GoKawiilPavel Durov, Telegram’s CEO, has elaborated on what led to the app’s brief removal from the App Store last night. Here’s what he said.
‘I want to explain what happened [and] warn other app developers’
Last night, Telegram disappeared briefly from the App Store worldwide, without warning or explanation.
During the time the app was unavailable, many speculated that the move was politically motivated, or perhaps in response to the recent discovery that Telegram has allegedly been using an obfuscated private UIKit API to animate its emoji picker.
Shortly after the app returned to the App Store, Apple got in touch with 9to5Mac, explaining that Telegram had actually been removed due to a CSAM violation:
“We briefly removed Telegram from the App Store after our review found content that violates our strict guidelines prohibiting child sexual abuse material. The app was subsequently restored after the developer promptly removed the content and banned the user who posted it.”
Telegram, in turn, told 9to5Mac that Apple had “reported one user sharing CSAM that was immediately banned,” adding that “Telegram has removed more than 337,900 groups and channels related to CSAM in 2026.”
Now, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has published a lengthier explanation of what happened, saying Telegram fell victim to a so-called takedown extortion scam.
From Durov’s post:
🧹Because Telegram quickly removes illegal content from public groups using all kinds of moderation tools, the attacker had to resort to a technical trick. He inserted AI-modified illegal content by editing an old message in an active group chat. As a result, the content was effectively hidden from the group’s members, preventing them from seeing and promptly reporting it. 💰 The attacker was a takedown extortionist: someone who demands ransom from group owners in exchange for not targeting their communities. These extortionists use automated accounts to plant illegal content in public groups and then report it directly to Apple, attempting to trigger the removal of legitimate communities whose owners refused to pay them.
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