In the United States, Telegram's lower public profile has helped it mostly avoid high level scrutiny from Congress, but it has not gone unnoticed. "The argument from Telegram is, 'You should trust us because we tell you that we're trustworthy,'" Maréchal said. "It's really in the eye of the beholder whether that's something you want to buy into." Now safely in France with his spouse and three of his children, Kliuchnikov scrolls through Telegram to learn about the devastation happening in his home country. In addition, Telegram's architecture limits the ability to slow the spread of false information: the lack of a central public feed, and the fact that comments are easily disabled in channels, reduce the space for public pushback. Official government accounts have also spread fake fact checks. An official Twitter account for the Russia diplomatic mission in Geneva shared a fake debunking video claiming without evidence that "Western and Ukrainian media are creating thousands of fake news on Russia every day." The video, which has amassed almost 30,000 views, offered a "how-to" spot misinformation.
from ms