Telegram blocked an Iranian channel with a million subscribers after the minister complained about calls for violence

The Telegram messenger blocked the amadnews channel, which was used by protesters in Iran. This was announced by the founder of the company Pavel Durov.

According to him, the channel was closed for violating the rules prohibiting incitement to violence - the channel published advice on the use of "Molotov cocktails" against the police. The “mirrors” of the channel that existed at the time of the violation were also blocked; new "mirrors", according to Durov, will not be blocked.

According to copy made on December 30, the channel had over 1.4 million subscribers. a Google cache

The channel was blocked after Iranian Communications Minister Azari Jahromi publicly addressed Durov on Twitter. The minister wrote about a certain channel with calls for the use of "Molotov cocktails" and an armed uprising and demanded "to stop such calls through telegrams."

In response to criticism of this decision, including from former CIA and NSA officer Edward Snowden, Durov wrote that the messenger blocks channels only for violating "very simple rules of use - no public calls for violence, no porn and no copyright infringement" . “Thousands of opposition channels thrive on Telegram and we don’t care what local politicians say about it,” he said.

• Telegram is very popular in Iran, where major Western social networks are blocked. According to available data, about 40 million people use it, that is, about half of the country's population. In June 2016, the messenger accounted for 40% of all Internet traffic in Iran.