Telegram gave authorities the data on 22,777 of its users in the first three months of 2025, according to a GitHub that reposts Telegram’s transparency reports.That number is a massive jump from the same period in 2024, which saw Telegram turn over data on only 5,826 of its users to authorities. From January 1 to March 31, Telegram sent over the data of 1,664 users in the U.S.
Telegram is a popular social network and messaging app that’s also a hub of criminal activity. Some people use the site to stay connected with friends and relatives and some people use it to spread deepfake scams, promote gambling, and sell guns.
CEO Pavel Durov long promoted the social network as a safe space for free speech and resisted cooperation with national governments. That changed last year when authorities in France arrested him after Telegram refused to turn over data related to a child abuse investigation.
Now Durov and Telegram are more cooperative with government requests for user data. As part of that process, Telegram runs a bot that will tell users how many requests the service has received and how many users have been affected. The bot only reports on data where the user is registered, but there are multiple sites and Telegram channels that share the transparency reports for a given country as they refresh. The technologist Tek, who works at Human Rights Watch, organized the data on a GitHub.
According to the GitHub data, Telegram processed at least 13,615 requests and turned over the data of 22,277 users in the first quarter of 2025. The report said that 576 of those were U.S. requests and 1,664 users were affected.
Durov had been stuck in France since his arrest, but his lawyers recently negotiated a temporary release from the country. He flew to Dubai on March 15 and started taking small shots at the French government in social media posts.
A centrist presidential candidate won an election in Romania over the weekend after fears that a hard-right populist may take power. In a post on Telegram the morning after the election, Durov implied that France had asked him to suppress the far-right candidate on Telegram.
“A Western European government (guess which 🥖) approached Telegram, asking us to silence conservative voices in Romania ahead of today’s presidential elections. I flatly refused. Telegram will not restrict the freedoms of Romanian users or block their political channels,” Durov said. “You can’t ‘defend democracy’ by destroying democracy. You can’t ‘fight election interference’ by interfering with elections. You either have freedom of speech and fair elections — or you don’t. And the Romanian people deserve both.”
Durov named the country, and the official who made the ask, in a post on X. “This spring at the Salon des Batailles in the Hôtel de Crillon, Nicolas Lerner, head of French intelligence, asked me to ban conservative voices in Romania ahead of elections. I refused. We didn’t block protesters in Russia, Belarus, or Iran. We won’t start doing it in Europe,” Durov said. The French intelligence service has denied any of this took place.
In the first three months of 2024, Telegram took 4 requests from France and turned over the data of 17 people, according to the data in the GitHubIt fielded none from Romania. In the same time period a year later it fielded 668 requests from France and turned over the data of 1,425 users. Romania got on the board too, with 37 requests of its own that affected 88 users.
Monday, the genetic pharmaceutical company Regeneron announced that it is buying genetic sequencing company 23andMe out of bankruptcy for $256 million. The purchase gives us a rough estimate for the current monetary value of a single person’s genetic data: $17.
Regeneron is a drug company that “intends to acquire 23andMe’s Personal Genome Service (PGS), Total Health and Research Services business lines, together with its Biobank and associated assets, for $256 million and for 23andMe to continue all consumer genome services uninterrupted,” the company said in a press release Monday. Regeneron is working on personalized medicine and new drug discovery, and the company itself has “sequenced the genetic information of nearly three million people in research studies,” it said. This means that Regeneron itself has the ability to perform DNA sequencing, and suggests that the critical thing that it is acquiring is 23andMe’s vast trove of genetic data.
The most recently available numbers show that 23andMe collected DNA from roughly 15 million people, meaning that 23andMe’s genetic data is worth roughly $17 per person. 23andMe does not perform full genome sequences. It instead does DNA genotyping, which looks at specific parts of the genome that tend to vary from person to person.
The sale to Regeneron means that the genetic data collected by 23andMe will likely be used for the development of new drugs, which felt like the most likely and perhaps best-case scenario for the company’s bankruptcy. In the past, genetic data companies have been sold to larger companies that explicitly make DNA forensics products for law enforcement. Regeneron said in the press release that it “intends to ensure compliance with 23andMe’s consumer privacy policies and applicable laws with respect to the treatment of customer data. As the successful bidder, Regeneron is prepared to detail the intended use of customer data and the privacy programs and security controls in place for review by a court-appointed, independent Customer Privacy Ombudsman and other interested parties.”
