Lastly, the web previews of t.me links have been given a new look, adding chat backgrounds and design elements from the fully-features Telegram Web client. The original Telegram channel has expanded into a web of accounts for different locations, including specific pages made for individual Russian cities. There's also an English-language website, which states it is owned by the people who run the Telegram channels. Given the pro-privacy stance of the platform, it’s taken as a given that it’ll be used for a number of reasons, not all of them good. And Telegram has been attached to a fair few scandals related to terrorism, sexual exploitation and crime. Back in 2015, Vox described Telegram as “ISIS’ app of choice,” saying that the platform’s real use is the ability to use channels to distribute material to large groups at once. Telegram has acted to remove public channels affiliated with terrorism, but Pavel Durov reiterated that he had no business snooping on private conversations. For Oleksandra Tsekhanovska, head of the Hybrid Warfare Analytical Group at the Kyiv-based Ukraine Crisis Media Center, the effects are both near- and far-reaching. Recently, Durav wrote on his Telegram channel that users' right to privacy, in light of the war in Ukraine, is "sacred, now more than ever."
from cn
