It was and is, at least currently, an oasis for all those who feel oppressed and persecuted by the “censorship” of other social media sites: Telegram. But dark clouds are gathering over parts of this paradise, as it has now become known that the operators are now, at least partially, cooperating with German law enforcement authorities.
The beautiful appearance is cracking
Since 2013, the spreaders of all sorts of illegal activities have been able to feel safe on Telegram: the paradise for hackers and cybercriminals often changes its headquarters (most recently in Dubai) and is not really within reach of the authorities. So far, the company has hardly responded at all to requests to delete content or give users' data to the authorities.
Even now it is still difficult for German authorities to obtain information from Telegram, but the rigid “we don’t tell anyone” policy appears to be moving: According to information from “ Spiegel ”, user data was passed on to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in several cases, The cases are said to be child abuse and terrorism.
Things have been moving since February
At the beginning of February, the Federal Ministry of the Interior was able to make direct contact with the Telegram operators for the first time and lay the foundations for further cooperation, which now appears to be slowly bearing fruit.
At that time, the operators declared their “greatest willingness to cooperate” with the German authorities. As a result, Telegram set up a special email address for the BKA to which the authority can report criminal content.
Since then, the BKA has reported more than a hundred German-language channels and groups that are actually no longer accessible. At least one prominent example is known: In February 2022, numerous Telegram channels of the conspiracy mythist Attila Hildmann also disappeared.
Conclusion
There are still many German-language channels on Telegram that clearly contain illegal activities, but a good start has been made. Telegram's collaboration with the authorities is slowly showing initial success, so it is only a matter of time before more channels disappear and the messenger service has a cleaner image again.
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