Daily Authority: 📩 Telegram doesn’t check its email

☕ Good morning! The week to come: Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Nothing event on March 23, and maybe the OnePlus 10 Pro could see a launch this week as well?

Telegram forgot to check its email

There’s a fun-yet-serious story that Telegram forgot to check its email, and was banned in Brazil for not complying with the email.

No, really:

• “Telegram’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov has just put out a statement about why Brazil’s Supreme Court is now suspending the app, and the reason is incredible. In the statement, which you can read in full below or on Durov’s Telegram channel, he says it was because his company was checking the wrong email address.
• “It seems that we had an issue with emails going between our telegram.org corporate addresses and the Brazilian Supreme Court,” Durov says, going on to explain that his company asked the court to send future takedown requests “to a dedicated email address.” But the court didn’t do that, apparently — it kept using “the old general-purpose email address,” and Telegram missed them somehow, and now it’s getting banned, unless the court takes pity.
• And, despite Telegram’s CEO plea to Brazil’s Supreme Court to give it a chance to read its emails, including the junk mail and spam and accidentally deleted items, or whatever, Telegram was suspended for two days.
• Apple and Google were forced to help block the app.

Disinformation:

• It’s all because Telegram has struggled to manage alleged disinformation, with a Supreme Court judge battling against Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, who uses Telegram as a main outlet, and the judge has been “leading Supreme Court investigations into Bolsonaro and his supporters for disseminating fake news.”

Anyway:

Telegram ended up checking its email properly and implementing what was asked, but it was banned for two days while changes were made:

• “The court walked back on its ban after Telegram made several changes to help keep misinformation at bay in the country, which includes removing classified information shared by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.”
• The political aspect isn’t exactly something I can or want to dig into here.
• What’s wild is seeing how vulnerable a platform with millions of subscribers can struggle with facing the law, simply through an email mixup — and how publicly the company would admit that.
• It’s alarming/refreshing! It would be great to know what else has happened in tech due to email mixups.
• Like… what if Tim Cook just missed Elon Musk’s email?

Roundup:

⌛ Android users can now delete the last 15 minutes of their Google search history, with the rollout ongoing (e.g. I don’t have it yet, but it’s coming) (Android Authority).

👉 Is the Pixel 6 the only true affordable flagship now? (Android Authority).

Twitter was created 16 years ago today on March 21, 2006. And …it’s been a ride.

Cheers,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor