"Someone posing as a Ukrainian citizen just joins the chat and starts spreading misinformation, or gathers data, like the location of shelters," Tsekhanovska said, noting how false messages have urged Ukrainians to turn off their phones at a specific time of night, citing cybersafety. False news often spreads via public groups, or chats, with potentially fatal effects. Telegram users are able to send files of any type up to 2GB each and access them from any device, with no limit on cloud storage, which has made downloading files more popular on the platform. "He has kind of an old-school cyber-libertarian world view where technology is there to set you free," Maréchal said. "For Telegram, accountability has always been a problem, which is why it was so popular even before the full-scale war with far-right extremists and terrorists from all over the world," she told AFP from her safe house outside the Ukrainian capital.
from vn