The Coalition for a Safer Web association has filed a complaint against Apple. The reason: the Cupertino company has not removed Telegram from the App Store even though the application does not respect the general conditions of use. Telegram is reportedly regularly used by extremist and anti-Semitic groups and the owners of the app take no action against such abuse. Telegram had already been deleted from the App Store in 2018 for a few hours.
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Telegram does not always manage to moderate its content. For several years now, the application has been singled out by associations for the defense of hate and violent speech on social networks and on the Internet. One of these associations is Coalition for a Safer Web (or CSW), worn by the former United States Ambassador, Marc Ginsberg. In June 2020, CSW claimed in a press release that Telegram is used by anti-Semitic and anti-black groups who broadcast extremely violent hate content. Chance of the calendar, at the same time, the humorist Dieudonné joined Telegram after being banned from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
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The association added that Telegram is aware of its abusive uses, but does not take any drastic decisions to combat. Weeks later, CSW contacted Apple executives, including Tim Cook, to request a removal of Telegram from the App Store. But no response has been given since. This week-end, the association filed a complaint against Apple in the court of Northern California, United States. She believes that the firm has been made aware of the content broadcast on Telegram and that these contents violate the general conditions of use of the App Store. By not removing Telegram, CSW believes that Apple is failing to keep its commitments to its users.
Apple accused of having double standards
This lawsuit comes at a time that was not chosen at random. Last week, all the major American groups (Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.) took punitive actions against Parler, the social network accused of being used to orchestrate the attack in Washington at the beginning of the month. The association points out here that Apple should have acted in the same way with Telegram. In the document filed in court, CSW compares Apple’s lack of action with the high-profile withdrawal of Fortnite, Epic Games’ game.
This is not the first time that Telegram has been the subject of controversy over the content that is broadcast there. In 2018, the application had been removed for several hours from the App Store following the discovery of illegal content, including child pornography. Apple then explained that the firm ” has no tolerance for any activity that undermines the safety of children “. As soon as the content was removed, Telegram was back on the App Store.
Source: Apple Insider
