Apple briefly removed Telegram from its App Store worldwide after finding that a Telegram user had shared child sexual abuse material, with the messaging app restored the same day once the offending content was taken down and the user banned.
An Apple spokesperson confirmed the removal followed a review that found content violating the App Store's guidelines against child sexual abuse material, and said the app was reinstated after Telegram promptly removed the material and banned the user responsible. Telegram, which says it has more than a billion monthly active users, said it has a zero-tolerance policy for child sexual abuse material and noted it had blocked nearly 338,000 groups and channels over such content this year. The company posted publicly questioning whether Apple would apply the same standard consistently across other apps on the store.
The episode is not the first of its kind. Telegram founder Pavel Durov previously described a 2018 suspension as involving what he called "inappropriate content" at the time; that removal was also followed by a restoration after Telegram strengthened its safeguards.
Tim Sweeney, chief executive of Epic Games — a company that has been engaged in extended legal disputes with Apple — publicly challenged the rationale behind the removal, questioning how Apple's stated standard could be applied at scale to any large communications app, including Apple's own iMessage. Apple's spokesperson did not respond to a request for further comment on the guideline violation itself.
The removal lands alongside separate regulatory scrutiny of Telegram's content practices. Britain's Ofcom launched an investigation in April into evidence suggesting the sharing of child sexual abuse material on the platform, an investigation Telegram has denied, saying it has largely eliminated public distribution of such material since 2018 through detection algorithms. Separately, Telegram was fined in February by Australia's online safety regulator for delays in responding to queries about the measures it had taken against child abuse and violent extremist material.
For Telegram, the removal adds to an already active compliance load: an ongoing Ofcom investigation and a completed Australian enforcement fine, both concerning the same category of content, now sit alongside a demonstrated willingness by its primary distribution partner to suspend access over a single flagged item.
