Telegram Blames Shutdown in Brazil on Missed Emails

pcmag.com:

It seems the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil's decision to shut down Telegram within the country was, at least according to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, the result of some missed emails.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ruled that Telegram would have to be shut down because the company "repeatedly refused to adhere to judicial orders to freeze accounts spreading disinformation or comply with the country's laws," as Reuters put it.

"It seems that we had an issue with emails going between our telegram.org corporate addresses and the Brazilian Supreme Court," Durov says on his public Telegram channel. "As a result of this miscommunication, the Court ruled to ban Telegram for being unresponsive."

Durov explains:

We complied with an earlier court decision in late February and responded with a suggestion to send future takedown requests to a dedicated email address. Unfortunately, our response must have been lost, because the Court used the old general-purpose email address in further attempts to reach us. As a result, we missed its decision in early March that contained a follow-up takedown request. Luckily, we have now found and processed it, delivering another report to the Court today.

Durov also notes that "the last 3 weeks have been unprecedented for the world and for Telegram." That's because the messaging platform is popular in both Ukraine and Russia—especially now that the latter country has cracked down on Facebook and Twitter.

"Because tens of millions of Brazilians rely on Telegram to communicate with family, friends and colleagues," Durov says, "I ask the Court to consider delaying its ruling for a few days at its discretion to allow us to remedy the situation by appointing a representative in