The sale price to Regeneron suggests that the overall monetary value of this type of data has decreased in recent years. In 2018, the drug giant GSK invested $300 million into 23andMe in exchange for the genetic data of 5 million people, which means it valued an individual’s genetic data at roughly $60. The massive private equity firm Blackstone bought Ancestry.com, a company that sequences genetic data but also has other parts of its business, for $4.7 billion in 2020.
Apple has just released iPadOS 17.7.8, a critical security bug fix release targeted at iPad models that are too old to be able to update to iOS 18. The new release is a follow-up to iPadOS 17.7.7, which was pulled after users reported consistent issues where various App Store apps kept getting logged out.
Formula 1's busy 2025 schedule saw the sport return to its European heartland this past weekend. Italy has two races on the calendar this year, and this was the first, the (deep breath) "Formula 1 AWS Gran Premio Del Made in Italy e Dell'Emilia-Romagna," which took place at the scenic and historic (another deep breath) Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, better known as Imola. It's another of F1's old-school circuits where overtaking is far from easy, particularly when the grid is as closely matched as it is. But Sunday's race was no snoozer, and for a couple of teams, there was a welcome change in form.
Red Bull was one. The team has looked a bit shambolic at times this season, with some wondering whether this change in form was the result of a number high-profile staff departures toward the end of last season. Things looked pretty bleak during the first of three qualifying sessions, when Yuki Tsunoda got too aggressive with a curb and, rather than finding lap time, found himself in a violent crash that tore all four corners off the car and relegated him to starting the race last from the pit lane.
2025 has also been trying for Ferrari. Italy expects a lot from the red team, and the replacement of Mattia Binotto with Frédéric Vasseur as team principal was supposed to result in Maranello challenging for championships. Signing Lewis Hamilton, a bona fide superstar with seven titles already on his CV, hasn't exactly reduced the amount of pressure on Scuderia Ferrari, either.
A Microsoft employee disrupted the company’s Build developer conference in Seattle, Washington, this morning, protesting against the company’s cloud and AI contracts with the Israeli government. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had only been on stage for a matter of minutes before protesters started interrupting his speech, with one shouting “free Palestine!” Nadella continued his keynote, ignoring the protesters as they were escorted out of a hall inside the Seattle conference center.
Microsoft employee Joe Lopez, who has spent the past four years working as a firmware engineer in the company’s Azure hardware systems team, was one of the protesters who interrupted Nadella. He was also joined by a fired Google employee, who was part last year’s sit-in protests against Google’s cloud contract with Israel.
Shortly after Lopez’s interruption, he sent an email to thousands of Microsoft employees, telling them he was “shocked by the silence of our leadership,” just days after Microsoft responded to employee protests by claiming it hadn’t found any evidence that its Azure and AI tech has harmed people in Gaza.
“Leadership rejects our claims that Azure technology is being used to target or harm civilians in Gaza,” says Lopez in his email. “Those of us who have been paying attention know that this is a bold-faced lie. Every byte of data that is stored on the cloud (much of it likely containing data obtained by illegal mass surveillance) can and will be used as justification to level cities and exterminate Palestinians.”
Microsoft announced last week that it had recently conducted an internal review and used an unnamed external firm to assess how its technology is used in the conflict in Gaza. Microsoft says that its relationship with the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) is “structured as a standard commercial relationship,” and that it has “found no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct.”
This latest employee protest comes just weeks after after two former Microsoft employees disrupted the company’s 50th-anniversary event, with one calling Microsoft’s AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, a “war profiteer” and demanding that Microsoft “stop using AI for genocide in our region.” A second protester interrupted Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former CEO Steve Ballmer, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella later on in the event.
The protests have been organized by No Azure for Apartheid, a group of current and former Microsoft employees rallying against Microsoft’s contracts with the Israeli government. The group accuses Microsoft of “supporting and enabling an apartheid state,“ by not suspending sales of cloud and AI services to Israel. It has also highlighted media reports that detail the Israeli military’s increased use of Azure and OpenAI technology to gather information through mass surveillance and use AI tools to transcribe and translate phone calls, texts, and audio messages.
Hossam Nasr — an organizer of No Azure for Apartheid and a former Microsoft employee who was fired for holding a vigil outside Microsoft’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza — called the company’s latest statement contradictory last week. “In one breath, they claim that their technology is not being used to harm people in Gaza, while also admitting they don’t have insight into how their technologies are being used,” said Nasr. “It’s very clear that their intention with this statement is not to actually address their worker concerns, but rather to make a PR stunt to whitewash their image that has been tarnished by their relationship with the Israeli military.”
