Telegram has deleted the channel of the St Petersburg-based publication MR7, which recently lost its media licence following a demand from Roskomnadzor. ASTRA drew attention to this.
Initially, when attempting to access the channel, it was marked as private. Later, a new channel titled ‘1’ was created under its link, where an image of a cat was posted, SOTA reported. Now, attempting to follow the MR7 channel address shows a message saying that such a page does not exist.
According to Paperpaper.ru, the MR7 editorial team suspects the channel was deliberately hacked to hijack its link. Before this incident, the channel had about 2,600 subscribers.
The outlet also told Rotonda that they plan to discuss the situation with Telegram’s administration. The publication noted the channel was registered to an editorial phone number—its user received no warnings from the messenger and is confident they did not click any malicious links.
According to Important Stories, channels in Telegram usually become private when illegal content is found in them, such as advertisements for drug sales.
In January, the Supreme Court of Russia, acting on Roskomnadzor’s request, revoked MR7’s media licence. The regulatory agency explained its demand was due to the absence of ‘foreign agent’ labelling on two news items on MR7’s website, even though the outlet added the labels after being warned and paid fines for their omission.
In April, several channels that Roskomnadzor had sought to have removed in court disappeared from Telegram. Among them was the anonymous channel ‘VChK-OGPU,’ which had over a million subscribers and posted about crime in government, law enforcement, and military agencies. Its administrators accused the messenger platform of deleting the channel. Telegram’s press office stated that the ‘VChK-OGPU’ channel was deleted by its owner and added: “Possibly as a result of unauthorised access.”
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Illustration: OVD-Info