Telegram claims to have been attacked by “downside blackmail”: AppleStore's temporary removal was caused by a user's implantation of a violation

On 5 August, Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov stated that Telegram had recently been temporarily taken off Apple Store by apples because a user had planted illegal pornography in an open group. The application returned to the shelf within the following hours. Durov states that the attackers exploited technical loopholes by inserting illegal content modified by AI into old news in active groups, concealing content by editing historical information, making it difficult for members of the general group to detect and report in a timely manner. Such attacks are acts of “takedown extortion”, where the attackers implant irregularities into open groups through automated accounts and report them to platforms such as Apple, in an attempt to force group managers to pay ransoms, or to use platform rules to block communities. Durov added that Telegram continued to combat illegal content through mechanisms such as user reporting, AI filtering, content-Hashi, and that the incident was not a systemic issue for the platform, but a targeted attack by the attackers using a loophole of rules. He also warned that the direct removal of apples without early contact with Telegram could pose a risk to all mobile applications providing user-generated content (UGCs) and that platform developers needed to improve their preparedness for malicious reporting and “downside attack”。