There are many things that right-wing extremists want about Telegram, the social media and messaging app that is currently at the top of the application stores. The moderation of its content is lazy and widespread. It is a well-built app with many features for mass communication as well as encrypted chats and file sharing. And Telegram has more users than ever.
After the Capitol uprising, Telegram announced that it had surpassed 500 million active users worldwide. It added 25 million new users in just 72 hours. Only 2 percent of the user base of the Dubai-based app is in the US, but it is becoming more popular among Americans. According to data from app measurement firm Sensor Tower, Telegram’s US downloads in the first weeks of this year were more than 700 percent higher than for the same period in 2020.
The use of alternative messaging apps has skyrocketed over the past few weeks for several reasons, including the failure of a WhatsApp privacy update and the suppression of other platforms after the riot in Capitol. In the US, Signal, known for its end-to-end encrypted messages, has the same number of unique installations in the first 18 days of 2021 as in 2020.
Telegram is currently the most downloaded app in the Google Play Store, with Signal not having the best location in the United States. However, Telegram’s specific combination of features makes it especially popular among American right-wing extremists, who have joined the platform en masse after being kicked out of Twitter, Facebook and Parler. The latter is another extremist favorite and was recently kicked off the internet, although it is now back in a very limited form.
Telegram has three main components. Channels, as well as private ones, are mostly one-way broadcasts that can be watched by an unlimited number of people.
Telegram also has public and private groups where up to 200,000 people can communicate. Groups on signal, by comparison, reach a maximum of 1000; WhatsApp at 256. After its role that intensified violence in India and Myanmar, WhatsApp’s Facebook group is limiting the ability to forward messages to other groups to stop spreading misinformation. Larger groups spread false news – and calls for violence – faster.
The third component of Telegram is called Secret Chats, where people can have one-on-one conversations that are end-to-end encrypted, which means that hackers or police cannot see the content of the messages.
Megan Squire, a professor of computer science at Elon University and fellow university at the Southern Poverty Law Center who investigates online extremism, says these social media and messaging features are ‘comfortable’ for online extremists.
“They can do radicalization and recruitment on one platform,” Squire told Recode. These features also make it popular among activists worldwide. The app has been used by protest movements (Hong Kong) and extremists (the Islamic State).
Telegram last week indicated a rare departure from its much more practical approach to American extremists, blocking dozens of public channels to incite violence, saying they violate the terms of service. It included a channel that in the days before the inauguration showed how to make and hide homemade guns and bombs. The app’s founder, Russian technology entrepreneur Pavel Durov, said this week that after seeing an increase in reports in the US, he had taken down “hundreds” of calls for violence on public channels.
There are still numerous public channels and groups that contain hate speech, conspiracy theories and racist memes. There are currently two channels with Proud Boys in the name, each with nearly 40,000 followers. They have built up a lot of it over the last few weeks.
The coalition Coalition for a Safer Web, a non-profit group, filed a lengthy lawsuit against Apple on Sunday, calling for Telegram to be launched from the App Store – as Apple did with Parler – because it does not use violent and extremist content. removed from the app.
A Telegram spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
There is reason to believe that Telegram does not treat content moderation as seriously as other platforms. Squire said she reported a manifesto about the killing of Muslims to Telegram almost two years ago, and it is still going on. Last week, a Proud Boy posted Squire’s address on the site. She reported it, but doxing is not one of the five categories of inappropriate content you can report, and again no one returned her. Unlike on Facebook or Twitter, there is no way to track down a report on Telegram and find out what happened to it.
But the lax moderation in the social media messaging program is also one of the different reasons for its popularity among extremists. Unlike other platforms, Telegram also enables file storage, which Squire says is an appeal to extremists who want to share radical videos and manifestos. Telegram’s very short terms of service prohibit the promotion of violence on public channels, but mention nothing about the promotion of violence on private channels or groups.
Telegram is also popular among extremists, precisely for the reasons why it is popular with everyone: the app is pretty good. It is easy to use and is not often offline. Squire said it is much better than other programs popular with right-wing extremists such as Gab and Parler. “It is not composed of bubble gum and adhesive tape,” she said.
As such, many people use it. And communication platforms rely on network effects, which means that the more people use them, the more useful they become.
And as more and more extremists turn to Telegram for repression on other platforms, the app’s loose moderation could create the potential to create new echo chambers to further radicalize the people. How much Telegram moderates its website will decide what kind of platform it becomes.