alt Hacker NewsTelegram is currently the target of legal/regulatory investigations by Russia (alleged extremism), France (likewise), and India (alleged facilitation of national exam leaking/cheating). I'm guessing the latter since it's the most recent and arguably has the most fiscal heft.
Also very surprised to see Telegram was reliant on GoDaddy, notorious for its lack of transparency.
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Montenegro (.me) seems to be aligned with the EU. But I would have expected there to see a legal ruling in France before Montenegro would do this sort of thing.
I wouldn't be surprised if GoDaddy caved to request. They are known for giving up domains to anyone with a badge and a fax machine!
In Russia, "extremism" is being against Putin or the war. For example, posting photo of Alexey Navalny is "displaying extremism symbol". Also, there are people charged with extremism for posting a link to instagram/facebook domains (Meta is an extremist organization).
Also "facilitation of exam cheating" is the most stupid accusation. Why they cannot keep exam question in secret? Also why they do not shutdown scammer call centers which scam Westerners? So they want Telegram to be blocked but scammer call center to continue operating?
But Telegram hasn't engaged in that, some of their users have.
I think the issue might be that although Telegram has a lot of abuse takedown activity, they do not permit access or direct action by authorities. If I recall, they have reiterated many times that some level or types of messages always remain private.
Maybe that's the issue is that a lot of illicit activity is going on in private channels and whether or not their filtering addresses it at all, authorities see the activity and have no access for court cases or direct action against it, so they can imagine it is quite rampant.