Hartley Charlton (The Verge):

Apple briefly removed Telegram from the App Store on Monday night after a review found content that violated its guidelines against child sexual abuse material (CSAM), but restored the app a short while later, according to Reuters.

It seems like this was a symbolic gesture. Removing the app didn’t affect any of the customers who had already downloaded it. Probably none of them saw the image. And restoring the app doesn’t mean that it’s completely free from CSAM—probably none of the major platforms is. It just means that Telegram did the obvious thing after the violation was reported, which presumably they would have done, anyway.

Jeff Johnson:

They removed an entire app for ONE app user???

And before even contacting the developer? Telegram banning the account is what actually prevented users from potentially seeing the CSAM. Apple’s action seems like either a mistake or trying to send them a message.

I would note, by the way, that the Telegram app was apparently never removed from the Mac App Store. Which goes to show how little Apple cares about the Mac App Store.

Telegram:

I’m sure this stance will be applied equally to all other apps in the store, in the future right? @Apple

Pavel Durov (Telegram, MacRumors):

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/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.

[…]

Extortionists have found a way to manipulate Apple into overreacting. Apple removed Telegram from the App Store before contacting us. This creates a potential systemic risk for every mobile app that hosts user-generated content. If an app used by more than a billion people can be removed from the App Store without prior warning, any app can be.

Marcus Mendes:

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.

It’s sad but kind of hilarious that both of these so disparate theories were considered possible. Durov really does have political enemies, and Apple really does seem to have it out for Telegram. But, also, using private API to animate emojis totally seems like something that Telegram would do and that Apple would overreact to.

Previously:

• Telegram Founder Arrested
• Telegram Stuck in App Review
• Apple Forces Telegram to Close Channels Run by Belarus Protestors
• Apple Hasn’t Blocked Telegram App, But Won’t Allow Updates

Update (2026-08-06): Matt Burgess (Hacker News):

Over the last nine months, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has run dozens of paid ads that include explicit AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and images of minors alongside sexually suggestive statements, according to details of the ads shared with WIRED. The ads, which in some cases reached several thousand accounts, were targeted at people living in the United States, United Kingdom, and more than a dozen European countries.

This is much worse than what happened with Telegram, yet Apple didn’t overreact.

There’s also the Twitter/Grok case.

Previously:

• San Francisco Demands Removal of Nudify Apps

Matt Burgess (MacRumors, ArsTechnica):

On Thursday, San Francisco city attorney David Chiu sent legal notices to Apple and Google demanding that they remove from their app stores 13 face-swapping apps, which allow users to create AI-generated nonconsensual nude images. The letters say the Silicon Valley giants should stop “aiding and abetting” the sale of explicit deepfake images and “sever” business relationships with the app developers.

[…]

Researchers have repeatedly found and reported apps in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store that allow people to generate sexual images using AI—including some apps being rated as suitable for use by children. While new laws and bans aim to tackle the scourge of explicit deepfakes online, technology and social media companies consistently direct millions of people toward the harmful tech.

Both Apple and Google have developer policies that prohibit pornography, abuse, and harassment on their platforms.

Burgess gives the impression, which is my base assumption, that these 13 apps were clear about what they do, so App Review has no excuse for missing them. But I’m sure it’s keeping us all safe in other regards.

Meanwhile, in a preprint research paper published in May, researchers from Cornell University and Georgetown University identified 420 apps offering general face-swapping capabilities on Google’s and Apple’s app stores. They tested 155 to see if they could be used to create face swaps with nude images; in 70 percent of cases, it was possible, with the apps not including safety measures to prevent this.

Previously:

• Sirius Pomodoro
• Apps for YouTube℠™®•!
• Sanctioned Entities Slip Through App Store Controls

Update (2026-07-21): Danny Bradbury:

Chiu isn’t arguing that hosting an app automatically makes a platform liable for what it does. Platform operators already won that battle with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That 30-year-old law says websites generally aren’t responsible for content posted by users, allowing platforms to host user-generated content without getting sued every time someone defames someone in a comment thread.

Courts have often extended those protections to cover app stores too. Apple and Google are treated as distributors of whatever a third-party developer uploads, rather than publishers.

Chiu is attempting to sidestep that argument by focusing on the companies’ payment systems, noting that Apple and Google collect a cut of every in-app purchase. According to the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), that means they profit from apps that generate revenue by creating non-consensual intimate imagery.