Australia’s online safety regulator filed a civil lawsuit against Telegram in the Federal Court on Thursday, alleging the messaging platform failed to remove pro-terror content including livestreamed footage of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings and the 2022 Buffalo, New York, mass shooting. The eSafety Commissioner’s office said a year-long investigation found Telegram left some of this material accessible for weeks after being notified — in one case, footage remained online for nearly three months before removal.
“This case concerns content linked to some of the most notorious acts of known extremist violence in recent history, including material associated with the Christchurch and Buffalo terror attacks,” eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement. “We allege that this content remained accessible on the service long after Telegram had been put on notice.” The regulator also alleges Telegram failed to remove accounts and channels tied to the material, lacked terms of service barring pro-terror content across all parts of the app, and did not inform some Australian users who reported the material about the outcome of their complaints.
Telegram, which reports having roughly 1 billion users worldwide and is based in the United Arab Emirates, faces civil penalties of up to 54.6 million Australian dollars (about $38 million) if the Federal Court finds against it. A company spokesperson rejected the allegations. “We reject these allegations and will contest them in court,” the spokesperson said, adding that the platform’s counterterrorism efforts are well documented and that it removed thousands of extremist communities in 2026 alone. The case is a test of Australia’s 2021 Online Safety Act, which requires platforms to act to keep illegal and pro-terrorism material off their networks.
Separately, and in an unrelated matter, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on July 29 that it had charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorist activity and placed him on an international wanted list. The FSB alleges — a claim that has not been independently substantiated and is reported here strictly as the Russian security service’s position — that Telegram channels, chats, and a popular dating chatbot called Daivinchik, known as “Leo,” were used by Ukrainian intelligence services to recruit young Russians, posing as women online, to carry out acts of sabotage and attacks on infrastructure and law enforcement inside Russia. The FSB said 46 Russians aged 12 to 22 had been arrested over the past year in connection with this alleged recruitment pattern. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, and Interpol did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the FSB’s stated intent to seek an international arrest warrant; the FSB did not specify what mechanism it would use to do so.
Durov, a dual French and Emirati citizen who has lived in Dubai since leaving Russia over a decade ago, has not publicly responded in detail to the new charges; Telegram’s account on the social platform X posted an image of him making an obscene gesture in response to the announcement. Moscow has effectively throttled access to Telegram inside Russia as part of a broader campaign against foreign tech platforms, though Russian state bodies, including the Kremlin and the defense ministry, continue to use the service daily. Durov was previously arrested in France in 2024 over allegations that Telegram failed to adequately counter criminal activity on the platform; he was later allowed to leave the country while that investigation continued.
