This week, 2 (and more) of major furry arts channel, both of which had up to 10k users, were blocked/banned due to "violation of Telegram's TOS".
Both of these channels were public and posted both SFW and NSFW arts. The art itself was focused around said Furries, with most of it coming from sites like X or E621, with the idea of sharing the art with community and helping new artists get a firm ground
And yet, both of these channels were banned due to violation of TOS. So let us sit and actually read through it..
By signing up for Telegram, you accept our Privacy Policy and agree not to: • Use our service to send spam or scam users. • Promote violence on publicly viewable Telegram channels, bo/ts, etc. • Post illegal pornographic content on publicly viewable Telegram channels, bo/ts, etc. • Engage in activities that are recognized as illegal in the majority of countries. This includes child abuse, selling or offering illegal goods and services (drugs, firearms, forged documents), etc. Source: https://telegram.org/tos/en
The third rule talks about how you may not post illegal NSFW content on public channels. And heres the problem - what does qualify as illegal NSFW content?
The arts that were posted were not about minors, trafficing of victims, rape, so called "revenge porn". Both of the channels were even going as far as blocking extreme kinks, bestiality arts, characters that looked too young and prostitution. All they were posting was legal NSFW content, something that Telegram's TOS is allowing them to do, and allowed them to do for years... until recently.
So now the main question remains: Under what TOS line did they have a right to outright block a channel that did nothing but obide to their own rules, while allowing sex-AI-girlfriend and cryptoscams to be advertised on their platform?
One point to note: This also wasn’t an iOS filtering issue - the channels were fully taken down by Telegram, and the owners (who spent years building these communities) weren’t given any chance to appeal.
