, Judge Alexandre de Moraes made the decision to block Telegram in Brazil because the application did not follow up on orders he had sent to it. He had indeed been asked to delete the accounts of a prominent supporter of President Jair Bolsonaro, the latter being the subject of an investigation for having disseminated erroneous information and threatened Supreme Court judges. Brazil’s telecommunications regulator, Anatel, was ordered to enforce the service suspension within 24 hours, while Apple and Google were given five days to remove Telegram from their respective app stores.
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According to the Supreme Court, any companies that fail to comply within that timeframe risk being fined $20,000 a day. Additionally, those caught using a VPN or other means to access Telegram while it has been blocked will also be fined $20,000.
Alexandre de Moraes is a staunch opponent of Jair Bolsonaro, he notably oversees several investigations against the president and regularly issues court orders targeting him, his allies and his political strategy. For his part, Bolsonaro has said in the past that he will not comply with the judge’s decisions. Telegram is an application of choice for the Brazilian far right, President Bolsonaro has encouraged his supporters to download the application, which has a much less strict policy on the content that is shared than other messengers.
According to the judge, banning Telegram in Brazil will help fight misinformation as the presidential elections are fast approaching. Brazilians will return to the polls next October.
While the elections will be held next October in Brazil, the Supreme Court wants to do everything to fight against misinformation. Photography: Matheus Camara da Silva / Unsplash
Telegram, app favored by the Brazilian far right
As explained by New York Times, Telegram’s popularity among the Brazilian right has made it one of the fastest growing messaging apps in the country. Since 2014, Telegram has been downloaded nearly 85 million times in Brazil, including 29% of those installs last year according to Sensor Tower, an app data firm. In comparison, WhatsApp, the dominant app in Brazil, has been downloaded 677 million times in the country. Jair Bolsonaro has 1.1 million subscribers on the messaging service. As a reminder, WhatsApp was in 2019 a real weapon of disinformation in Brazil, it has since adopted many measures to fight against the spread of false information.
Supporters of the Brazilian president reacted quickly. Carla Zambelli, a congresswoman and longtime supporter of the leader, said Telegram was ” the only current tool in which we have freedom of expression and called Judge Moraes ” tyrant “. For his part, Bolsonaro called the decision ” inadmissible “, while Anderson Torres, the Minister of Justice and Public Safety, affirmed that this ” monocratic decision harms millions of Brazilians.
Telegram apologizes and obeys
In the end, the ban only lasted two days. In A declaration published shortly after the judge’s decision, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov explains that it is in fact a qui pro quo:
“It appears we’ve had an issue with emails circulating between our corporate telegram.org addresses and the Supreme Court of Brazil. Following this communication problem, the Court decided to ban Telegram for lack of responsiveness.
On behalf of our team, I apologize to the Supreme Court of Brazil for our negligence. We certainly could have done a better job.
We complied with an earlier court ruling in late February and responded by suggesting sending future withdrawal requests to a dedicated email address. Unfortunately our response must have been lost as the Court used the old general email address to attempt to reach us. Therefore, we missed the decision she made at the beginning of March, which contained a request for withdrawal. Thankfully, we tracked her down and treated her, and filed a new report with the court today.”
Thus, Telegram has taken various measures in order to satisfy the Brazilian Court. The app has effectively removed classified information shared by the president’s account and banned the accounts of the supporter accused by Judge Moraes. The service further announced that it would start promoting verified news in Brazil and flag fake posts as inaccurate, while asking its employees to monitor the country’s 100 most popular channels, which account for 95% of viewers’ views. public posts. As a result, the ban on Telegram was finally lifted this Sunday, March 20 by Alexandre de Moraes. In the end, it did not come into force since Apple and Google had five days to apply it.
The judge’s decision to ban Telegram may nevertheless raise questions in a democracy like Brazil. Usually, it is more totalitarian countries like China or Russia, which recently blocked Twitter and Facebook, which resort to this kind of practice.