Emma Roth, writing for The Verge:

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov blames an extortionist for planting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in a public chat to get the app temporarily removed from Apple’s App Store on Monday night. “Apple removed Telegram from the App Store before contacting us,” Durov says in a post on X. “This creates a potential systemic risk for every mobile app that hosts user-generated content. If an app used by more than a billion people can be removed from the App Store without prior warning, any app can be.”

Durov adds, “Extortionists have found a way to manipulate Apple into overreacting.”

Overreacting? Perhaps. Apple moved quickly to take down an app that was hosting CSAM. That’s commendable. Doing so without contacting the developer is quite unusual—even more so if it was indeed “one user” that shared the illegal material, as Reuters reports.

We can’t lay blame on one overzealous reviewer here, either. Individual app reviewers don’t have the ability to directly remove apps—takedowns go through a process that includes multiple senior-level managers. Nuking Telegram was a considered decision.

In Durov’s full statement, as quoted in The Verge, he writes:

The attacker was a takedown extortionist: someone who demands ransom from group owners in exchange for not targeting their communities. These extortionists use automated accounts to plant illegal content in public groups and then report it directly to Apple, attempting to trigger the removal of legitimate communities whose owners refused to pay them.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s CSAM-spewing Grok remains available in the App Store. Despite several legitimate calls to remove it, Musk merely received sternly worded warnings.

Concerns beyond CSAM clearly factored into these decisions. Perhaps Grok is too big to ban. Perhaps Apple has a better relationship with Musk. Or perhaps Apple simply calculated that Telegram was less likely to sue.