Channels are not fully encrypted, end-to-end. All communications on a Telegram channel can be seen by anyone on the channel and are also visible to Telegram. Telegram may be asked by a government to hand over the communications from a channel. Telegram has a history of standing up to Russian government requests for data, but how comfortable you are relying on that history to predict future behavior is up to you. Because Telegram has this data, it may also be stolen by hackers or leaked by an internal employee. As a result, the pandemic saw many newcomers to Telegram, including prominent anti-vaccine activists who used the app's hands-off approach to share false information on shots, a study from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue shows. Perpetrators of such fraud use various marketing techniques to attract subscribers on their social media channels. Telegram, which does little policing of its content, has also became a hub for Russian propaganda and misinformation. Many pro-Kremlin channels have become popular, alongside accounts of journalists and other independent observers. WhatsApp, a rival messaging platform, introduced some measures to counter disinformation when Covid-19 was first sweeping the world.
from sg