Here is Joe Lopez’s email in full:
Fellow Microsoft workers and Microsoft leadership, By now you may have seen or heard of my disruption at the Microsoft Build keynote this morning. I have been working as a firmware engineer under Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure (AHSI) for the past 4 years. As a Microsoft worker – while I’ve had positive experiences here, working and learning with many incredible people – I can no longer stand by in silence as Microsoft continues to facilitate Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
Like many of you, I have been watching the ongoing genocide in Gaza in horror. I have been shocked by the silence, inaction, and callousness of world leaders as Palestinian people are suffering, losing their lives and their homes while they plead for the rest of the world to pay attention and act.
Like many of you, I have tried to do my part in small ways. Staying informed, sharing information with friends, signing petitions, making donations. All the while continuing my work at Microsoft.
My disillusionment with Microsoft
Then I came across the No Azure for Apartheid movement, whose members have been organizing, taking action, and speaking out no matter the cost. I saw Ibtihal and Vaniya’s disruption of Microsoft’s 50th anniversary on April 4 and was shocked to hear the words coming from their mouths. Microsoft is killing kids? Is my work killing kids?
I was also shocked by the silence of our leadership. By the silence of Mustafa Suleyman, Brad Smith, Kevin Scott, Scott Guthrie, and Satya Nadella. “Why aren’t they responding”? I asked myself. “If we are truly not guilty, shouldn’t they deny these horrible accusations?”
I started to look deeper. I read the articles, saw the evidence, heard the testimonies of employees who were horrified to find out that the technology that we are building is being used by Israel in their mission to erase the Palestinian people.
A switch had been flipped. Presented with this information, I went into work everyday plagued by thoughts of the suffering that is being inflicted by a United States-Israeli war machine that runs on Azure. I joined Microsoft because I truly believed that it was the “more ethical big tech”. I thought that the work that I was doing was empowering people, not causing harm.
Microsoft’s admission of complicity
Microsoft recently uploaded a blog post, marking its first official response to the concerns that many have been shouting into their ears for years. Their statement falls far short of what we are demanding. Nontransparent audits into our cloud operations in Israel (conducted by no other than Microsoft itself and an unnamed external entity) that declare no wrongdoing by the company do not give me any sense of relief. In fact, this response has further compelled me to speak out. Microsoft openly admitted to allowing the Israel Ministry of Defense “special access to our technologies beyond the terms of our commercial agreements”. Do you really believe that this “special access” was allowed only once? What sort “special access” do they really need? And what are they doing with it?
Leadership rejects our claims that Azure technology is being used to target or harm civilians in Gaza. Those of us who have been paying attention know that this is a bold-faced lie. Every byte of data that is stored on the cloud (much of it likely containing data obtained by illegal mass surveillance) can and will be used as justification to level cities and exterminate Palestinians. We don’t need an internal audit to know that a top Azure customer is committing crimes against humanity. We see it live on the internet every day.
As one of the largest companies in the world, Microsoft has immeasurable power to do the right thing: demand an end to this senseless tragedy, or we will cease our technological support for Israel. If leadership continues to ignore this demand, I promise that it won’t go unnoticed. The world has already woken up to our complicity and is turning against us. The boycotts will increase and our image will continue to spiral into disrepair.
Call to action
My future children will one day ask me what I did for the Palestinian people as they were suffering and pleading for our help. I hope they will forgive me for my previous inaction. Many of you have children who may be asking you that question today. What will you tell them?
As Israel continues its deadly blockade of Gaza, and Netanyahu continues to assert that he will not rest until Gaza is fully occupied, we know that this situation is beyond dire. I wouldn’t have risked my career and my livelihood if I didn’t believe that to the core of my being. It’s terrifying to speak up, especially right now. Imagine your home being demolished as soldiers stand by cheering.
Your friends and family members dismembered by bombs that drop daily in your neighborhood.
Every member of your community on the brink of death due to starvation
Strangers staking claims to your home, awaiting your death.
Wouldn’t you hope that someone would speak up for you?
I recognize my privilege as a young person with little financial responsibility to anyone but myself and little risk of deportation as a US citizen. Not everyone can afford to do what I did without great risk to themselves and their family. But no act is too small when human lives are at stake. Sign the petition, join the movement, start the conversation with colleagues, please contribute whatever you can to the cause.
I know many of you out there are also considering leaving Microsoft for the same reasons I am. You are not alone. If you find it is too debilitating to work at this company and you wish to leave, please lean on our campaign to support. If we continue to remain silent, we will pay for that silence with our humanity.
Looking back, I’m ashamed of my past silence. But as the saying goes: “The best time to act was yesterday, the second best time is today.”
