New York Times Pressures Encrypted Messaging App Telegram to Censor Right-Wing Voices
Shane Trejo
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The New York Times is prodding Telegram to censor right-wing voices and hamper the platform’s amazing growth as mainstream social media platforms enact Draconian censorship.
The notorious fake news rag published an article on Tuesday imploring Telegram to do more to stop so-called “far-right conspiracy theorists, racists and violent insurrectionists” from using the app to communicate.
“There’s a real push and pull between the people that are using Telegram — and messengers like it — for good, and the people who are using them to undermine democracy,” said Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation analyst at the globalist Wilson Center.
“We see the same openness and sense of connection that is used by democratic activists opportunistically exploited by extremists,” she added.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov is already starting to cave to the establishment pressure, noting that the platform is profiling its right-wing user base and beginning to remove their controversial groups and channels from the app.
“For the last two weeks, the world has been following the events in the United States with concern,” Mr. Durov said in a post on his Telegram channel.
“While the US represents less than 2% of our user base, we at Telegram have also been watching the situation closely,” he added.
The Times pointed to groups like Hate Facts and Murder the Media, which offer alternative perspectives to information curated by the fake news, and the pro-western fraternal group, the Proud Boys, communicating on the platform to facilitate the demand for censorship.
“Welcome, newcomers, to the darkest part of the web,” Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio wrote in a Telegram message. “You can be banned for spamming and porn. Everything else is fair game.”
The Times compared right-wing organizers to ISIS militants, who have used Telegram to spread their propaganda in the past. Until recently, Durov has stood strong against voices urging him to shutter his platform.
“Telegram has never yielded to pressure from officials who wanted us to perform political censorship,” Durov wrote several years ago.
Durov, a Russian-born libertarian, has run into trouble with the Kremlin over Telegram, but the Russian government has come around on the platform and now regularly use it. Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, even urged former President Donald Trump to get on the platform after he was banned by Big Tech.
“Seems like you don’t enjoy freedom of speech in your own country any more!” Mr. Polyanskiy wrote.
Although Trump is not currently on the platform, his son, Donald Trump Jr., has joined Telegram and already commands a massive following on the pro-free speech app.
“Big Tech Censorship is getting worse and if these Tyrants banned my father, the President of the United States, who won’t they ban?” Trump Jr. wrote in a tweet. “We need a place that I can connect to you guys that represents Free Speech. That’s why I joined Telegram.”
Telegram would be wise to ignore complaints from the fake news and other globalist forces agitating for the platform to enact a regime of Draconian censorship. The market is demanding freedom and privacy, and Telegram will lose their market share if Durov betrays his principles.
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