Apple removed Telegram from the App Store worldwide on Monday night, then restored it roughly 40 minutes later.
“We briefly removed Telegram from the App Store after our review found content that violates our strict guidelines prohibiting child sexual abuse material,” Apple said in a statement sent to several outlets. “The app was subsequently restored after the developer promptly removed the content and banned the user who posted it.”
A Telegram spokesperson said that Apple had reported one user sharing the material, and that the user was immediately banned, meaning the trigger was a single user on a platform that Telegram says has more than a billion monthly active users.
“The app was subsequently restored after the developer promptly removed the content and banned the user who posted it,” the spokesperson wrote.
Pulling an app from the App Store only blocks new downloads and updates. Anyone who already had Telegram installed kept messaging straight through the episode – which ran, by Reclaim The Net’s timings, from about 9:30 to about 10:10 that night, Eastern time.
The takedown was patchy while it lasted and it stayed available on the Mac App Store and on Google Play throughout.
But the brevity measures how fast Telegram moved, not the limit of what Apple can do. A removal that stood would have blocked new installs first, then reached anyone who reset or replaced a phone, and, once updates stopped coming, eventually everyone was still using the app.
Apple’s hold over what reaches an iPhone is already in federal court. The Justice Department and 16 state and district attorneys general sued the company in March 2024 for monopolizing smartphone markets. The complaint says that Apple maintains its dominance through restrictions on third-party developers, among them limits on “super apps” and the favoring of its own Messages app over third-party messaging.
A federal judge in New Jersey denied Apple’s motion to dismiss in June last year, and no trial has been scheduled. Bloomberg reported in July that Apple has made offers and entered early settlement talks with the government, and that there is no guarantee an agreement will be reached.
What happens to a developer who takes a week to remove the content, instead of 40 minutes?
Hellbound and Down 