Telegram: Privacy or Exploitation?
After WhatsApp changed its privacy terms, millions made the move to Telegram for what they believed was increased privacy, however many women across the world are speaking out against the platform for allowing the sharing of their personal nude images.
Despite Telegram’s reputation for privacy and safety, many women have reported to the BBC about their experience with their own nude pictures being shared across the platform, with one women from Cuba telling the BBC that the photo that she had shared with only one other person had ended up on a Telegram group with over 18,000 members. And not only that but her Instagram and Facebook profiles had been added, as well as her phone number to the group, leading to strangers contacting her asking for more nude images.
In many media-censorship countries, Telegram has been extremely popular with those protesting for democracy due to the application allowing users to remain anonymous through the lack of information needed to build and maintain a presence on the online network. Users are free to post without sharing their name or phone number to the potentially public or private channels which can have up to 200,000 members, or even to broadcasts where there are an infinite number of people who have access.
After the BBC investigated Telegram, they found that there were large numbers of groups and channels with thousands of secretly filmed and unsolicited images of women which had either been stolen or leaked, in at least 20 countries across the globe including Azerbaijan, where a woman reported to the BBC that her ex-husband had shared a video of them having sex with only his face blurred out on Telegram. This led to not only her own mother being sent the video, but a shared group with over 40,000 members. Although this is a form of revenge porn through blackmailing due to political issues, for many other women they are not aware of the images that are being shared of them online.
Despite the material of the women mentioned above being reported to Telegram, it appears that the platform is not responding or willing to tackle the problem which is littered across their network in order to help the victims of this terrible abuse. The women’s experience is sadly like many others and therefore the BBC, once aware of this issue, began to monitor 18 channels and 24 groups on the platform in a variety of countries from Brazil to Russia. The total number of subscribers to these channels and groups totalled to nearly 2 million.
Nude imagery was not the only thing shared in these networks, personal details including home addresses and parent’s phone numbers were also posted, connecting the women in these photos to information which would be used for many purposes including blackmail, stalking and/or harassment. The BBC were able to view group admins asking members to share nude and intimate images of previous partners, work colleagues and fellow students to an account which automatically published images, obtaining the anonymity of the individuals who had sent them in the first instance.
With more than half a billion active users worldwide, Telegram now has more users than Twitter, as many are attracted to the social media platform’s commitment to privacy. However despite this commitment to privacy, only the ‘secret-chat’ option on the platform provides end-to-end encryption which is the default for other apps such as Signal and WhatsApp. End-to-end encryption (E2EE) allows for individuals who are communicating with each other to be the only viewers of those messages, even the platform on which they are communicating cannot view their conversations. Due to this, Telegram often attracts those who have been banned from other platforms for behaviour such as sexual harassment, blackmail or the sharing of illegal and/or inappropriate content which violates the terms and conditions of other sites.
Telegram’s lack of moderation has led to the sharing of sexual and inappropriate content throughout the platform and further lack of policy for the tackling such problems as non-consensual sharing of nude and intimate images has encouraged this issue further and allowed it to grow. The app’s terms of service does however include a agreement which users agree to which includes- ‘not to share or post illegal pornographic content on public Telegram channels or bots’, although it is very clear that those, who despite agreeing to these terms when singing up the service, are now in violation of this agreement.
The app does include a reporting feature, which enables users to report for both public and private channels and groups, pornographic content. To test this feature and the policies in place, the BBC found sexual material on the social platform and reported 100 images. It was found that a month after reporting, 96 of the images were still accessible to the public, and the other four images which were not counted for were due to the BBC no longer having access to the groups in which these images were found. So although the images were no longer available, they had not been removed from the platform completely, emphasising further that despite the platform’s commitment to security through its policies and safety feature, it does not appear that there is moderation efforts are successful, and despite images such as the ones that the BBC found, being reported, none are being taken down from the site- showcasing Telegram’s lack of responsibility for the promotion of illegal sexual material on their platform and allowing for the likes of the stories of the women mentioned earlier to continue across the globe.
Whilst investigating the groups which the other four images were published, the BBC’s account was contacted by an account from Russia trying to sell to them am online folder containing child abuse videos, for what they describe as “for less than the price of a coffee”. And although in 2019, after being removed from the Apple App Store, Telegram made a valiant effort to remove a large amount of Islamic State content from the app, as well as to cooperate with EU crime agency- Europol- it is clear that removing sexually explicit content is not the social platform’s priority.
It was found that Telegram does not utilise Artificial Intelligence to search for inappropriate material and content moderators are simply splitting reported content they receive into ‘spam’ or ‘not spam’. Without allowing for content moderators to actively search for this type of material, if not reported by other users, it is encouraged to grow and be shared across the application. Telegram has recently introduced advertisement on public channels, as well as investment, highlighting the desire for the founder to monetise the platform. This will increase the need for Telegram to follow in the footsteps of its competitors to introduce, not only policies, but technology to combat the sharing of illegal, sexually explicit material on the platform.
