Too Small to Police, Too Big to Ignore: Telegram Is the App Dividing Europe

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-28/telegram-pro-russian-groups-spread-disinformation-and-eu-is-powerless

by bloomberg

21 comments

  1. *From Bloomberg reporters Alberto Nardelli, Daniel Hornak, and Jeff Stone:*

    Minutes after Slovakia’s Russia-friendly Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot, social media was awash with conspiracy theories.

    The attacker’s wife was a refugee from Ukraine. He was linked to a high-profile government critic. And Fico’s security guard was plotting against the premier.

    All those rumors were later rebutted by Slovak authorities. But not before they’d gone viral on Telegram.

    The messaging app has become a key weapon for pro-Kremlin accounts to spread disinformation aimed at undermining support for Ukraine. More recently, Russian intelligence officers have used it to recruit petty criminals to carry out acts of sabotage across European capitals.

    These incidents trade off Telegram’s key advantage: it’s largely unaccountable. That’s what most antagonizes European officials who’ve made the fight against fake news a top priority ahead of continent-wide elections in June. For all their new powers to regulate information online, they are largely powerless to rein in Telegram.

  2. Both Russia and China failed to regulate telegram. Why Europe should?

  3. Funny how I add any spam number to a ‘Blocked’ contact and both Signal and Telegram happily notify me that they have joined. Infested turd pools.

  6. Telegram isn’t an actual problem. What it is, is a problem for the EU because it doesn’t want to follow their rules and regulations through which they will try to create a backdoor into the app like they already tried to.

    The people in this thread who are assuming its a spy app only expose themselves as people who are both xenophobic and stupid as they are commenting on a topic they know nothing about.

    The creator of the app left Russia specifically to avoid allowing the Russian government a backdoor into the app. Look it up, educate yourselves and don’t let yourselves look stupid.

  7. It’s not the app, it’s the user.

    Telegram doesn’t restrict so much as other apps do. It just offers alot of functions which can be used in a good or bad way. We as society should learn how to live with those possibilities and educate ourselfs in terms of responsibility and humanity.

    In no way is telegram responsible for some peoples action, everyone out there is responsible for being kind and respectful against each other.

    If we want to fight those ill-led movements we have to start somewhere else. To restrict a messenger is just punching at the symptoms but the unwanted things will go on somewhere else

  8. Not just Russian disinformation, but in the “near me” function you can buy a lot of illegal things

  10. oh…it’s a social media site?

    I thought it was a dark web Russian disinfo platform…

  11. Remember the app is never the problem, encryption is always a good thing. If the government wants to shut something down, then that thing is doing something right.

  12. as some1 who met quite a few ppl using telegram, reading the internet and even used it myself for a while i can conclude:

    There are only 2 types of ppl using Telegram:

    1. Conspiracy Theorists
    2. Drug Dealers (and their customers)

  14. If you replace words “telegram” with “internet” while reading the article you’ll feel how strange the claims are.

    **UPD** but there is no conceptual difference between both: they borh are programs they both give tools for people and programs to connect

  15. I am not using often telegram but damn that app has some flexibility and programmablity

  17. As a Russian, I never believed that the Russian government would leave telegram uncontrolled.

  18. It’s the only app where normal artists and furry artists can both show off their creations. I don’t want it to go.

  20. Police free speech … euuuu. People what is happening here ?

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