Telegram has become a global sewer of criminal activity, disinformation, child sexual abuse material, terrorism and racist incitement, according to a four-month investigation by The New York Times that analyzed more than 3.2 million Telegram messages from over 16,000 channels. The company, which offers features that enable criminals, terrorists and grifters to organize at scale and to sidestep scrutiny from the authorities, has looked the other way as illegal and extremist activities have flourished openly on the app.
The degree to which Telegram has been inundated by such content has not been previously reported. The Times investigation found 1,500 channels operated by white supremacists who coordinate activities among almost one million people around the world. At least two dozen channels sold weapons. In at least 22 channels with more than 70,000 followers, MDMA, cocaine, heroin and other drugs were advertised for delivery to more than 20 countries.
Hamas, ISIS and other terror groups have thrived on Telegram, often amassing large audiences across dozens of channels.
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Maybe if these things are happening everywhere, it’s not the app that’s the issue. This kind of talk opens us up to bans on Signal and similar apps, and that’s just unacceptable. Address the core issues in society, don’t try (and typically fail) to bandage it by taking away more and more of people’s rights and freedoms.
They even admit that they did this research on public channels which never had encryption available to them on Telegram.
That’s like going on a bunch of open Discord servers and doing the same kind of research and coming to the same conclusions, even though Discord doesn’t even offer end-to-end encryption.
Arguably, Discord does more moderation of the types of groups in question, but at the same time, moderation is difficult, and acting like groups don’t “fall through the cracks” of Discord’s moderation is naive.
Telegram sucks, in my humble opinion, but I agree, this article seems more aimed at creating the narrative that only criminals use anything that has any encryption offerings, not that criminal activity happens anywhere and everywhere.