Apple Briefly Pulls Telegram From App Store Over Child Sexual Abuse Material

· Free Press Journal

Apple briefly removed Telegram from the App Store after its review process detected content that violated the company's guidelines against child sexual abuse material, before restoring the app once Telegram took the content down. The messaging platform, which counts close to a billion users globally, was unavailable to new and returning downloaders on iOS and iPadOS for several hours, even as existing installations continued to function normally throughout the disruption.

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What did Apple say?

Confirming the takedown, Apple told multiple news outlets in a statement, it briefly removed Telegram from the App Store after finding content that violated its guidelines prohibiting child sexual abuse material. The company added that the app was restored after the developer promptly removed the offending content and banned the user responsible for posting it. Apple's confirmation came roughly twenty minutes after the app's listing had already returned to the App Store, following hours during which neither company had publicly explained the sudden disappearance.

Why did Apple remove Telegram from the App Store?

Users across multiple regions started noticing that searches for Telegram on the App Store were no longer returning results, sparking speculation about the cause of the delisting. Throughout the removal, the app remained listed and functional on the Mac App Store, and existing installations on iPhones and iPads continued to allow messaging, calls and access to channels and groups. Users who had deleted the app during the window, however, would have been unable to reinstall it until Apple restored the listing.

Telegram's response

Telegram's official account addressed the episode with a lighter touch once access was restored, posting on X that "reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated." The company did not immediately offer a detailed public explanation of the specific content that had triggered the removal, though Apple's statement made clear that the offending material and the account responsible had both been dealt with before the listing returned.

The latest episode was not the first time Telegram has run into this exact problem with Apple. In February 2018, Apple temporarily pulled both Telegram and its experimental Telegram X app from the App Store after discovering that child sexual abuse material was circulating through public channels on the platform. At the time, Apple executive Phil Schiller confirmed to a Telegram user by email that the app had been used to distribute such material, and that the App Store team alerted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children before restoring the apps once Telegram had introduced safeguards.

Telegram has separately, and more recently, partnered with the UK based Internet Watch Foundation to allow automated scanning of its platform for known abuse imagery, a step aimed at addressing longstanding criticism from child safety groups over the platform's historically hands-off approach to moderation.

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