![]() ![]() ![]() “For years, we’ve been tracking these Nazi Terrorgram channels and reporting horrendous, explicit calls to racist violence and insurrection, and Telegram did nothing,” Snyder told TechCrunch, noting that the new wave of reporting sought to shame the company into action. Telegram’s new batch of takedowns appears to be connected to an effort by self-described anti-fascist and activist Gwen Snyder, who marshaled Twitter users in a “ mass-reporting campaign” following last week’s violent invasion of the U.S. One account advertised itself as “The Neo-Nazi Accelerationists your girlfriend told you not to worry about.” Many of the channels openly advocated for racial purity through strategic tactics, some gleaned through guides to guerrilla warfare and other texts admins provided for users through Telegram’s hosted files feature. Some of the channels even spoke derisively of QAnon’s outlandish beliefs, dismissing them as a distraction. The cluster of far-right accounts Telegram closed were largely not focused on mainstream U.S. Other sympathetic channels chronicled the bans in real-time, posting screenshots documenting violations of Telegram’s terms of service. Many extremist channels began publicizing backup accounts Tuesday, pointing subscribers to dozens of other groups where they could continue to gather. One of those now-removed groups bemoaned Telegram’s bans Tuesday in a post displaying a Nazi flag and the warning “you can’t kill an idea.” Prior to being taken down, that channel boasted more than 10,000 followers. Some of the blocked channels were still viewable on Telegram’s web client Wednesday. The company confirmed that a number of accounts TechCrunch had previously observed promoting white supremacy, Nazi iconography and other forms of far-right extremism were part of the new enforcement action, which is still expanding. Capitol, Ravdonikas said that Telegram will “examine all incoming reports” and that the company is “monitoring the current situation closely.” “…In the past 24 hours we have blocked dozens of public channels that published calls to violence for thousands of subscribers.”Īsked if those takedowns relate to last week’s violent siege of the U.S. “Our Terms of Service expressly forbid public calls to violence,” Telegram spokesperson Mike Ravdonikas told TechCrunch. Telegram confirmed to TechCrunch that it has removed dozens of channels over the course of the last day, citing concerns that the accounts were inciting violence. With many social networks suddenly reevaluating their policies in light of recent political violence in the U.S., the popular messaging app Telegram has begun chipping away at an organized network of neo-Nazi and white supremacist accounts flourishing on the platform.
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