Apple pulled Telegram from the App Store worldwide Monday night without warning. It came back an hour later.
What Apple Said
Apple found content violating its CSAM guidelines, removed Telegram, restored it once Telegram removed the content and banned the user. Existing installs kept working throughout. Telegram stayed available on the Mac App Store the whole time.
Telegram confirmed the same account. One user shared CSAM, got banned immediately. Telegram says it removed 337,900 CSAM-related groups and channels in 2026, up from 29,640 in 2025.
How It Got Past Moderation
Durov posted on X that a user edited an old message in a public group chat, appending illegal content after the fact. That skipped the flags that catch new posts. Durov said the user was running an extortion scheme, demanding payment from groups to avoid being targeted this way.
Apple acted without contacting Telegram first. Standard for CSAM violations.
Durov’s Response
Telegram’s X account posted “reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated,” apple emoji attached. Durov asked publicly whether the same standard applies to every other app in the store. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney used the incident to push his ongoing App Store antitrust argument, noting Apple never explained how any large messaging platform, iMessage included, operates under this standard.
Not The First Time
Apple pulled Telegram and Telegram X in February 2018 over what Durov called inappropriate content. Both returned the same day after Telegram added safeguards.
Australia fined Telegram AU$1 million (approximately RM2.8 million) this year over violent and child-safety content handling. Russia charged Durov with aiding terrorism last month. France detained him in 2024 over a criminal-activity investigation; he was released on bail with movement restrictions.
Telegram launched in 2013, founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov after leaving Russia and VK, which they say was taken over by the government. Nikolai built MTProto, Telegram’s encryption protocol. Pavel handled funding and infrastructure. Headquartered in Dubai. Passed a billion downloads in January 2021.
A platform this size going offline for an hour, over one user’s workaround, is the same risk every large user-generated platform carries. Telegram was just the one caught this week.
