Telegram has announced that Apple will remove the Telegram app from its App Store and users’ iPhones. It has recommended how users can prevent this from happening.
There’s no evidence this is true. Neither Telegram nor Apple has released information about any such decision. This claim circulated in 2021 and was debunked at the time.
According to posts on social media, Apple is removing the Telegram app from the App Store and it will be “deleted” automatically from people’s iPhones. But there’s no evidence this is true—neither Apple nor Telegram have announced any such thing.
Multiple Facebook posts have the caption: “BREAKING- Telegram announced that Apple will remove the Telegram app from their phones without their joint notice. Telegram announced that to prevent this, apply to mentioned settings”, while another post says: “This is not a joke - censorship is very real”.
Many of the posts include a series of screenshots, with text saying: “Telegram Alert Apple is trying to censor free speech by removing your ability to communicate. The Telegram app is being removed from the App Store and automatically deleted from iPhones without user knowledge or consent. Follow these steps to avoid the unwanted deletion of your Telegram app and any other apps you want to keep on your iPhone”. The other screenshots show steps to follow in Apple’s Settings app to supposedly prevent the app from being deleted.
However, no such announcements have been made on the Apple or Telegram websites, or social media pages. We could find no credible sources reporting any such changes, and at the time of writing, the Telegram app was available to be downloaded in the UK on the Apple App Store.
Moreover, this is not the first time this exact claim has been made—it circulated widely in 2021 and was debunked by fact checking organisations at the time.
Apple was reportedly sued in federal court by US nonprofit Coalition for a Safer Web for not removing Telegram from its store because of “religious and racial violence” that the coalition said was incited on the platform.
Apple has previously removed other apps from its store for violating its policies, including social media platform Parler and video game Fortnite. Parler was reinstated a few months later, while Fortnite is currently only available on iPhones in the EU due to new legislation requiring Apple to allow alternative app stores on its devices.
The founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has been placed under formal investigation by French authorities, which means he can’t leave the country, after being arrested in Paris on 24 August. The investigation reportedly relates to alleged offences concerning organised crime on the app.
Telegram has said the platform “abides by EU laws” and that Mr Durov has “nothing to hide”.
Telegram is a messaging app that allows groups of up to 200,000 members. According to its website, it has more than 950 million active users.
Full Fact has contacted Telegram for comment, and will update this article if we receive a response.
We’ve previously seen other false claims about social media platforms and freedom of speech, including that TikTok had been banned across France, and that Facebook made posting the Lord’s Prayer against its policies.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because this has not been announced by either Apple or Telegram, and the same claim circulated in 2021 and was debunked at the time.
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