Apple is being sued by the Coalition for a more secure network for failing to remove access to the Telegram while still blocking Parler, and also claims it is being used by hate groups and extremists to attack Chapter .
Filed Sunday at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Ambassador Marc Ginsberg and the Coalition for a Safer Web are accusing Apple of allowing Telegram to be available in the App Store. This “despite Apple’s knowledge that Telegram is used to intimidate, threaten and coerce members of the public.”
Billed as a “non-partisan, non-profit, promotional organization” to force the removal of extremist and terrorist content from social media platforms, the Coalition claims that Apple does not comply with its own policies and guidelines on the content of applications related to Telegram . In doing so, Apple allows the malicious users of Telegram to continue their activities.
The lawsuit comes at the end of a week in which Apple, Google, Amazon and others broke ties with Parler because they failed to manage the content of the application generated by its users. It is alleged that the application was used to plan and coordinate illegal activities in Washington DC, including the assault on the US Capitol.
In fact, the lawsuit is pressuring Apple to closely examine Telegram in order to deplete the encrypted messaging application, for allegedly carrying out similar activities.
According to a June 2020 CSW press release quoted by the trial, Telegram is used as a “communication channel for the Russian government and affiliated white Nazi-national and national groups, sowing disinformation and racial division in the United States and Europe. ”
Ginsberg also wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook on behalf of the CSW in July, calling for the Telegram to be temporarily disbanded due to its role in “inciting extremist violence.”
There is also an accusation that “anti-black and anti-Semitic groups openly used the Telegram with little or no moderation of content by the Telegram leadership.” Despite CSW’s warnings and media reports about the application, Apple “did not take any action against Telegram comparable to the action it took against Parler to force Telegram to improve its content moderation policies.”
The lawsuit also alleges that the Telegram was used to “coordinate and incite extreme violence” before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. “Some users have asked followers to abandon plans for a second protest in Washington in favor of nationwide surprise attacks,” the file said.
It also mentions how Ginsberg suffered emotional distress and anxiety due to misinformation and incitement to violence against Jews. Because Ginsberg is both Jewish and in the public eye, he is forced to “live in fear of religiously motivated violence against him,” causing him to fear for his life and the lives of his family.
The lawsuit also mentions an injustice in the way Apple enforces its rules, citing both the removal of Parler and the “Fortnite” of Epic Games for violating the guidelines. Meanwhile, it is said that the use of Telegram violates the rules of the App Store since the launch of the application in 2013, in various ways.
In the case of the Telegram developers, CSW claims that “they did not take any significant action to reduce these flagrant, systematic and continuous violations of the Defendant’s guidelines by Telegram users”.
The lawsuit calls for a jury trial and asks the court to award compensatory damages to each plaintiff, to issue an order banning Telegram from the App Store as long as it complies with Apple’s guidelines and legal costs.
Telegram has a history with Apple in terms of users and content hosted on this service, and Apple accessed in 2018 due to the presence of child pornography. In October, Apple demanded the elimination of posts related to the protests in Belarus.
In April 2018, Russian telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor ordered Apple to stop downloading Telegram, in part because the app’s developers refused to hand over the encryption keys to the government, as required by Russian law. While the political ban has prevented app updates from happening for some time, Apple approved app updates to be submitted in June of the same year.