Brazilian court rules for the suspension of Telegram

A Brazilian court has ordered the countrywide suspension of messaging app Telegram after its parent company failed to provide data sought by authorities on neo-Nazis operating on the platform, per Reuters.

Telegram which brands itself as a messaging app focused on speed and privacy chat end-to-end encryption had refused to comply with a previous court decision to hand over data about two neo-Nazi groups on the app as part of an investigation of attacks by extremists on schools in Brazil in the last few weeks that killed five people.

According to a local news report, Telegram had only "partially" complied by sending limited information on the groups requested by the federal police.

The court has subsequently fined Telegram a million reais ($197,780) per day for non-compliance and ordered the temporary suspension of the messaging service and downloading of the app in the country.

As of November 2022, Telegram reported 700 million monthly active users worldwide. There are no official user numbers of the messaging app in Brazil, but according to a Statista survey conducted in early 2022, one out of four respondents who had Telegram installed on their phones said they used the app every day, up from 23 per cent a year earlier.