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Telegram: According to Boris Pistorius, a "fire accelerator" for Reich citizens, conspiracy theorists and right-wing extremists
Photo: Fabian Sommer / dpa
Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) now wants to call on Apple and Google to ban the Telegram app from their offer because of calls for violence and hate speech that have not been deleted.
She wanted to remind the two dominant providers of mobile operating systems and the associated app stores of their "social responsibility," said the minister on Wednesday in Berlin after a meeting with the interior ministers of the SPD-led state governments.
Telegram has become a "fire accelerator" for Reich citizens, conspiracy theorists and right-wing extremists, said Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD). The Dubai-based company has so far hardly responded to complaints about relevant content, while occasionally intervening on other issues. Pistorius said: In the case of pornographic and Islamist-terrorist content, the company finally showed "that they can if they want to".
He had already demanded a reaction from Google and Apple in an interview with SPIEGEL in December: "What is happening in the Telegram groups and channels contradicts in every respect the compliance rules of Apple and Google, which offer this app in their stores. We urgently need to talk to them and convince them to stop selling Telegram.«
Kicking it out of the app stores would by no means be the end of the app: Existing users could continue to use the app, but it could be difficult for them to get updates. Telegram also offers a desktop application that works independently of the Apple and Google app stores. Nevertheless, a blocking by Apple and Google Telegram would affect the growth of the app. Telegram founder Pavel Durov has said in the past that he wants to follow the rules of Apple and Google.
"The social network Telegram and comparable providers serve people in Germany as a networking platform for lateral thinkers, corona deniers and right-wing extremists," said a joint paper by the German interior ministers.
Together with the European partners, they want to engage in more dialogue with foreign governments on this problem "and also clearly represent our expectations at a high-ranking political level".
Telegram was already under criticism after the storming of the US Capitol in January 2021.
According to SPIEGEL information, Apple was considering at least briefly throwing the app out of the App Store internally at the time.
In the end, however, the company quickly and clearly decided against this step.
pbe/hpp/dpa
