It’s extremely rare for Telegram to “nuke” a whole channel, said Squirrell, who previously worked as a senior adviser on counter-terrorism to the British government. However, the platform has acted upon notices from the security services or counter-terrorism police before.
An example of this was Europol’s “day of action” against ISIS-linked accounts in 2019, where “an absolute ton of ISIS channels were pulled down,” said Squirrell.
“ISIS is obviously still around on telegram, but it’s not as big,” he said.
But the platform seemed more relaxed when it came to letting far right communities thrive — until it began removing some channels this week. “Frankly speaking, if a brown person says something horrible, Telegram will be all over it, if a white person says it, I’m not sure they would be,” a former senior police officer involved in counter-terrorism enforcement, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO.
“Telegram’s moderators are actively monitoring the situation and are removing channels and posts containing calls to violence,” Telegram said.
A haven for conspiracists
Founded in 2013 by Russian billionaire brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, Telegram allows users to communicate privately, as well as set up group chats or launch “channels,” public groups which can broadcast messages to up to 200,000 people.
