From: Atlantic Council By Ivan Horodyskyy
As social media platforms grow, adapt, and proliferate, governments and the wider public are grappling with a basic question: How do companies guarantee—or compromise—privacy and security?
On April 24, US President Joe Biden signed a law banning TikTok in the United States—unless the Chinese company ByteDance sells its stake in TikTok in the next twelve months. The debate that led up to this law was conducted in public, where arguments were made about how to go about appropriately governing the US information space in a way that prevents foreign interference without jettisoning free expression and an interest in an open internet. The US debate will continue, while around the world many other countries grapple with similar tensions.
In that same spirit of transparency, it is worth looking at a bill proposed on March 25 in Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada, that would ban Telegram in Ukraine unless the company implements certain changes to protect against national security threats.
In late April, Ihor Solovey, director of Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security, explained in an interview why he believes that using Telegram is risky due to its lack of transparency and potential control by Russia. Using the message app of it for sending personal data and for official purposes, especially in the public sector and military zones, is not recommended, he said. Anonymity on the platform is often used to spread false information, he added, including by Russian special services, which negatively affects public order and security in Ukraine.
Voice of Ukraine 