Again, in contrast to Facebook, Google and Twitter, Telegram's founder Pavel Durov runs his company in relative secrecy from Dubai. The fake Zelenskiy account reached 20,000 followers on Telegram before it was shut down, a remedial action that experts say is all too rare. Messages are not fully encrypted by default. That means the company could, in theory, access the content of the messages, or be forced to hand over the data at the request of a government. 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 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.
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