Telegram restricts access to Hamas channels on Google, Apple stores

Hamas’s official account, the account of its armed wing the Qassam Brigades, and the news account Gaza Now have not been accessible on versions of Telegram downloaded from Google Play or Apple’s App Store since last week.

The accounts, which have amassed hundreds of thousands of new followers since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, are still accessible from the online version of Telegram and the version of the app downloaded directly from Telegram’s website.

While Telegram has not publicly commented on the reasons for the move, the restrictions appeared after the Zachor Legal Institute, a US-based lobby group that campaigns against “anti-Israel movements”, last week wrote a letter to Apple pointing out that seven Hamas-linked accounts remained accessible on iOS despite being blocked for Android users.

Apple and Telegram did not respond to requests for comment, but Google told Al Jazeera in a statement that Google Play requires apps that feature user-generated content to moderate “egregious content, including content that promotes terrorist acts, incites violence, or celebrates terrorist attacks”.

Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is considered a “terrorist” organisation by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan and Paraguay.

Telegram has been used heavily by Hamas to promote its message and it used the app to broadcast violent videos and images of its attacks on southern Israeli communities in real time. Other armed groups such as ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda have also used Telegram, which is known for its hands-off moderation, to promote their ideology and claim responsibility for attacks.

“Telegram served a purpose to Hamas that day and every day since because it lacks moderation policies and these lax rules allow militant groups to upload graphic footage of the carnage they are participating in, and then that content will filter to other places on the internet like X,” Layla Mashkoor, an associate editor at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told Al Jazeera.