A report by the American human rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says that the “similar channels” feature, introduced in Telegram last year, recommends extremist channels even to users searching for information about celebrities or technology.
A report by the American human rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says that the “similar channels” feature, introduced in Telegram last year, recommends extremist channels even to users searching for information about celebrities or technology.
This is reported by BBC Panorama, which claims that the researcher "in a matter of minutes" showed journalists how he found a person on Telegram who offered to deliver an Uzi submachine gun to the UK for 850 pounds sterling.
SPLC researchers analyzed 28,000 such Telegram channels for their report, “Telegram’s Toxic Recommendations.” They found that users viewing everyday topics were recommended extremist content—while users viewing one form of extremist content, such as anti-government conspiracies, were pushed toward other extremist ideologies, such as anti-Semitism or white nationalism.
Lead researcher Megan Squire demonstrated how the algorithm works by searching for “Donald Trump” in a newly created Telegram account.
Immediately, the "similar channels" recommendations showed numerous examples of channels promoting the Q-Anon conspiracy, which claims, without any evidence, that Trump is waging a secret war against Satan-worshipping "elite pedophiles" in government, business, and the media.
Another search for “riots in the UK” showed a meme about Adolf Hitler as the first result, followed by suggestions for a number of channels run by violent far-right groups.
“Some of these groups are quite active. You don’t just get memes on Telegram, you get to real events. They hold events in places where people show up,” Ms. Squire said.
According to Squire, the study showed that Telegram has become a “digital threat.” “On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say Telegram is an 11. It distributes a huge amount of criminal content, extremist content. In my opinion, it is extremely dangerous,” she said.
Professor David Maimon of Georgia State University, who has spent six years studying illegal content on Telegram, said there are tens of thousands of channels offering everything from scam tools to weapons. “Telegram is definitely one of the most important platforms that criminals use for criminal activity,” he said.
He demonstrated how, within minutes of posting a message saying he needed an “Uzi and a shotgun,” the seller posted a photo of the submachine gun and said he could “expeditiously deliver it” to the program’s address in Belfast within two to three days.
Telegram says it takes extremist and illegal content very seriously, with its moderation teams and artificial intelligence tools removing millions of pieces of harmful content every day. The company says its users only get the content they subscribe to because Telegram does not “inject or promote content.”
“The ‘Channel Suggestions’ feature only shows channels with the same topics as those to which the user is already subscribed. This approach ensures that users only receive the content they have chosen for themselves. This is completely different from how other platforms make suggestions,” the company said.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov, a Russian billionaire, is under official investigation in France for allegedly failing to stop crime on his platform. He denies the charges.
