Brazil's Supreme Court Justice Alexandre De Moraes ordered the countrywide closure of messaging service Telegram on Friday, claiming it has not cooperated with Brazilian authorities.
The closure is the result of a failure to comply with earlier orders about an arrest warrant issued in the name of a blogger named Allan dos Santos, who is an ally of current President Jair Bolsonaro and has been disseminating fake news on Telegram. The activist, who is now a fugitive in the United States, has remained active on Telegram.
Telegram also refused demands from Brazilian authorities, including a request from the police to ban profiles and reveal information related to the blogger. In addition, unlike its competitors, Telegram has failed to appoint a legal agent in Brazil, according to the judiciary.
Many of Bolsonaro's fans have moved to Telegram when WhatsApp, the messaging app's rival, modified its message-sharing regulations. Since January 2021, Bolsonaro and his supporters have urged his followers to join Telegram.
Bolsonaro was asked by fans in January what he felt of Telegram probes. "What they're attempting to do to Brazil is cowardice," he remarked. The president has also frequently criticised de Moraes and Brazil's top court of judgements that violate free expression.
In a statement, Pavel Durov, one of Telegram's founders, stated that the company "had an issue with emails flowing between our telegram.org business addresses and the Brazilian Supreme Court." As a result of this misunderstanding, the Court concluded that Telegram should be banned for being unresponsive."
"I sincerely apologise to the Brazilian Supreme Court for our lapse." "We should have done a better job," Durov said. "In late February, we complied with an earlier court judgement and responded with a proposal to direct future takedown requests to a designated email address." Unfortunately, our answer must have been lost because the Court continued to contact us using the previous general-purpose email account."
Durov also requested that the court "consider postponing its judgement for a few days at its discretion to allow us to address the problem by designating a representative in Brazil and establishing a framework to respond to future critical matters like this in an expeditious way."
Telegram's services remained operational until Friday evening, and fact-checking website Aos-Fatos, which has been monitoring pro-Bolsonaro Telegram pages, reported that several supporters of the Brazilian president have been sharing tutorials on how to install virtual private networks (VPNs) in order to continue using Telegram.
Bolsonaro has also committed to continue sharing messages on Gettr, an alternative messaging service developed by former Trump aide Jason Miller.
