The Trouble With Telegram
And The Defence That Doesn't Work
SLICE OF LIFE :: The young man - he looked to be in his late twenties - was terrified in a way I had never seen terror in anyone before, emanating unspeakable fear, awash with profound hopelessness.
He knew it was about to happen.
He was swarthy with black hair, a short beard, and dark circles under his frightened eyes. He was tied to a chair, looking directly into the camera, his body shook uncontrollably beneath the ropes that bound him, and his eyes, which met mine, were pleading - in a way I had never seen anyone plead before.
A second man, standing behind him, without hesitation, heaved a sword back behind his shoulders, and then with full might swung forward. In one instant - as the first man’s face melted into what looked like peace - his head was chopped off.
It fell to the ground. The video stopped.
One night about eighteen months ago, my f*ck buddy Scott was over, and we had decided to look for a third. We were chilling on my bed. Scott was next to me, on his phone, scrolling apps like Grindr and Scruff. I was on Telegram, under my made-up handle, looking through Toronto-focused hookup groups, and other gay groups I was part of. On Telegram, you can join, ask to join, or be randomly added to chat groups, without knowing you are part of it until the group appears on your feed. Have a chat with someone and mention you’re into, say, bears, and you might find yourself in groups focused on big hairy gay men. Groups can be devoted to any topic, can include as many as 200,000 participants, and besides chatting, you can broadcast from within them, and share media.
I don’t recall the name of the group I was added to, it was innocuous but homosexual, and new to me, and so I opened it and looked through the group’s chats and it’s posted media. Lots of videos and pics of guys showing off their junk, swipe left, swipe left…
And then the beheading. A video about 20 seconds long. Or less. Or more. What I saw was so traumatizing all time stopped, really.
Scott’s eyes had left his phone, he had watched it too. When it ended, we just stared down at my iPad, and then finally up at each other. “What the fuck did we just see?” one of us said. It wasn’t faked, it wasn’t AI. We had just witnessed someone getting their head sliced off.
I left the group.
Sometimes Telegram groups you get added to without being asked are like traffic accidents. You come upon them suddenly, and, in checking them out, can’t help see the gruesome sights or ideas awaiting within them. I’ve been in some good ones, and I’ve been added into some heinous ones. A “gay Nazi” group, for example, which, confused by the oxymoron of ‘gay’ and ‘Nazi’ I took a peek at - almost thinking it was going to be a joke / parody - whereupon I discovered a video of a group of skinheads urinating on a black homeless person lying passed out in the street, cut to skinheads beating up a Hasidic Jew.) They weren’t fake, they weren’t AI.
I left the group.
Welcome to the dark side of Telegram, which has 900 million users, founded by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, 39, in 2013. He is estimated to be worth $9 billion.
Telegram is one of the world’s biggest communication tools, working like iMessage or WhatsApp, and boasts that it’s the world’s fastest messaging app. You can message, get news, share your ideas, large files, and links on it. It’s meant to be encrypted (though some security experts debate the claim.)
In places like Ukraine, India and Russia it is a central part of everyday life. It is the main tool used to narrate the war in Ukraine. It has given people in authoritarian regimes the ability to communicate and organize. It is the chat app of choice in the multi-trillion dollar crypto industry, including crypto-entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
Telegram has become the dark web, sprung to life in popular chat app form.
Its commitment to free speech means a very light touch when it comes to oversight, which has attracted the crowds typically booted off Facebook and its ilk. This is how one can stumble upon a beheading video, Nazis being Nazis - oh and did I forget to mention the Satanists, terrorists, child porn, people selling firearms and illegal drugs, money laundering, other cybercriminals, and the posting of dis-information?
Durov was arrested Saturday, August 24th, in France, on charges related to the spread of illicit material on Telegram.
For those claiming to be concerned about free speech on the internet, his arrest rang alarm bells around the world. Telegram has become a free speech flashpoint.
Enter Twitter’s top twit Elon Musk (sorry, I can’t call it X, you can’t make me) who has been very lax in his approach to content moderation (have you seen the enormous amounts of porn on his now discombobulated platform?) His remissness has given rise on the site to right wing propaganda, racism, misogyny, LGBTQ+ hate, dis-info and more, all found at any given moment in time in the sewer the once lovely space has become. Musk, who declares Twitter a “town hall” and champion of free speech, posted #FreePavel on his own account, and also suggested that by 2030 one could be executed for liking a mere meme.
Eyeroll. That prediction is as silly and ridiculous as the world’s richest man himself, and speaking of ridiculous, far-right wing talk show liar Tucker Carlson also chimed in on free speech and Telegram. He called Durov’s arrest a warning “to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies.”
Durov’s former press secretary, George Lobushkin, with whom Durov is still tight, said in an interview on Telegram that Durov’s arrest was “a monstrous attack on freedom of speech worldwide.”
But perhaps no one has been louder than the crypto industry. Cryptocurrency espouses the same freewheeling vibe Telegram does, and Durov received a flood of support globally from the countless crypto folk who rely on it, many screaming his arrest was an assault on, you guessed it … free speech.
As I’ve stated, Telegram does a lot of good. People can stay connected, especially in war-torn countries like Ukraine, it helps people in authoritarian countries like Russia get real news instead of a diet of pure Putin propaganda, and helps them to organize. You can even make a threesome happen from it - on a good night. It would be a shame to lose it.
But using free speech as the driving defence isn’t going to win the case. Musk, Carlson, Lobushkin and the crypto kids seem to have forgotten what free speech is and isn’t.
Saying what you want - or remaining silent - without punishment is free speech. You can disseminate, look for, receive information and ideas orally, in writing, print, through art or any media. You might even offend others through your free speech.
But free speech comes with restrictions. Boundaries a civil society agrees on include incitement, defamation, fraud, child porn, targeted harassment or threats, blabbing a company’s secrets like customer data, or proprietary intel, and of course, hate speech.
Free speech isn’t a term or idea you can throw around to describe terrorists organizing, kiddie porn being shared, Nazis gathering, money laundering, Satanism, selling guns, selling drugs, and posting dangerous disinformation.
Or video a young man being murdered you never asked to see, a sight that still haunts me to this day.
Whether it meant to or not, through Durov’s feather-light moderation touch, Telegram has become the dark web, sprung to life in popular chat app form.
That’s not free speech. It’s why the dark web is dark in the first place.
I deleted my account.
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