Daily Authority: 📩 Telegram doesn't check its email

☕ Good morning! The week to come: Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Nothing event on March 23, and maybe the OnePlus 10 Pro could see a launch this week as well?

Telegram forgot to check its email

There’s a fun-yet-serious story that Telegram forgot to check its email, and was banned in Brazil for not complying with the email.

No, really:

• “Telegram’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov has just put out a statement about why Brazil’s Supreme Court is now suspending the app, and the reason is incredible. In the statement, which you can read in full below or on Durov’s Telegram channel, he says it was because his company was checking the wrong email address.
• “It seems that we had an issue with emails going between our telegram.org corporate addresses and the Brazilian Supreme Court,” Durov says, going on to explain that his company asked the court to send future takedown requests “to a dedicated email address.” But the court didn’t do that, apparently — it kept using “the old general-purpose email address,” and Telegram missed them somehow, and now it’s getting banned, unless the court takes pity.
• And, despite Telegram’s CEO plea to Brazil’s Supreme Court to give it a chance to read its emails, including the junk mail and spam and accidentally deleted items, or whatever, Telegram was suspended for two days.
• Apple and Google were forced to help block the app.

Disinformation:

• It’s all because Telegram has struggled to manage alleged disinformation, with a Supreme Court judge battling against Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, who uses Telegram as a main outlet, and the judge has been “leading Supreme Court investigations into Bolsonaro and his supporters for disseminating fake news.”

Anyway:

Telegram ended up checking its email properly and implementing what was asked, but it was banned for two days while changes were made:

• “The court walked back on its ban after Telegram made several changes to help keep misinformation at bay in the country, which includes removing classified information shared by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.”
• The political aspect isn’t exactly something I can or want to dig into here.
• What’s wild is seeing how vulnerable a platform with millions of subscribers can struggle with facing the law, simply through an email mixup — and how publicly the company would admit that.
• It’s alarming/refreshing! It would be great to know what else has happened in tech due to email mixups.
• Like… what if Tim Cook just missed Elon Musk’s email?

Roundup:

⌛ Android users can now delete the last 15 minutes of their Google search history, with the rollout ongoing (e.g. I don’t have it yet, but it’s coming) (Android Authority).

💻 Chrome OS tests variable refresh rate support (The Verge).

📶 My colleague Dhruv is easily the most tech of the tech nerds we work with, so take it seriously when he says: “I ditched consumer Wi-Fi routers, and I recommend you do too” (Android Authority).

👉 Is the Pixel 6 the only true affordable flagship now? (Android Authority).

🔫 Fortnite’s new season removes building and adds Doctor Strange (The Verge).

🍎 Apple Mac Studio teardown details upgradeable memory and the sheer size of the M1 Ultra SoC (Notebookcheck).

🍏 People want Apple to make Wi-Fi routers again, and it is weird that Apple just gave up making Wi-Fi routers(Bloomberg, $).

🍎 The first Linux distribution to support Apple Silicon is now out: works without a jailbroken device, doesn’t affect security, but it’s an early release (Tom’s Hardware).

📦 Long read: How did a vast Amazon warehouse opened in 2011 change life in a former UK mining town? (Interesting tidbit: “You wouldn’t believe how flat the floor has to be [for the robots to work]” (Ars Technica).

🔒 A big bet to kill the password for good: credential management system? (Wired).

🌉 There’s a new longest suspension bridge in the world (Jalopnik).

🤔 “What is the easiest (legal) way to make money on the side?” (r/askreddit).

Monday Meme

Twitter was created 16 years ago today on March 21, 2006. And …it’s been a ride.

• The very early times of Twitter were unhinged. Nothing has been beaten since Britney tweeted something that can never be deciphered, yet remains undeleted.
• I was going to say one of the best ways to reminisce is via the list of most retweeted tweets, but that’s now a minefield of BTS tweets from the BTS Army.
• Though, Ellen’s Oscar photo on the Samsung Note 3 held the spot for a very long time.
• And the request for a lifetime of nuggs somehow sits way, way up there too.

Cheers,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor