Former US Ambassador Demands to Remove Telegram From Google Play

The head of the non-profit organization Coalition for a Safer Web, which advocates removing extremist content from social media, and former US ambassador to Morocco, Marc Ginsberg, has filed a lawsuit against Google's parent company (Alphabet), demanding that the company remove the Telegram app from Google Play.

According to the plaintiff, the Telegram messenger is used to spread threats, encourage and coordinate racist violence. According to Marc Ginsberg, it began to happen especially often after US President Joe Biden's inauguration and George Floyd's assassination.

"Google has not taken any action against Telegram comparable to the action it has taken against Parler to compel Telegram to improve its content moderation policies," Ginsberg said in the lawsuit.

Google and Telegram did not immediately respond to an email asking for comment. Earlier, the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, stated that its moderators removed hundreds of posts after the Capitol's riot that calls for violence.

Recall that on January 17, the Coalition for a Safer Web, led by Ginsberg, demanded that Apple remove the Telegram messenger from App Store. Then the organization announced its intention to file a similar lawsuit against Google.

In the first half of January, the Telegram messenger audience exceeded 500 million users per month. It is 100 million more than in April 2020. The messenger faced a sharp influx of users amid WhatsApp's announcement of data sharing with Facebook. US audience growth was influenced by the blocking of the incumbent President Donald Trump's Twitter account and the blocking of the conservative social network Parler, popular among Trump followers.

Later, WhatsApp decided to postpone the user agreement update, according to which personal data will be transferred to Facebook to May 2021.