i don’t think you can call them effective given the active and open organizing of terrorist groups like Terrorgram and ISIS on Telegram.
It is more reasonable to arrest the Telegram CEO for me now. I can understand that if they designed it as impossible to control, but they are controlling contents for a long time... This almost means they permit these contents in their community.
Well, the moderation tools might be effective, but it's clear that they're used very selectively.
Telegram host thousands (or more, not like I keep count) of blatantly cybercriminal groups and refuses to take them down. Due to nature of my work I have access to a few new telegram channels used to leak people's data every day, and telegram refuses to do anything with it. Same goes for channels where cybercriminals organise their activities.
Telegram is one of the main sources of disinformation in my country. Known fake news channels are never closed. It's also a big market for illegal data.
Telegram hosted a leak channel for the data stolen from my country's government for many months before finally agreeing to take it down. Then a clone of this channel was created, and it exists to this day.
Tell me more about how telegram does... anything at all to moderate its content.
Can confirm. One can subscribe to channels that for example give away stolen credentials for disney+/netflix/chatgpt every day.
I've seen a lot of wild shit in Telegram channels. It's weird seeing people defend Telegram, but I guess that's American first amendment fundamentalism/fetishism. Even terrorist speech should be protected, apparently?
What kind of "terrorist speech" are we talking about?
True. Among all noise over Durov being harassed by France it may seem to uninformed that this is some new development, but it isn't.
The first time I've noticed some "extremist" (I mean, I don't necessarily think they merited being taken down, but I need to find some word to communicate the idea that it was "serious business", like, you know, discussing firearms, being largest free library, being pro-Trump or COVID-skeptic, some spicy things) channels being taken down was January 2021, right after Biden came to office and all the fuzz that accompanied these events. Probably, it also happened before, but it was the first time I really noticed it happening at scale. Like, enough for me to finally learn that Telegram isn't some "old free Internet" kinda thing anymore.
And lately it even can be about forcing bloggers to delete something as mild as fancams from some sports-event a big TV-channel has all rights to. And when that happened everybody was angry at that TV-channel, not at Telegram, because Telegram abiding if somebody large enough is insistent enough is nothing that isn't unexpected. I'd just say they are kinda lax if nobody large enough is insistent enough, and it was like that for quite some time.