Telegram and Signal Havens for Right-Wing Extremists
Since the violent storming of Capitol Hill and subsequent ban of former U.S. President Donald Trump from Facebook and Twitter, the removal of Parler from Amazon’s servers, and the de-platforming of incendiary right-wing content, messaging services Telegram and Signal have seen a deluge of new users. In January alone, Telegram reported 90 million new accounts. Its founder, Pavel Durov, described this as “the largest digital migration in human history.” Signal reportedly doubled its user base to 40 million people and became the most downloaded app in 70 countries. The two services rely on encryption to protect the privacy of user communication, which has made them popular with protesters seeking to conceal their identities against repressive governments in places like Belarus, Hong Kong, and Iran. But the same encryption technology has also made them a favored communication tool for criminals and terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Telegram Auto-Delete Messages in Any Chat
Some messages aren’t supposed to last forever. There are some Telegram groups and conversations where it’s best if messages are automatically deleted in a day or a week. Here’s how to auto-delete messages in any Telegram chat. You can enable the auto-delete feature on a per-chat basis. It works for both one-on-one conversations and group chats. Previously, you needed to use the Secret Chat feature to automatically delete messages after a set time. At the time of writing, you can choose to automatically delete messages after a day or a week. Telegram starts the timer once they are sent, not after they are read. This won’t affect the messages that were sent before enabling the feature.
