While the press in the United States has understandably focused their reporting any whatever anti-lockdown protests that happen on those taking place domestically, a fairly vigorous protest movement has also appeared in Germany. The sometimes violent demonstrations – which have seen thousands taking to the streets in Stuttgart, Munich, and Berlin – seem however to be attracting a broader set of political viewpoints and themes than the US version, ranging from those concerned about the erosion of constitutional rights all the way to anti-vaccination conspiracists (centered largely around Bill Gates.) Although these protests have been necessarily small-scale due to public-health restrictions, discontent with the government’s anti-coronavirus measures have had a surprising impact on how the public is using technology.
What is Telegram?
The messaging app Telegram is relatively little-known in the United States with far fewer monthly users than more-established apps such as Facebook Messenger and Snapchat. In fact, those two messaging combined apps boasted over 150 million users in the United States in April 2019 compared to just under 3.5 million for Telegram. By comparison, Telegram had 7.8 million monthly users in Germany in November 2019 (contrasted with a combined 76 million for WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.) The organization behind Telegram, which was founded in 2013 by Russian brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov (who also founded the Russian equivalent to Facebook, Vkontakte, in 2007), does not disclose where it rents offices in order to protect users’ data. (The brothers Durov currently live in Dubai, but they are silent about who or where the rest of Telegram is.) This stance could explain Telegram’s sudden popularity among the segment of the population that sees restrictions on movement or assembly as excessive or authoritarian.
What Makes Telegram So Appealing?
The German public is generally seen as skeptical if not outright skittish in sharing personal electronic data, which some researchers have ascribed to the country’s experience with totalitarian surveillance. Unsurprising then is widespread unease that has met proposals to use cell phones to track and trace part of the population to limit the spread of COVID-19. Telegram’s brand of cryptographed libertarianism has therefore found fertile ground among not just users who value data privacy but also for those who share messages that might otherwise be removed based on potentially objectionable content.
Although the German government has been striving to get tech giants like Facebook and Twitter to quickly remove certain illegal content, so far Telegram has proven untouchable. Pavel Durov has even stated that he will only assist the police with copyright violations, terrorist propaganda, and child pornography. For him, governments are otherwise monstrous entities that only serve to limit the individual and that “local restricts on freedom of speech do not matter.” For instance, German laws that criminal speech that denies or trivializes the Holocaust – and that lead to immediate removal from Facebook – are simply ignored. Telegraph is also partially or completely blocked in Russia, China, and Iran because the company refuses to hand over user data to authorities.
This seeming shroud of secrecy means that some users consider merely downloading the app to be a “subversive act” that skirts speech restrictions and keeps users’ personal data hidden. Since the start of the COVID crisis, celebrities like the vegan TV chef Attila Hildmann and the pop star Xavier Naidoo have used their significant Telegram followings to disseminate conspiracy theories about mandatory vaccination or secret underground bunkers where children are kept.
Combatting Coronavirus Conspiracies
Naturally there has been massive pushback on these unsupported statements—however with much of that coming from government-owned public channels or establishment media such criticism might often fall on deliberately deaf ears. The massive reach of Telegram’s user groups as compared to WhatsApp also reinforces the informational bubble that allow conspiracy theories, if not speech deemed illicit in Germany, to spread unchecked. Whereas a WhatsApp group has an upper limit of 256 users, groups on Telegram can be as large as 100,000 users (almost as much as the circulation of some national newspapers.) Just a few large accounts combined creates a parallel media landscape operating outside restrictions on speech, either imposed by lawmakers or formulated by social media companies themselves.
Are Current Online Hate Speech Laws Effective?
This is precisely what some critics of Germany’s online hate speech laws had warned about. Objectionable speech would not vanish once objectionable content was removed from Facebook or YouTube. Rather, it would simply move to other, more private platforms that would operate outside of any form of social or legal control such as closed messenger groups. Martin Fehrensen, a German social media expert and founder of the Social Media Watchblog, observes that such users retreat into their own “private” spheres within messenger services. These chat groups operate outside of any “filtering” algorithms, which have an “enormous influence” on what content is shown. Fehrensen also claims that the current system by which Facebook and YouTube operate functions well in that users who post objectionable material will have to contend with pushback from other users they are connected with. By contrast, Telegraph’s limited functionality means that administrators of a chat group alone act as gatekeepers and can decide to exclude members for whatever reason, thereby building an echo chamber in which aberrant world views only grow more robust.
If Fehrensen’s view is correct that social media’s own content gatekeepers, combined with the potentially suppressing function of algorithms and users’ role as content stakeholders, can keep objectionable material to a minimum, this may show another – and perhaps more effective – way to tackle the problem than with massive fines and unrealistic deadlines that can never achieve the ideal of a civil and fact-based Internet. As Telegram shows, spaces where bizarre conspiracies and sometimes outright hatred will likely exist despite laws to curb disinformation and ethnically or religiously based agitation. Social media companies can perhaps get ahead of an avalanche of new laws by showing it can effectively patrol its own while making extralegal echo chambers less appealing.
GermanLegalBlog.com 