Telegram is a breeding ground for extremists, scammers, and terrorists. It’s time for moderation to get serious.

In their early days, many large social networks had minimal moderation. Reddit, in particular, was known for having the ideal of a “free speech” platform, which is to say, a platform with minimal moderation, where any opinion could spread freely. While subreddits each had user-moderators, the Reddit administration aimed to do as little as possible. This seemed like a worthy ideal at the time, but exposed not only vile opinions, but calls to violence, scams, non-consensual pornography, cultish bigotry, and a wide variety of other posts and behaviors that slowly demanded action from the reddit administration.

Since then, many social networks have started up claiming to be “free speech” platforms, but specifically intended to support the same hate speech as others. Parler and Gab helped organize the January 6th riots. Gab’s founder, Andrew Torba, is a proud and outspoken antisemite. They weren’t all right-wing extremists — Lemmy was briefly home to an overwhelming proportion of “tankies,” although they were not nearly as violent. Many of these extremist social networks attempted to take advantage of the fediverse to grow, but were quickly defederated. And they still engaged in censorship — they just censored moderate opinions, instead. Gab, unfortunately, still exists and still spreads extremism.

But there are social networks that managed to escape the negative PR of platforming hate, while… still platforming hate. And they use a clever trick. Discord and WhatsApp are not without problems, but Telegram is the key example. Although it has over half a billion users, Telegram is not expected to moderate much because it is, firstly, a messaging app.

Have you ever received a sketchy message on one platform telling you to reach out on WhatsApp or Telegram instead? The scammers are trying to reach you where nobody is watching. To be fair to Meta, moderating WhatsApp is a unique challenge, in that WhatsApp chats are end-to-end encrypted by default. But Telegram chats do not have end-to-end encryption by default, Telegram group chats cannot use end-to-end encryption at all, meaning that Telegram can practically moderate these chats without issue.

Perhaps most obvious, Telegram introduced “Broadcast Channels” — one to many chats, not dissimilar from Instagram or Twitter accounts, where nobody could leave comments correcting the posters on the spot. Telegram also recently introduced a “story” feature. These features substantively transform Telegram from a mere messaging app into a social network. (Note, Instagram and Whatsapp have since copied the broadcast channel feature. Meta has a very long history of copying features other social media companies invent).

These features substantively transform Telegram from a mere messaging app into a social network.

The scams are an obvious problem — crypto scams, pump and dump scams, phishing scams, the list goes on. Several experts attribute this to anonymity or encryption, but these features are not unique to telegram.

And it’s no stranger to white supremacy, either. High-ranking members of the US military got caught using Telegram to spread neo-Nazi ideology throughout the military community. They used Twitter as a starting point to recruit users to Telegram, where they could spread more extreme opinions without scrutiny or censorship. Their echo chambers each grow more extreme over time.

And it’s widely beloved by terrorists. ISIS has a long-documented history of using Telegram, Hezbollah operates there openly, and Hamas has been caught using Telegram to spread propaganda and share footage of its terrorism. Telegram offers generous file sharing and storage features, making it a popular platform for sharing large video files privately. Al Qaeda apparently uses a private messaging server software on its own servers, but its supporters operate on Telegram and take advantage of the Telegram network to spread hate.

Telegram did, in early 2021, ban 15 extremist groups. They are not unaware of extremism. They took down a few openly pro-ISIS accounts in 2015 after a terrorist attack in Paris. But clearly, they haven’t been taking ISIS too seriously. And Telegram banned a few neo-Nazi groups, including paramilitary group Terrorwave, after the story broke about the U.S. Military officials mentioned above. Edit: The Telegram isiswatch channel apparently documents the banning of terrorist bots and channels, and describes reporting procedures. This is definitely a start, but the continued prevalence of terrorism on Telegram is evidence that it really isn’t enough.

But it feels like too little, too late. These groups are still recruiting, and stay around for years before Telegram needs to react to a bad headline by banning a few. Many are still unaware that Telegram broadcast channels even exist. Ordinary people don’t come across extremist broadcast channels and report them, as they can and do with Twitter or Instagram accounts. Ordinary people are not able to comment on the broadcast messages, questioning whether or not they are true.

Of course, we’re not going to stop scamming altogether. And terrorists will spread their message on whatever platform they can get. And disinformation is spreading. But people are giving these companies scrutiny, and the companies are responding. And regulators are trying to hold platforms accountable for the spread of disinformation.

But Telegram should be high on their radar. Regulators should generally be aware of the way messaging apps are being used to spread extremism. People should be aware, not only to avoid the scams and extremism, but to find ways to combat that extremism. While I strongly support encryption and software freedom, Telegram group chats and broadcast channels are not end-to-end encrypted, the service is operated centrally, and it is very popularly used for scams and extremism in their various forms.

It’s time for Telegram to take moderation seriously.