Telegram CEO Gains Support from Far-Right Extremists and Activists Who Have Success on the App

Far-right activists, violent white supremacists, and neo-fascists who have gained large followings on Telegram are coming to the defense of the app’s founder, Pavel Durov.

Long before Durov was charged Wednesday with facilitating crimes through the app, Telegram had established itself as a vital meeting place for individuals and groups excluded from mainstream social media platforms.

Telegram’s enthusiastic users span the spectrum of right-wing political figures, from conservative pundits and allies of former President Donald Trump to violent extremist groups that have organized white supremacist events. It’s rare to find high-profile Democrats or progressives on the site.

French prosecutors said Durov’s arrest was part of a broader investigation into his “complicity” in disseminating child abuse material and other abusive behavior on the app, but right-wing Americans who have gained popularity on Telegram were quick to portray the incident as a free speech issue.

“The once free world is fast becoming dark,” conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, who has a large following on Telegram, wrote on X this week.

Telegram appears to be operating normally since Durov’s arrest. It’s unclear whether the criminal case will ultimately force changes to the app to curb extremism or illegal activity.

In a statement released in response to Durov’s arrest Saturday near Paris, Telegram said: “It is absurd to claim that the platform or its owner is responsible for the abuse of this platform.”

Telegram isn’t as widely used in the U.S. as competitors like WhatsApp, but researchers have observed for years that it has become critical for groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Front, giving them a space to organize, recruit members and spread hate propaganda. That’s earned the app the nickname “Terrorgam” among anti-hate researchers.

Telegram, which is based in Dubai, has long been reluctant to moderate or police the content people post on it, including a lot of scams and other types of criminal behavior. It’s known for offering little cooperation when it comes to government requests. (Other tech companies, like Meta, also occasionally reject law enforcement requests, but they tend to handle them on a case-by-case basis.)

Megan Squire, deputy director of data analysis at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-hate group founded in 1971, called Telegram “very lenient.”

“They barely have any content moderation,” she said. “The content moderation they do have is pretty light, so people who have been deplatformed elsewhere have found that quite appealing.”

Squire said the platform also has technical advantages that make it more popular than fringe apps like Gab or Rumble. For example, it rarely crashes, she said.

“It’s pretty easy to use. There are no ads. It’s fast,” she said.

She added that if Telegram were to disappear or change significantly, users with radical views would likely move to other places, including Gab and X.

Telegram has both one-on-one chat and groups, called channels, where users can send messages to “subscribers,” though the service is free. It also has file storage, which is especially useful for video creators, and a recommendation engine that suggests channels to follow.

Durov defended the hosting of extremist material, including Hamas videos, in a post last year, saying Telegram serves “as a unique source of first-hand information for researchers, journalists and fact-checkers.”

Squire, who has been researching extremists on Telegram for years, estimated that there are 30,000 extremist channels operating worldwide, including those associated with QAnon conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists and other violent groups.

American white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who is banned from most social media apps but has over 63,000 followers on Telegram, wrote on X that the arrest “is yet another outrageous attack on free speech by Western elites who will stop at nothing to control and police all global communications.” Fuentes has frequently praised Adolf Hitler.

Keith Woods, an Irish white nationalist whose Telegram channel has over 30,000 subscribers, wrote on X that the arrest was “madness” and that claiming Durov was complicit in crimes on Telegram was like holding the phone company accountable. He wrote about dedicating his life to the maintenance of white European nations.

And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who has faced suspensions from platforms including Facebook and what was then called Twitter, wrote on X: “Freedom of speech is under attack around the world. Why are people’s opinions and voices such a threat?” Greene maintains two active and verified Telegram channels that have a combined 98,000+ followers.

Despite claims that the arrest is a form of suppression of free speech, Daphne Keller, director of the Platform Regulation Program at the Stanford Cyber ​​Policy Center, said most jurisdictions, including the U.S., can hold an app liable for failing to remove unencrypted child sexual abuse material after receiving a notice.

“I’m usually one of those people who makes a fuss about the free speech consequences when lawmakers overreach by regulating platforms. Maybe this will turn out to be one of those cases. But so far, I don’t think so,” Keller wrote in a LinkedIn post.

She wrote that Telegram’s case could be analogous to Silk Road, a website seized by U.S. prosecutors in 2013 whose founder, Ross Ulbricht, was convicted in 2015 of seven counts of facilitating illegal drug sales via bitcoin. (Trump has promised to commute Ulbricht’s sentence.)

At least one major conservative Telegram account, belonging to former pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood, appears to be susceptible to suspicion of Telegram committing a crime.

“Pedophilia and child sex trafficking is a REAL ‘pandemic’ in our country and the world,” Wood told his 301,000 subscribers in a post about the Telegram investigation. He added in a separate post: “Draw your own conclusions.”

Wood wrote in an email that he had no opinion on Durov or the impact his arrest would have on Telegram. He said he uses Telegram because of its large, international audience and said he was unaware of any white supremacist groups on it.

Telegram began to gain popularity as a right-wing platform around 2019 after the mass shootings at a mosque and an Islamic center in Christchurch, New Zealand. Footage of the shooting was widely available on Telegram, even after a crackdown by other apps like Facebook, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League that year.

Telegram is not a member of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a tech industry group whose mission is to stop the spread of graphic material like the Christchurch video, the forum confirmed in an email Wednesday.

Since the Christchurch shooting, Telegram has hosted other violent videos, including a mass shooting near a synagogue in Halle, Germany, in 2019, videos recorded by Hamas after the Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel, and a video of an attack on a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, in 2022, where a white attacker killed 10 people because he claimed they were black.

Active extremist channels on Telegram include several belonging to the Patriot Front, which split from the neo-Nazi group Vanguard America after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. At least one of the Patriot Front channels has more than 19,000 followers.

Other channels are dedicated to the far-right group Proud Boys, whose former leader Enrique Tarrio is serving a 22-year prison sentence in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. A study published this year by researchers at New York University and George Washington University identified 92 public Telegram channels clearly linked to the Proud Boys.

Proud Boys channels operate primarily in the United States, but also in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany, researchers found, forming “the core of a well-connected network of 131,953 subscribers.”

A rare example of Telegram taking down extremist channels came in the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, when at least 15 were blocked, according to an NBC News tally at the time. But the crackdown was an exception.

The more popular right-wing channels attracted five- and six-figure viewers.

Trump does not have a verified Telegram channel, although a channel with his name on it has over 650,000 subscribers. A channel dedicated to Trump’s “official” cryptocurrency project has over 47,000 subscribers, and Donald Trump Jr. has a verified channel with over 452,000 subscribers. Carlson’s verified channel has over 265,000 subscribers, and Greene’s channel has over 86,000.

Other longtime Trump associates have large accounts.

Mike Lindell, founder of MyPillow and a prominent 2020 election denier, has a verified channel with over 111,000 subscribers. He posts a variety of content, including Trump support, pillow promotions, and paid partnerships for precious metals investing.

Another channel with more than 191,000 subscribers belongs to Michael Flynn, the Trump administration national security adviser whom Trump pardoned after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with a Russian diplomat.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com