RIO DE JANEIRO (LifeSiteNews) — Messaging app company Telegram has agreed to ban an outspoken supporter of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in exchange for having a sealed judicial order lifted that prohibited the company’s operation in the country.
Brazil’s Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes banned Telegram in the entire country on Friday, as reported by Reuters. The judge is an opponent of President Bolsonaro, who has more than 1.2 million followers on Telegram. The tech company agreed to ban blogger and Bolsonaro supporter Allan dos Santos from the app.
The New York Times reported:
Telegram worked quickly over the weekend to comply with the court’s orders, including by deleting classified information shared by the account of President Jair Bolsonaro and removing the accounts of a prominent supporter of Mr. Bolsonaro who has been accused of spreading misinformation.
That action satisfied the court. Late Sunday, the court lifted its ban on Telegram. But Telegram also went further in a bid to avoid a ban. The app made several other changes in Brazil to combat misinformation on its app, which has worried Brazilian officials ahead of the presidential elections in October. Telegram said that among the changes, it would start promoting verified information in Brazil and marking false posts as inaccurate, while also having employees monitor the 100 most popular channels in Brazil, which account for 95 percent of the views of public posts in the country.
CEO Pavel Durov released a statement apologizing to the judge for not blocking content sooner and for a mix-up. Durov said his company did not receive emails from the court due to not checking the right inbox.
The court system has previously asked Telegram to shut down some views on the app and combat alleged misinformation.
Durov wrote on March 18 on his Telegram channel:
It seems that we had an issue with emails going between our telegram.org corporate addresses and the Brazilian Supreme Court. As a result of this miscommunication, the Court ruled to ban Telegram for being unresponsive.
On behalf of our team, I apologize to the Brazilian Supreme Court for our negligence. We definitely could have done a better job.
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.
President Bolsonaro is an opponent of vaccine passports, abortion and gender ideology. He is up for re-election in October.