Telegram designs the ideal hate platform

Last week the Parler social network went back online, after several weeks of being offline. Its return got me thinking more about what the ideal hate platform is. I think there are two essential elements: the ability to recruit new followers to hate groups, and the ability to amplify their message. The two are related: you ideally need both. Parler, for all the talk about its hate-mongering, really isn’t the right technical solution, and I will explain why Telegram has succeeded.

This blog post comes out of email discussions that I have had with Megan Squire who studies these groups for a living as a security researcher and CS professor. She gave me the idea when we were discussing this report from the Southern Poverty Law Center on how Telegram has changed the nature of hate speech. It is a chilling document that tracks the rise of these groups over the past year. But the SPLC isn’t the only one paying attention: numerous other computer science researchers have tracked the explosive growth in these pro-hate groups since the Capitol January riots and other seminal events in the hate landscape.

Telegram’s rise in numbers doesn’t tell the complete story. Telegram has crafted a more complete social platform for distributing hate speech and recruiting new followers. Certainly, Facebook still has the largest user base, but their tech hate stack (if you want to give it a name) is nowhere near as well developed as Telegram’s, and Parler’s is a distant third. Compare the three networks below in terms of both amplification and recruitment elements:

Criteria Parler Facebook Telegram
Type of service Microblog Social network Messaging+
Coherent and transparent reporting process for hate speech No Mostly and improving No
Support email inbox No Yes No
Content moderation team It depends Yes It depends (see below)
Appeals process Yes Yes No
Encrypted messaging No Separate app Built-in
Corporate HQ location USA (for now) USA Dubai
Growth in English-speaking hate group followers Unknown Unknown Huge growth (SPLC report)
Group cloud-based file storage No No < 2 GB
Group-based sticker sets No No Yes
Bot infrastructure and in-group payment processing No No Yes

“Telegram is absolutely the platform of choice right now for the harder-edged groups. This is for technical reasons as well as access/moderation reasons,” says Squire. You can see the dichotomy in the table above: most of the moderation features that are (finally) part of Facebook are nowhere to be found or are implemented poorly on Telegram, and Parler is pretty much a no-show. Telegram’s file-sharing feature, for example, “allows hate groups to store and quickly disseminate e-books, podcasts, instruction manuals, and videos in easy-to-use propaganda libraries.” I have put links in the chart above to descriptions on why the bot infrastructure and sticker creation features are so useful to these hate groups.

What about moderating content? Here we have conflicting information. I labeled the boxes for Parler and Telegram as “it depends.” Telegram has said that their users do content moderation. In their FAQ they claim to have a team of moderators. For Parler, their community guidelines document says in one place that they don’t moderate or remove content, and in another that they do. My guess is that they both do very little moderation.

The picture for Parler is pretty bleak. If they do succeed in keeping their site up and running (which isn’t a foregone conclusion), they have almost none of the elements that I call out for Facebook and Telegram. Using the Twitter micro-blogging model doesn’t make them very effective at amplification of their messages (at least, not until some of their personalities can bring over huge crowds of followers) or in recruitment, especially now that their mobile apps have been neutered.

There are two technical items that are both useful for Telegram: its encrypted messaging feature and the difference between its mobile app and web interfaces. Much has been written about the messaging features between the different social networks (including my own blog post for Avast here). But Telegram does a better job both at protecting its users’ privacy (than Facebook Messenger) and has much better integration into its main social network code.

The second item is how content can be viewed by Telegram users. To get approval for its app on the iTunes and Google Play app stores, Telegram has put in place self-censorship “flags” so that mobile users can’t view the most heinous posts. But all of this content is easily viewed in a web browser. Parler could choose to go this route, if they can get their site consistently running.

As you can see, defining the tech hate stack isn’t a simple process, and evolving as hate groups figure out how to attract viewership.

N.B.: If you want to read more blogs about the intersection with tech and hate, there is this post where I examine the evolution of holocaust deniers and this post on fighting online disinformation and hate speech.

4 thoughts on “Telegram designs the ideal hate platform

  1. Why the obsession with policing speech? Recently the NY Times wrote an article about the horror of “unfettered” conversations on Clubhouse. That is so bizarre. Just let adults decide what they want to participate in and move on. And FYI, the SPLC is just a money racket. They have millions in offshore Cayman Island accounts that could be used to alleviate Southern poverty.

  2. Hi David,

    I’m still keeping up with you through your posts. They are timely and much needed. Have you shared the information about the ability to hide the worst posts with Google Play and ITunes? This is horrifying.

    Susan

  3. I guess since I don’t accept the premise that there’s a discernible difference between “hate speech” and any other speech this article’s argument is without merit. Thinking people aren’t afraid of any speech and free people never seek to silence speech between people who choose to engage their ideas with one another.

    You’re the actual problem. Your thinking is the only type of thinking that needs to be arrested. As G.K. Chesterton said, “There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped”

  4. Pingback: How hate can fund a video streaming career | Web Informant

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