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Telegram online9/4/2023 ![]() ![]() Despite terms of use that forbid promoting violence, attacks such as these are commonly celebrated in some spaces of Telegram, with little moderation or oversight. Makeshift memorial at the site of the 2019 mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. In late 2019, Telegram, in partnership with European law enforcement, launched a systematic effort to boot the international terrorist organization that calls itself the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or Daesh), and related networks from its platform. Hate content flourishes on Telegram with minimal restrictions Increasingly, Telegram chats consist of individual extremists who are not members of any group sharing hate content and discussing plans with one another. Telegram’s “secret chat” feature allows for a private conversation between two users. Many channel administrators have also leveraged Telegram “bots” to support vetting requirements and to automatically erase content from the channel, thus reducing the likelihood that a channel is infiltrated or that its contents are copied. (Encryption refers to the process of scrambling data so that messages cannot be read by anyone other than the sender and recipient.) In these chat groups, potential recruits can mingle with organizers of a group, talk with other members, learn the culture of the group and gain access to media deemed too sensitive for the public-facing propaganda channels. In addition to enabling the spread of propaganda, Telegram’s built-in features also facilitate recruitment by making it easy for extremists to set up public or private encrypted discussion groups. Telegram’s lax enforcement policies have allowed these videos to proliferate long after they were purged from other parts of the internet. These same channels have also provided a space for livestreams of white supremacist terrorists, including the perpetrators of the 2019 terrorist attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Halle, Germany, engaged in acts of mass murder. ![]() These may include images and videos dedicated to white supremacist terrorism and encouraging violence against religious and ethnic minorities, guides for 3D printed weaponry, white supremacist literature, hate music and more. The file storage feature in particular is leveraged on Telegram to store and share massive libraries of multimedia propaganda. Messages and digital media can also be “forwarded” or shared between channels on Telegram, increasing the audience for hate content. As on Twitter or Facebook, an individual user or group can start an account – known as a “channel” on Telegram – that allows them to post messages, pictures, videos, customizable “stickers” and other files for their followers. First, the platform’s technical features make it especially effective for spreading propaganda. Pavel Durov, considered by some to be “ Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg,” founded Telegram in 2014. (Photo by Jude Edginton/Contour by Getty Images) Telegram offers a one-stop shop for extremistsĮntrepreneur who founded social networking site VK and Telegram Messenger Pavel Durov is photographed for Fortune magazine on Februin London, England. “If got a logo, a name, and an online presence, that’s three strikes, run for your life,” wrote one moderator of a prominent white supremacist accelerationist channel in a guide, distributed on Telegram, for organizing white supremacist terror cells. While this shift does indicate that extremists are using new strategies for organizing, it does not signal a decrease in the threat those extremists pose in the United States and around the world. As a result, extremists have come to rely less on in-person groups, such as those recorded in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual hate count, and more on diffuse, leaderless digital networks, such as those facilitated by Telegram. ![]() ![]() Telegram, a messaging app, is a haven for neo-Nazis, white nationalists and antigovernment extremists locked out of traditional social media sites, as Hatewatch first reported in mid-2019.īut 2020 presented a year full of new hurdles for in-person organizing for the movement, ranging from legal quagmires to the COVID-19 pandemic. Far-right extremists and white supremacist terrorists have embraced Telegram as their platform of choice, signaling a shift away from these groups’ traditional methods of organizing and toward a dangerous future defined by leaderless resistance and “lone actor” terrorism. ![]()
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