Telegram is the app that divides Europe

(Bloomberg) — Minutes after Russia-friendly Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot, social media was awash with conspiracy theories.

Bloomberg’s Most Read

The attacker’s wife was a refugee from Ukraine. He was linked to a prominent government critic. And Fico’s security guard was conspiring against the prime minister.

All these rumors were later refuted by the Slovak authorities. But not before they went 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 agents used it to recruit petty criminals to carry out acts of sabotage in European capitals.

These incidents offset Telegram’s main advantage: it is largely unaccountable. This is what most antagonizes European authorities who have made the fight against fake news a top priority ahead of continental elections in June. For all their new powers to regulate online information, they are largely powerless to control Telegram.

“Disinformation is spreading openly and completely unchecked on Telegram,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told Bloomberg.

Requests to remove disturbing content often go unanswered, she said: “We know that other member states have similar problems.”

Read more about Russian disinformation in Europe:Russian sabotage, espionage and intimidation are spreading in EuropeRussia accused of using German anti-war protests for propagandaEU supports new sanctions against Russian propaganda outletsFrance proposes new EU sanctions to combat Russian disinformation

A typical pro-Russian propaganda campaign relies on a barrage of online techniques. This includes posts on social media, stories on state media outlets, fabricated news stories designed to mimic the appearance of legitimate websites, and anonymous comments on real websites.

Telegram – owned by a Russian who left the country a decade ago – functions as a central node in this ecosystem, a kind of bridge that propaganda groups use to disseminate their content in active social communities, with the aim of amplifying their narratives. to a wider audience. public.

“Telegram is popular among various pro-Russian actors as well as individuals who have been spreading disinformation for a long time because there is almost no content moderation,” said Daniel Milo, former director of the Center for Combating Hybrid Threats in the Slovak Interior. Ministry. “Telegram’s rules in this regard are very, very lax.”

The story continues

The EU recently enhanced its powers to deal with illegal and harmful content, in a bid to stop malicious actors spreading disinformation ahead of the European elections.

But when it comes to Telegram, these measures are not very effective – truly effective tools only apply to platforms with more than 45 million active users in Europe. Telegram, its owners say, has 41 million.​​​​​

According to Kallas, these numbers do not tell the whole story and “the European Commission should carry out an independent assessment”, she said.

Even so, Telegram’s stated numbers put it below the threshold needed to trigger a set of stringent obligations under the EU’s flagship Digital Services Act, which came into full force in February.

A commission spokesperson said regulators are now examining the company’s methodology for counting users. This is part of an effort to determine whether the service should qualify as a major online platform under content moderation law, according to people familiar with the matter.

For large platforms, the EU can levy fines of up to 6% of annual sales if it finds violations – or ban repeat offenders in the EU. These rules cover Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, among others.

Smaller platforms are the responsibility of national agencies where companies have legal representation. This is Belgium, in the case of Telegram. However, national authorities have limited powers to take action on the content of the service, a spokesperson for the Belgian Post and Telecommunications Institute said in an email response to questions.

“Calls for violence or property damage are explicitly prohibited on Telegram,” a company spokesperson said in response to questions. They added that moderators monitor public parts of the platform to remove content that violates its terms of service.

If Telegram were designated as a “very large online platform” under the DSA, it would be required to take action against the spread of misinformation and implement stricter content moderation protocols, Kallas said. “It would also ensure a level playing field in the internal market, as other platforms have made significant efforts to comply with the Digital Services Act,” added the Estonian Prime Minister.

The main themes of Russia’s disinformation efforts include the war against Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East, immigration, climate change and the upcoming European Parliament elections, according to an internal EU assessment seen by Bloomberg.

No algorithms

On these five topics, the number of articles coming from unverified sources across all platforms more than doubled by the beginning of May, compared to less than 20,000 articles per day at the beginning of the year, the assessment shows. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in disinformation and sabotage operations.

“Telegram is not an effective platform for spreading disinformation,” said the company spokesperson. “Unlike other apps, Telegram does not use algorithms to promote sensational content to users and they only receive the information they explicitly choose to subscribe to.”​

The Kremlin hasn’t always been so receptive to Telegram. In 2018, a Russian court ordered the app to be blocked for refusing to hand over its encryption keys to security services, although efforts to prevent its use failed. In 2020, Russia’s communications watchdog abandoned its efforts to block it. Telegram has also been used by protesters, including in Hong Kong and Iran, to organize and avoid surveillance.

Pavel Durov, its founder, owner and CEO, left Russia in 2014 after losing control of his previous company for refusing to hand over Ukrainian protesters’ data to security agencies. Based in Dubai, the company surpassed 700 million monthly active users last year.

Similar websites

However, when French foreign disinformation watchdog Viginum announced in February that it had detected preparations for a massive disinformation campaign involving a network of almost 200 websites in several European countries, it discovered that Telegram content was central to this campaign.

Following the assassination attempt in Slovakia, a Telegram channel with nearly 50,000 subscribers shared a long post from a website falsely claiming to be the Daily Telegraph, a prominent British publication.

The text claimed without evidence that pro-Ukrainian forces were responsible for the shooting of Prime Minister Fico. This came at a time when authorities in Slovakia stated that the motive for the incident remained under investigation.

The suspect, identified as 71-year-old Juraj C., later told investigators that he acted alone and was motivated by his opposition to a number of Fico’s policies, including the decision to suspend military support for Ukraine, according to a report. court document seen by Bloomberg. Fico, who remains hospitalized, was shot four times at close range. Read more about the attack on Fico: Shooting in Fico raises fears of Slovak media ‘organization’.

Disguising itself as a local media outlet has been the work of a disinformation group that researchers have called “Doppelganger,” which is famous for using Telegram to spread false content purporting to come from mainstream media.

The same operation, which is the focus of an EU investigation into Meta, used more than 2,000 inauthentic social media accounts, according to cybersecurity firm Recorded Future Inc., or targeting the German public to undermine trust in their legislators. The group also released videos falsely claiming to be from Al Jazeera and EuroNews.

To infiltrate social media discourse, Doppelganger uses tactics that are more advanced than simply spreading false information through social media channels.

The group uses cheap domain name services that are often hosted on Russian services, according to security firm Sekoia, a tactic that makes it difficult for Western agencies to take the sites offline. From there, Doppelganger spreads the links containing false information to Telegram, where the goal is to create user engagement across multiple channels and ultimately go viral elsewhere on social media, with smaller countries especially vulnerable. .

“Almost a third of the content on Slovak Telegram accounts originates from or is directly taken from various Russian sources,” Milo said, citing a Slovak government study. “Telegram plays a key role in spreading Russian narratives.”

–With assistance from Jake Rudnitsky, Samuel Stolton and Lyubov Pronina.

(Updates with committee examining Telegram user numbers in 15th paragraph)

Bloomberg Businessweek Most Read

©2024 Bloomberg LP