Telegram Still Hasn’t Removed an AI Bot That’s Abusing Women

Telegram Still Hasn’t Removed an AI Bot That’s Abusing Women

In one Telegram group chat about the bot, its owner says that Telegram has blocked mentions of its name. However, WIRED was unable to confirm this or any action taken by Telegram. Neither Telegram’s spokesperson or the service’s founder, Pavel Durov, responded to requests for comment. The company, which is believed to be based in Dubai but has servers all around the world, has never publicly commented about the harm caused by the Telegram bot or its continued position to allow it to operate.


Since it was founded in 2013, Telegram has positioned itself as a private space for free speech, and its end-to-end encrypted mode has been used by journalists and activists around the world to protect privacy and evade censorship. However, the messaging app has run into trouble with problematic content. In July 2017, Telegram said it would create a team of moderators to remove terrorism-related content after Indonesia threatened it with a ban. Apple also temporarily removed it from its App Store in 2018 after finding inappropriate content on the platform.


“I think they [Telegram] have a very libertarian perspective towards content moderation and just any sort of governance on their platform,” says Mahsa Alimardani, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute. Alimardani, who has worked with activists in Iran, points to Telegram notifying its users about a fake version of the app created by authorities in the country. “It seems that the times that they have actually acted, it's when state authorities have got involved.”

On October 2 ..

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