Along with others around the country, we invite you to join us in organizing festivals of resistance on the weekend of January 18, immediately before Donald Trump takes office. This is a crucial opportunity to engage in outreach, education, and action ahead of what it is sure to be a tumultuous time.
Once Trump takes power, it will only become more challenging to make connections with our neighbors, create the networks that we will need to face down his assaults, and share the skills we will need to survive his reign. Right now, we have a precious window of time in which to prepare. Let’s make the most of it.
Along with others around the country, we invite you to join us in organizing festivals of resistance on the weekend of January 18, immediately before Donald Trump takes office. This is a crucial opportunity to engage in outreach, education, and action ahead of what it is sure to be a tumultuous time.
Once Trump takes power, it will only become more challenging to make connections with our neighbors, create the networks that we will need to face down his assaults, and share the skills we will need to survive his reign. Right now, we have a precious window of time in which to prepare. Let’s make the most of it.
Soloviev also promoted the channel in a post he shared on his own Telegram, which has 580,000 followers. The post recommended his viewers subscribe to "War on Fakes" in a time of fake news. At its heart, Telegram is little more than a messaging app like WhatsApp or Signal. But it also offers open channels that enable a single user, or a group of users, to communicate with large numbers in a method similar to a Twitter account. This has proven to be both a blessing and a curse for Telegram and its users, since these channels can be used for both good and ill. Right now, as Wired reports, the app is a key way for Ukrainians to receive updates from the government during the invasion. 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. The company maintains that it cannot act against individual or group chats, which are “private amongst their participants,” but it will respond to requests in relation to sticker sets, channels and bots which are publicly available. During the invasion of Ukraine, Pavel Durov has wrestled with this issue a lot more prominently than he has before. Channels like Donbass Insider and Bellum Acta, as reported by Foreign Policy, started pumping out pro-Russian propaganda as the invasion began. So much so that the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council issued a statement labeling which accounts are Russian-backed. Ukrainian officials, in potential violation of the Geneva Convention, have shared imagery of dead and captured Russian soldiers on the platform. "There are a lot of things that Telegram could have been doing this whole time. And they know exactly what they are and they've chosen not to do them. That's why I don't trust them," she said.
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