Lastly, the web previews of t.me links have been given a new look, adding chat backgrounds and design elements from the fully-features Telegram Web client. 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. Telegram does offer end-to-end encrypted communications through Secret Chats, but this is not the default setting. Standard conversations use the MTProto method, enabling server-client encryption but with them stored on the server for ease-of-access. This makes using Telegram across multiple devices simple, but also means that the regular Telegram chats you’re having with folks are not as secure as you may believe. Unlike Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Twitter, which run very public anti-disinformation programs, Brooking said: "Telegram is famously lax or absent in its content moderation policy." Two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, an account on the Telegram messaging platform posing as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged his armed forces to surrender.
from tr