In his Telegram post today, Durov — borrowing some of the more “high-level” language that other social media executives have used — said that “Telegram’s moderators and AI tools remove millions of obviously harmful content from our public platform,” but he also swiftly moved on to defending the app continuing to allow sensitive content under the category of “war-related coverage.”

“Tackling war-related coverage is seldom obvious.” (He does not define what the line is between “obviously harmful” and “war-related coverage.”)

“While it would be easy for us to destroy this source of information, doing so risks exacerbating an already dire situation,” he continued, citing how, he said, Hamas used Telegram to warn civilians in Ashkelon to leave the area ahead of missile strikes. “Would shutting down their channel help save lives — or would it endanger more lives?” he asked in his post today.