Telegram’s App Kicked Out Of App Store Over ‘Inappropriate Content’

Telegram, the news organization operated by a Russian programmer who fled his country back in 2014, was removed from the App Store because of what TheStreet reported Apple said was “inappropriate content.”

Telegram Founder Pavel Durov stated that Apple alerted the company that inappropriate content was being made available to users and, as a result, both of its apps were removed from the App Store.

“Once we have protections in place, we expect the apps to be back on the App Store,” Durov told TheStreet. The report noted that under the App Store’s rules, mobile apps must be able to filter questionable material, report content that is deemed offensive and block users who are abusers of the rules from the service. The two Telegram apps are still accessible at the Google Play store. Telegram X has downloads of 100,000 to 500,000 since it launched.

Durov is also the founder of VKontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook. Since being ousted from his home country, his company has been working on developing Telegram, which has 100 million monthly users and 350,000 new users signing up every day.

In August, TechCrunch reported news that Telegram was gearing up to introduce voice calls to its messaging app, offering audio-calling that uses artificial intelligence to increase quality on an ongoing basis, as well as end-to-end encryption for security. The technology uses a variety of call information, such as network speed, ping times and packet-loss percentage to optimize each call and improve the quality of future calls.

In addition, users can opt to use a “low data” call, where they can save on a data plan at the expense of poorer call quality, as well as limit their incoming calls by only allowing people in their contacts to contact them. Its end-to-end encryption enables the feature to be used safely and securely, with the framework for Telegram’s “Secret Chat” feature adapted for this new introduction. Two people making a call over Telegram will be able to compare four emojis as a key exchange to ensure that their call is encrypted.