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Telegram, a recent haven for the far right, purges extremist content

Telegram, a recent haven for the far right, purges extremist content

Jan 14, 2021 1 min, 8 secs

Telegram, a Dubai-based chat app that has attracted a surge of new users, including some far-right Trump supporters fleeing purges at other sites, has begun a rare purge of American extremist content.

At least 15 extremist Telegram channels — akin to chatrooms where the founders have moderating power — have recently been banned, according to a tally by NBC News.

One of the deleted channels, which proclaimed itself to be "eco-fascist," started in early June, hosting white supremacist content from its beginning.

Megan Squire, a professor of computer science at Elon University and a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist groups, said that while Telegram's approach to moderating extremist content tends to be "scattershot," many of the recent bans are new.

Despite the deletions, a number of other channels that are open to the public are still actively posting explicitly white supremacist and pro-Nazi content.

Facebook banned content like claims of white supremacy in 2019, and Twitter in 2018 began banning some high-profile accounts that violated its policies on abuse and harassment.

On Tuesday, Durov posted that Telegram had passed 500 million monthly users, with 25 million of them having joined in the previous three days.

Telegram also flagged an account that purported to be Trump's, which for years had archived Trump's tweets but in recent days began posting official White House statements, with a red "SCAM" tag Wednesday

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