RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Comparisons between messaging apps and social networks are commonly heard. Services such as WhatsApp have become so widespread and ubiquitous in society that the association actually makes sense, albeit with a big difference: in these digital corners, content control and moderation are virtually unfeasible in the current format – either due to technical issues (such as encryption) or lack of action by the companies.
This shows the difficult balance between the need for privacy and the demand to counter excesses, a constant ambivalence that results in both safe communication tools and environments where extremism can flourish with little concern.
An app in particular has been winning over far-right supporters in Brazil: Telegram. With the tightening of measures by big tech companies against disinformation, hate speech and the organization of violent rallies, Telegram has become a refuge (even if still modest compared to the big social networks or WhatsApp) for figures who have been or risk being sanctioned on other platforms.
Banned on Facebook, Twitter and the major networks for their potential for real-world harm, channels and groups that spread conspiracy theories or violent speech can be easily found with a simple keyword search in the app.
In the US, for instance, the channels of white supremacist group Proud Boys and extremists who exploit the QAnon conspiracy theory have tens of thousands of followers. In Brazil, channels aligned with the radical right – the kind that spread lies about the covid-19 pandemic, call for military intervention, or demand the arrest of Supreme Court justices – continue to do business as usual.
Telegram recently exceeded the half-billion monthly active user mark, in part attracted by politicians and personalities sanctioned by – or displeased with – actions and policies implemented on other social networks. In a 72-hour period in the second week of January, the platform conquered 25 million new users shortly after former US President Donald Trump was kicked off Twitter and suspended from Facebook for instigating anti-democratic acts against the US Congress.
In Telegram’s favor was also the unease caused by an update to WhatsApp’s privacy terms, which made the existing policy of sharing user data with other companies owned by Facebook more open, displeasing many. It is therefore no wonder that Telegram was the world’s most downloaded app in January, according to its founder and CEO, Russian Pavel Durov.
To understand this far-right migration to Telegram, the Brazilian Network Information Center (Núcleo de Informação e Comunicação do Ponto BR, ou NIC.br), an NGO responsible for maintaining Registro.br the principal Brazilian internet domain, analyzed some 600,000 messages from 15 right-wing groups and channels for about a month, and observed usage and sharing patterns, as well as the increase in the number of subscribers over the period. These groups, only a small sample of the right-wing presence there, were chosen because they were either owned by politicians or well-known communicators, as well as because of the volume of subscribers.
President Jair Bolsonaro launched his official channel on January 12th and by February 15th already had 420,000 subscribers – the second-highest number among world leaders found by the tool. It is nowhere near the 13.8 million followers on Facebook, the 18.3 million on Instagram, or the 6.6 million on Twitter, but it is impressive in just a month of existence as the channel has not yet been promoted much by the president.
Telegram’s main focus has been more about organization and reference than purely volume. It is there that supporters can gather to consume content (including disinformation) from other networks and organize with little fear of retaliation from the platform, as was the case with attacks against the STF in 2019 or the “300” extremist group in Brazil. In the US, this type of organization has also been recorded recently.
It is no accident that, according to the NIC.br analysis, almost two out of three of the 200,000 links shared in these 15 groups were directed to: YouTube (44% of all analyzed links); Twitter (12%); and Facebook (5%).
In other words, they took subscribers to bases already consolidated in other networks. As in a loop, the reverse also happens: influencers and politicians use these same networks to increase their followers on Telegram.
“They’re making an effort to bring that audience they already have on Twitter, Facebook and even WhatsApp to Telegram,” researcher David Nemer, a professor at the University of Virginia in the US who studies disinformation consumption on messaging apps and has been tracking the migration to Telegram, told Núcleo. “I see many advertising links directing to Telegram.”
It is, therefore, a mass movement, although not yet consolidated. Despite being an alternative space for the far-right, the adoption of this technology is still faced with resistance due to:
- the difficulty in changing the culture of adopting new apps, considering the ubiquity of WhatsApp;
- the distrust of part of users after the scandalous hacking of Vaza Jato case prosecutors;
- the lack of means to monetize in these channels for content producers; and
- the difficulty in making money from content on Telegram.
Yet solutions to this hindrance are now emerging. Telegram announced in December that it will start accepting ads on major broadcast channels, although not in chats or using personal data, as most tech companies do.
It may be an interesting model for content producers looking for a new way to make money, but it’s an old issue among those who follow the topic: how to remunerate those who produce potentially harmful content?
For a long time, YouTube channels with extremist videos and websites known to spread lies have been able to monetize their content using Google’s remuneration tools, for instance. The American company, under pressure from legal inquiries, advertisers, and projects like Sleeping Giants, has been taking these channels down.
YouTube removed Terça Livre channel, prompting a legal dispute. According to NIC.br’s analysis, this had little impact on Bolsonarism, but was a strong blow against a channel known for its violent discourse.
Such measures raise concerns among initiatives and personalities exploiting the right to freedom of expression by spreading lies that are harmful to society and anti-democratic discourse for profit. Hence the need for a place with less risk.
That plays in Telegram’s favor now, as do two other motivations: the updates to WhatsApp’s terms of use; and the zero rating policies (when telecommunication carriers do not charge for access to certain apps) that have come to include Telegram.
“From the moment an agreement was reached with carriers, it was natural for the right to migrate,” researcher Yasodara Córdova, from the Harvard Ash Center, told NIC.br. This practice was already common with WhatsApp and other Facebook products, but began to include Telegram a few years ago, depending on the carrier and the data plan purchased.
On the subject of terms of use, according to a BBC Brasil report, not much has actually changed, and the updates reflect the launch of a new service for managing conversations between businesses and consumers, yet WhatsApp’s recent changes expose the Facebook product data sharing practices, a company already viewed with suspicion from all sides of the political spectrum.
