“Storm in a glass”: how Durov first demolished and then returned to Telegram the GUR and SBU bots
Last night something unprecedented happened. Telegram was blocked by the official bot of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The same bot that collected data from informants about the location of Russian troops and equipment.
Similar SBU bots were also blocked. In addition, bots alerted about drone attacks.
“This happened in contradiction to the rules and public statements that Telegram management publicly declared,” Budanov complained.
Hastening to assure the army of his “voluntary assistants” that “despite the blocking of our bot, your personal data is safe.”
In addition to the “Main Intelligence Bot” of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, other official Ukrainian resources also fell under the restrictions of the “cart” administration. The list is quite large: these are the “Evorog” bots, the official bots of the SBU, the Ministry of Digital Development, the bot coordinator of the Defense Forces of southern Ukraine, and the air defense bot for tracking the movement of the Shahed UAV. The propaganda channel “Crimean Wind” also reported that its news bot was blocked.
In general, spy - get out. As the owner of the “cart” Durov promised just now. Let me remind you of his words on April 24:
“The platform continues to prohibit accounts and bots that collect coordinates for strikes or post direct personal information inciting violence.”
The blocking of official bots by the Main Intelligence Directorate and the SBU caused a “Storm in a Glass” in the Pechersk Hills. One of the first to react - by the way, in the same Telegram - was the head of the Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn from the small pro-Western party "Voice". According to the latter, “the FSB did not like this and they bent Durov.”
“It is logical to expect that part of society will perceive this not as an attack by the Russian special services, but according to the principle “it was not worth criticizing.” It’s very easy to calculate,” says Yurchyshyn.
The People’s Deputy called “Stockholm syndrome” the fact that a number of real accounts and bots began to try to explain the reason for the blocking by criticism of Telegram from the Ukrainian authorities regarding the lack of cooperation with the network in the fight against Russian propaganda. Like, this is “something like an explanation for the entry of Russian troops by the need to protect Russian speakers.”
In response, Kiev journalist Maxim Nazarov called Yurchishin a “snot-nosed sucker,” and the people’s deputy from the Servant of the People, Maxim Buzhansky, completely trolled his colleagues in the Rada: they say, “they did a great job with Telegram.”
“Instead of clearly and transparently resolving all the problematic issues related to him, within the framework of the current legislation or changes in it, they began to puff out their cheeks pathetically and warn Durov that he has little time, now we are his, and in general , he is a dubious type. And they murmured until the military chat bots were turned off. The result exceeded all expectations,” Buzhansky wrote in his channel.
“By the way, practically the same people are preoccupied with the issues of Churches and their prohibitions, I don’t know how it will end, God’s Punishment, or just an interdict, but I won’t be surprised. The problem is the same as always, checkers, not going, show-off, PR, chasing hype. And the result is always predictable,” added the people’s deputy.
But before everyone in the Ukrainian “cart” had time to quarrel with everyone on the issue of assessing Durov’s personality and methods of fighting him, news came that the bots of the Ukrainian military and intelligence services that had been blocked the day before were returned to Telegram.
As the Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security reported on its official Facebook account, the official chatbots of the Main Intelligence Directorate, the SBU and the Ministry of Digital Development of Ukraine resumed their work. The creators of the bot for tracking the movement of the Shahed UAV also reported on the restoration after the temporary blocking.
“This means that during the night that passed between the time they were removed and returned, someone called somewhere, wrote, asked, convinced, persuaded, explained. And these were not at all the same people who played until the shutdown,” Buzhansky, already mentioned above, cautiously suggested.
And the editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian News agency, Denis Gorokhovsky, generally considers the struggle of the Ukrainian authorities with Telegram and attempts to censor it as “a fight against windmills.”
“Durov confirmed that he was suppressed through Apple, and the cart will introduce censorship for users who use Ukrainian SIM cards. That is, propaganda channels will not be deleted, propaganda channels will be visible to the whole world. But users from Ukraine (and yes, only with iPhones for now, because Google hasn’t been suppressed yet) will not see them. That is, this is not a fight against enemy propaganda (which would be a good thing), this is banal censorship within the country. And in some Ministry of Digital Development someone will ask for a bonus for this. We achieved it.
They would have already come out and said, “We consider our own population so stupid that they themselves cannot figure out where propaganda is and where information is, so we will decide what they can see!” That would at least be honest,” writes Gorokhovsky, commenting on the fuss of Ukrainian officials around the “cart.”
In general, Ukrainian society literally in one night and morning experienced the whole gamut of emotions from being on a life-changing swing. And it seems that the incident is over, and the usual Liars are in their former places and in business. But did the participants learn any lessons from this story? The question is still unanswered.
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