"There is a significant risk of insider threat or hacking of Telegram systems that could expose all of these chats to the Russian government," said Eva Galperin with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has called for Telegram to improve its privacy practices. "Someone posing as a Ukrainian citizen just joins the chat and starts spreading misinformation, or gathers data, like the location of shelters," Tsekhanovska said, noting how false messages have urged Ukrainians to turn off their phones at a specific time of night, citing cybersafety. The channel appears to be part of the broader information war that has developed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin has paid Russian TikTok influencers to push propaganda, according to a Vice News investigation, while ProPublica found that fake Russian fact check videos had been viewed over a million times on Telegram. "The result is on this photo: fiery 'greetings' to the invaders," the Security Service of Ukraine wrote alongside a photo showing several military vehicles among plumes of black smoke. "And that set off kind of a battle royale for control of the platform that Durov eventually lost," said Nathalie Maréchal of the Washington advocacy group Ranking Digital Rights.
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