Andrey, a Russian entrepreneur living in Brazil who, fearing retaliation, asked that NPR not use his last name, said Telegram has become one of the few places Russians can access independent news about the war. Such instructions could actually endanger people — citizens receive air strike warnings via smartphone alerts. 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. This ability to mix the public and the private, as well as the ability to use bots to engage with users has proved to be problematic. In early 2021, a database selling phone numbers pulled from Facebook was selling numbers for $20 per lookup. Similarly, security researchers found a network of deepfake bots on the platform that were generating images of people submitted by users to create non-consensual imagery, some of which involved children. Individual messages can be fully encrypted. But the user has to turn on that function. It's not automatic, as it is on Signal and WhatsApp.
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