Bluesky is making it easier to know when an NBA game is happening with a new test that adds a red border to the NBA’s profile picture, along with a “live” callout below it. When you click the profile picture, you’ll be taken out of Bluesky and to whatever live event the organization is promoting, Bluesky COO Rose Wang announced yesterday.
“We aren’t trapping you in Bluesky,” Wang writes in her post. “We want you to use Bluesky to discover what’s happening.”
In the announcement, Wang quote-posted an NBA promotional post about two games that were set to take place last night, indicating that the badge would have shown up during them. Bluesky didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s email asking for a screenshot of the new indicator and whether it plans to extend the test to other sports or non-sports organizations. As TechCrunch points out, Wang confirmed that the feature will appear for WNBA games as well.
Though Wang doesn’t say it, her post feels like a dig at the various deals Twitter made with sports organizations like the NFL, MLB and NHL, and the NBA to stream their content on its platform, rather than linking out to their streams elsewhere. In an interview with SportsPro last month, Wang said Bluesky doesn’t have the means or desire to take on partnerships like those, but the new live badge testing shows it’s certainly not above doing what it can to nurture its burgeoning “Sports Bluesky.”
A Kansas mother who left an old laptop in a closet is suing multiple porn sites because her teenage son visited them on that computer.
The complaints, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for Kansas, allege that the teen had “unfettered access” to a variety of adult streaming sites, and accuses the sites of providing inadequate age verification as required by Kansas law.
According to the complaints, the mother, “Jane Doe,” put an old laptop in a closet at home and forgot about it. Her son, 14-year-old “Q.R.,” found it in working condition. He visited Chaturbate 30 times between August and October 2024, the complaint against Chaturbate says. “Jane Doe was vigilant in monitoring Q.R.’s devices to prevent his exposure to harmful material during this important developmental stage of his life,” NCOSE wrote in its press release. NCOSE is a conservative anti-porn lobbying group that’s gone after adult material on Reddit and Twitter in the past, and has supported efforts to ban Pornhub entirely.
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Do you know anything else about how adult sites are handling age verification laws, or how lobbyists are pushing for them? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at [email protected].
In April of last year, Kansas passed one of the most extreme age verification bills into law. “Any commercial entity that knowingly shares or distributes material that is harmful to minors on a website and such material appears on 25% or more of the webpages viewed on such website in any calendar month” falls under the purview of this law, sites that don’t comply could be fined up to $10,000 for each violation, and parents could sue for damages of at least $50,000.
Kansas criminal law defines “material harmful to minors” as involving “nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse.”
Benjamin Bull, General Counsel for NCOSE, told local news outlet KAKE that he hopes this lawsuit will “open up the floodgates” of similar age verification based challenges in other states. Eighteen states, including almost all of the U.S. South, have age verification laws in place, according to the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry advocacy organization. Free speech advocates and internet safety experts say these laws are archaic, ineffective for actually controlling childrens’ access to adult materials, and chilling for adults’ rights to view adult material.
Last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Chaturbate and other porn sites, accusing them of not complying with Texas' age verification law; Chaturbate paid Texas $675,000 to settle.
The plaintiff in these lawsuits against Chaturbate and others are asking for at least $75,000 in damages in each complaint, for “actual damages resulting from Q.R.’s access to material that is harmful to minors, including but not limited to past medical expenses, future medical expenses, past and future lost services and disability, past and future pain, suffering, and disability.” According to the law, each violation could cost the porn sites $50,000.
With the Galaxy S25 Edge and full lineup released, the Galaxy S25 FE is starting to rear its head. According to new leaks, the Galaxy S25 FE camera array may offer little change, sticking with a similar telephoto camera to last year’s model.
Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire said in a webinar hosted by Israel’s Defense Ministry that he connected the IDF with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet far sooner than believed.
The annual developer conference kicks off with a keynote address on Tuesday. Look out for updates on Android, Gemini, Search, and Google’s latest forays into XR.
In the mood for a jauntily charming sci-fi comedy dripping with wry wit and an intriguing mystery? Check out Apple TV's Murderbot, based on Martha Wells' bestselling series of novels The Murderbot Diaries. It stars Alexander Skarsgård as the titular Murderbot, a rogue cyborg security (SEC) unit that gains autonomy and must learn to interact with humans while hiding its new capabilities.
(Some minor spoilers below, but no major reveals.)
There are seven books in Wells' series thus far. All are narrated by Murderbot, who is technically owned by a megacorporation but manages to hack and override its governor module. Rather than rising up and killing its former masters, Murderbot just goes about performing its security work, relieving the boredom by watching a lot of entertainment media; its favorite is a soap opera called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.
