Controlling social media: The case for X and Telegram

With over 600 and 900 million users respectively, the platforms X, formerly Twitter, and Telegram are two of the most popular social media platforms around the world. It surely comes as great news for Elon Musk and Pavel Durov, the chiefs of both platforms but this sheer number causes issues worldwide as well. 

Because of so many users any material spreads rapidly across nations and continents. However, that material is not always authentic. 

One such instance lately has been the huge issue surrounding India-Bangladesh. After ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country to India on 5 August, X has been the hub for India-Bangladesh disinformation. Especially spreading lies about sensitive topics such as communal violence and minorities. 

Rumour Scanner, a prominent fact-checking platform in Bangladesh revealed that 50 accounts that are based in India, have spread videos, labeling them as communal violence in Bangladesh. Shockingly, in the week after the victorious revolution 154 million views were garnered on such misleading content. An example of such an outrageous incident is when a famous Bangladeshi actress Azmeri Haque Badhon's speech was twisted into a Hindu woman's sorrowful plea. 

Such fake news was fanned even more by Indian media outlets such as NDTV and to such an extent that the interim government of Bangladesh has had to face the brunt of this falsely created situation, with the people in charge of press and media debunking each misleading news. 

This was recently highlighted after the arrest of ISCKON leader Chinmoy Krishna Das. So much fake news about minorities in circulation adds to the already high responsibility of the Interim Government to keep the different communal situations under control. 

The government is working hard but Artificial Intelligence deepfakes and fabricated videos are easy to spread and hard to stop. Even a recent study by TrustLab under the EU that covered more than 6,000 posts of the biggest social media networks, identified X with the highest number of fake news on its platform. 

This study was done with examples from countries like Portugal and Slovakia. So, misinformation on Twitter is present even in Europe. In the India-Bangladesh situation, many are taking advantage of X's fake news reputation. 

This is so huge that even the US Presidential Election is not safe from its clutches. In fact, before each US election misinformation spreads even more. This was evident in 2016 too when a tweet went viral of Floyd Mayweather wearing a hijab in a trump rally. And now in 2024, the program named "Community Notes" that corrects Twitter (X) information is said to have failed to correct 74% of false tweets about the election before its completion. 

Thus, X indeed has huge misinformation but what it also has is less censorship than other social media platforms. The social media platforms under Meta like Facebook and Instagram have strict restrictions whereas on X, anything from nudity to hate speech is common now. Especially after Musk's takeover. What this allows people is freedom but also a gateway to criminal and anti-government activities.   

In the case of an abusive government that is entirely fine but whilst under a democratic rule, many try to make a point against a decision of the government that falls under criminal activity. Example: Arson incidents of government property such as setting fire to Buses. To stop such events as well as to curb hate speech and keep the situation under control governments want to have access to social media sites and X is among them. 

Before Elon Musk's takeover as the X chief, the platform had gained notoriety among governments as a social media site that did not comply with government requests to take down certain tweets that caused a stir in the community or the country, that was misleading information or was an anti-government opinion. 

But since the arrival of Elon Musk, X fully or partially complied with almost 100% of the takedown requests from the government. Meaning whatever governments wished Twitter to grant. These governments include countries like Turkey and India where critics are silenced a lot. 

This paints a confusing picture in terms of reaching a conclusion, as governments must fight, target, and stop the criminals but giving access to the governments to control X is a dangerous possibility because authoritarian regimes and dictatorships then gain even more power in their countries and freedom of speech of the individuals is even more violated.  

Telegram on the other hand is a rapidly growing messaging platform in recent years that has gained extreme popularity among many because of the multiple alleged privacy issues of the other messaging apps such as Messenger. 

Telegram allows users anonymity and a sense of security in critical times such as anti-government movements for example during the July Revolution of Bangladesh Telegram was used as a safe platform that could not be accessed from outside and without any tracking. 

It is because of this "perk" that Telegram offers that makes it popular amongst many common people but also protestors and anti-government individuals. This does translate to many criminals residing in the Telegram world as well which makes it a headache for the governments and law enforcement. One can constitute a whole criminal or terrorist network using the 20,000 capped chat groups on this platform without the knowledge of governments and it is already happening. Not just terrorist activity, child pornography, and blackmailing groups all are active using Telegram channels and chat groups. This is with the governments having completely no access to its information. 

Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, became popular because of this exact reason. He does not allow governments access to Telegram user's information and as the platform has no USA aka NSA connection, has a Russian CEO who himself left his country to avoid pressures of the regime there, making the whole operation extremely popular. That was the case until recently before he was detained and arrested in Paris a few months ago because of not cooperating with governments and particularly becoming a headache for the European Union. 

As Durov did not allow any government any access, many criminals found a haven amongst those common people who wanted some privacy on the app. Durov's allegations were related to this as well as allowing child porn and terrorism on his platform. Moreover, it is also alleged that Telegram stores the information that is on its platform on data servers whose whereabouts are unknown according to Deutsche Welle. Hence, Pavel Durov had to agree to share the information on criminals and protestors involved in protests, such as the 2020 Belarus protest which was created and spread using Telegram, with governments.  

The controversy surrounding Telegram will continue to remain despite its newest decision because of its already-created image. But with terrorism and criminal activity now getting into the hands of the government is surely better for the people but if Telegram has stored mounds of data on its users it surely is a risk for the general people even if only the governments will have access to it. It will be a violation of many people's privacy and freedom. 

Similar to the issue of X granting permission and power to the governments and making them even more prone to power abuse, in the case of the only anonymous platform this could hinder many people from interacting freely. 

However, criminals will be caught with the information and terrorism might just lessen. That just might edge the whole scenario in favor of the governments having access to Telegram and Twitter as well.

The author is a student of the Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.