The Coalition for a Safer Web is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organisation that advocates for new technologies and policies to remove extremist content from social media. The group is headed by former US Ambassador to Morocco Mark Ginsberg, now a cybersecurity and social media platform adviser.
On 17 January, the Coalition for a Safer Web filed a lawsuit against Apple urging it to remove the Telegram messenger from its app store which, according to its filing, “is being used to intimidate, threaten, and coerce members of the public”.
The coalition complained that “neo-Nazi” and “racist” messages as well as hate speech were allegedly distributed on Telegram. The organisation has filed a lawsuit in a northern California district court and claims that Telegram violates Apple's app store rules by allowing the publication of this kind of content.
The case also contains accusations of Telegram being a “tool to facilitate and carry out its terrorist activity, including the attack on the United States Capitol that took place on 4 January 2021”. According to the suit, Telegram is a vehicle facilitating voices of violence and extremism across the US.
As The Washington Post noted, the prospects for the suit's success are unclear. Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, online platforms are given high immunity from liability for most of the content they distribute. The decision to keep Telegram in the app store is not just protected by the…
