Perspective: ExtremismTelegram: The Latest Safe Haven for White Supremacists

Telegram, the online social networking, may not be as popular in the U.S. as Twitter or Facebook, but with more than 200 million users, it has a significant audience. And it is gaining popularity.

ADL reports that Telegram has become a popular online gathering place for the international white supremacist community and other extremist groups who have been displaced or banned from more popular sites.

The platform, which is a cloud-based chat and group messaging app, was created in 2013 by the same two Russian brothers who founded the Russian-based social networking site VKontakte, or VK, which is also known for its lack of moderation of white supremacist content. 

Telegram currently hosts more than 221,000 channels and groups.

ADL writes that

while most of Telegram’s 200 million-plus users have nothing to do with extremism, extremists of all types, from Islamist extremists to right wing extremists, have found Telegram to be a hospitable and safe space to congregate online. In our research over the last five years, we have seen thousands of Islamist extremist channels and more recently, hundreds of white supremacist channels. We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg.

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Many of the white supremacist channels on Telegram have thousands of subscribers. And while Telegram’s terms of service policy clearly stipulates that users agree not to “promote violence on publically [sic] viewable Telegram channels, bots, etc.” it is extremely easy to find content that violates this agreement, including the videos captured by white supremacist mass shooters Brenton Tarrant (Christchurch, New Zealand) and Stephan Balliet (Halle, Germany) during their murderous rampages earlier this year. The videos continued to be accessible on Telegram even after other platforms (including Twitch) had removed them.