Lawsuit wants Telegram app removed from the Apple App Store

A Washington nonprofit group sued Apple in federal court Sunday, demanding that it remove Telegram, a chat and social media app, from its app store for failing to crack down on violent, extremist conversation in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, reports The Washington Post.

The article says the suit amounts to a pressure tactic to get Apple to act against Telegram as it already has against Parler, a social media site that swelled with calls for violence and insurrection ahead of the Capitol siege. The Coalition for a Safer Web, a nonpartisan group that advocates for technologies and policies to remove extremist content from social media, and the coalition’s president, Marc Ginsberg, a former U.S. ambassador to Morocco, filed the lawsuit.

Telegram is described as freeware, cross-platform, cloud-based instant messaging software and application service. It also provides end-to-end encrypted video calling, VoIP, file sharing and several other features.