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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 announces Anonymous Admins

The cloud-based messaging platform is also adding Anonymous Group Admins feature. As per Telegram, this feature is being introduced for safer protests. As per the Telegram blog post, users can “Toggle Remain Anonymous in Admin rights to enable Batman mode. The anonymized admin will be hidden in the list of group members, and their messages in the chat will be signed with the group name, similar to channel posts.”