It’s not that there isn’t misinformation and hate speech in other networks. Before he was arrested, Bolsonarist federal deputy Daniel Silveira, who broke the memorial plaque of murdered city councilor Marielle Franco and was thrilled about it, published a video on YouTube in which he advocated the repressive AI-5 decree, used in the dictatorship, as well as shutting down the Federal Supreme Court.
The video platform removed the content, but it remains alive on messaging apps, such as Silveira’s Telegram channel, where he has over 8,000 subscribers.
Telegram is a good tool to avoid “de-platforming” – a word that has shaken the declared policies on free speech on social networks and made radicalism shudder, under threat of losing its bases overnight.
The 2020 US election and the attack by far-right militants on the US Congress on January 6th, 2021 was a milestone that defined for the major platforms the acceptable limits of free speech, as well as its separation from misinformation and hate speech.
Moreover, it has strongly rekindled the debate about the need for active moderation by platforms, on the grounds that some speech is too dangerous for democracy. After all, freedom of speech does not mean openly preaching violence or planning a coup d’état.
If before the platforms were willing to ban only the most grotesque groups and personalities, such as the communicator Alex Jones (Infowars), in the last few years they have started punishing authorities and even presidents, including Bolsonaro.
The few places left for spreading misinformation and hate speech came under pressure for content moderation, to the point where Amazon no longer allowed the social network Parler to use its servers, and was kicked out of the Apple and Google app stores, causing the social network to collapse for several weeks.
Gab, another social network with a profusion of right-wing groups, despite adding 600,000 new users soon after Parler’s issues, also had its apps removed from the Apple and Google stores, the two largest smartphone ecosystems in the world, several years ago, which greatly limited its usability on mobile devices and, consequently, its growth.
Clapper, virtually a clone of TikTok, became a new destination for the far-right but has already mobilized to moderate content by banning QAnon-related content, for one, in order to avert potentially catastrophic sanctions for the company.
Worthy of note is that Telegram is not an app that identifies itself as a haven for the far-right, as Parler and Gab set out to be under the guise of free speech.
The app was launched in 2013, so much has happened before this right-wing migration. There are, among many other aspects, media outlets, online stores, religious groups, health food communities, and, of course, even left-wing activists.
A channel about the reality show Big Brother Brazil 21 has 250,000 subscribers and has become a reference for other networks.
Data and technology initiatives have long used the tool. The open data website Brasil.io has a channel to report the most recent data on the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil. Because it allows automation, it features a bot with pandemic data. The initiative Direitos na Rede, which addresses digital rights in Brazil is also there, as are several organizations.
Message network or social messenger?
But messaging apps have slightly different rules. Although, of course, companies claim not to tolerate violent or hate speech, they can only truly monitor this kind of thing in open channels, not in closed groups and secret chats, under the protection of encryption.
On social networks, community rules and the very nature of these virtual spaces do not, in theory, allow for anything to be fully secret.
In early January, the Telegram moderation team began receiving a high number of reports about public activity related to the US. The team was decisive in taking action against US channels that promoted violence.
Telegram does have a moderation team. But while Twitter and Facebook banned tens of thousands of extremist profiles and groups in January 2021, Telegram banned 15. Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov, on his channel, said that during the attacks on the US Congress, Telegram removed “hundreds” of harmful content, which is not much.
These measures may have some effect in calming the spirits of both those who advocate direct action by platforms against dangerous speech, while also reassuring data security advocates that it is possible to take some sort of action without meddling with privacy policies or encryption.
An important tool for private and secure communication, with even very legitimate and necessary uses, encryption adds to the argument that total moderation is difficult or virtually impossible, considering that Telegram has private group features and secret chats between two users.
“It’s very unlikely to happen [increase in moderation]. What these platforms sell today enables having these groups and this privacy, moderating content goes against their business model,” Nemer said.
Either way, Telegram has already shown it doesn’t much care for outside interference. The company is currently headquartered in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where IT industry regulations are rather blurry, after being founded in Russia and having passed through Germany, the UK, and Singapore, all of which it left because it failed to adapt to local rules, as its own website admits.
Telegram may be halfway to consolidating the right-wing, but it is apparently still far from becoming a destination for the left: there are no major channels or groups, at least not compared to the right – online mobilization has never been the left-wing’s strength.
The Workers’ Party (PT) joined in July 2020 and its channel has about 4,500 subscribers, while PSOL has 2,600 – well below right-wing influencers. Guilherme Boulos and Luiza Erundina’s official campaign channel for mayor of São Paulo has 669 subscribers and hasn’t posted anything since December.
Through a simple search, finding groups and channels with radical content is easy, such as the QAnon conspiracy theory, which has been banned from the major social networks.
Something similar occurs with media outlets. Despite having more user-friendly tools and resources for publication, some newsrooms have only just begun joining the platform, such as Folha de S.Paulo and Poder360, in 2021. BBC Brasil is a different case: it has more than 18,000 subscribers and has been posting on Telegram since 2015. Núcleo Journalismo also has a channel there.
Núcleo Jornalismo survey
Núcleo has been following 15 right-wing groups (there are many others) and channels on Telegram, mainly Brazilian government’s officials and supporters, and downloaded the messages from these groups from the app’s desktop version, which allows this openly (so does WhatsApp). The data can be found below and were updated after the closing of this report.
Núcleo tried to contact Telegram through the media contacts listed on its official page, with no success.
Given that this report is not aimed at denouncing or accusing, but rather at observing trends, we did not reach the analyzed channels. If you would like to respond to this report, our email address is [email protected].
Source: Núcleo Jornalismo https://nucleo.jor.br/