Westerners tend to think that if we were to inform on our neighbors, it would be under duress or if they were doing something objectively wrong such as harming their children.
There is rarely a shortage of people who will trip over themselves to inform on their countrymen without any pressure or even much tangible reward other than some sort of status or a sense of "I'm doing my part".
As one Stasi recruiter said, " Well, some of them were convinced of the cause. But I think it was mainly because informers got that feeling that, doing it, they were somebody. You know - someone was listening to them for a couple hours a week, taking notes. They felt they had it over other people"
Westerners tend to think that if we were to inform on our neighbors, it would be under duress or if they were doing something objectively wrong such as harming their children.
There is rarely a shortage of people who will trip over themselves to inform on their countrymen without any pressure or even much tangible reward other than some sort of status or a sense of "I'm doing my part".
As one Stasi recruiter said, " Well, some of them were convinced of the cause. But I think it was mainly because informers got that feeling that, doing it, they were somebody. You know - someone was listening to them for a couple hours a week, taking notes. They felt they had it over other people"
Perpetrators of such fraud use various marketing techniques to attract subscribers on their social media channels. Right now the digital security needs of Russians and Ukrainians are very different, and they lead to very different caveats about how to mitigate the risks associated with using Telegram. For Ukrainians in Ukraine, whose physical safety is at risk because they are in a war zone, digital security is probably not their highest priority. They may value access to news and communication with their loved ones over making sure that all of their communications are encrypted in such a manner that they are indecipherable to Telegram, its employees, or governments with court orders. Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Durov wrote that Telegram was "increasingly becoming a source of unverified information," and he worried about the app being used to "incite ethnic hatred." Two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, an account on the Telegram messaging platform posing as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged his armed forces to surrender. 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.
from ua
