The channel appears to be part of the broader information war that has developed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin has paid Russian TikTok influencers to push propaganda, according to a Vice News investigation, while ProPublica found that fake Russian fact check videos had been viewed over a million times on Telegram. "And that set off kind of a battle royale for control of the platform that Durov eventually lost," said Nathalie Maréchal of the Washington advocacy group Ranking Digital Rights. Again, in contrast to Facebook, Google and Twitter, Telegram's founder Pavel Durov runs his company in relative secrecy from Dubai. Groups are also not fully encrypted, end-to-end. This includes private groups. Private groups cannot be seen by other Telegram users, but Telegram itself can see the groups and all of the communications that you have in them. All of the same risks and warnings about channels can be applied to groups. On Feb. 27, however, he admitted from his Russian-language account that "Telegram channels are increasingly becoming a source of unverified information related to Ukrainian events."
from cn
