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Credit to Author: Matt Burgess| Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2022 16:22:34 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n Matt Burgess<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every day for<\/span> the past two years, thousands of Ukrainians opened the official Covid-19 Telegram<\/a> channel for the latest pandemic news. The @COVID19_Ukraine account shared daily case figures, the number of people who had died, and the government\u2019s latest health advice. Millions read the channel during the global health crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n But as Russian troops marched toward Ukraine\u2019s borders, the channel responded. It asked whether members wanted updates on the latest \u201csocio-political\u201d news? People overwhelmingly voted for the change. Since then the Telegram channel has shared the latest war news 24 hours a day\u2014changing its display name to @UkraineNOW<\/a>\u2014and become an essential source of verified information for Ukrainian citizens.<\/p>\n In the days since the war started, WIRED has reviewed hundreds of Telegram posts from verified Ukrainian government accounts and politicians. Their messages help keep people safe, debunk potential Russian disinformation, and counter emerging threats. Wartime propaganda is mixed with practical safety advice<\/a>. Disinformation rebuttals<\/a> are peppered among requests to spot Russian saboteurs<\/a>. And alleged videos of captured Russians<\/a> sit alongside photos of babies born in air raid shelters<\/a>. All of this unfolds in real time, with accounts posting hundreds of messages per day.<\/p>\n \u201cHow to distinguish our equipment from the enemy?\u201d UkraineNOW posted on Friday, sharing pictures of Ukrainian and Russian tanks. On Saturday, three separate posts in the space of just six minutes warned of imminent airstrikes across Ukraine (\u201cair alarm: Lviv, Rivne \u2757\ufe0f\u2757\ufe0f\u2757\ufe0f\u201d); maps showing air raid shelter locations were shared. On Sunday the channel advised on ways to safely pass military checkpoints (\u201cturn on the hazard warning light, no video recording\u201d) and what to do if there are attacks on chemical processing plants (\u201cclose the windows and do not open them unnecessarily\u201d).<\/p>\n With nearly 500,000 members before Russia\u2019s invasion, UkraineNOW was already one of the country\u2019s biggest Telegram channels. Now a million people depend on it for updates about the war. Its posts, which are shared by other channels, get around 8 million views a day<\/a>. On February 26, UkraineNOW posted 139 times and forwarded another 54 messages from other Telegram accounts; before the invasion it posted three to five times per day. Its evolution and continued growth provides a glimpse of how the social media app has helped keep citizens up to date on Russia\u2019s invasion with verified information during a time when platforms have struggled to handle a flood of misinformation and disinformation<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom bomb shelters, on the road, in different parts of the country, day and night we are working to ensure that Ukraine and the world receive truthful information and fight Russian propaganda,\u201d one Ukrainian team member involved in the channel\u2019s operation tells WIRED. They say the channel was quickly \u201ctransformed into a powerful information ecosystem\u201d to keep people informed.<\/p>\n For more on Telegram, read our cover story story from the March issue<\/a>.<\/p>\n The original Covid-19 channel was set up by a Ukrainian technology agency, the Institute of Cognitive Modeling. The government<\/a> quickly adopted<\/a> it as the official Telegram pandemic service in March 2020. The agency still operates the channel, as well as an associated Viber account. \u201cWe work in conjunction with the government, we publish only verified information,\u201d the person familiar with the channel\u2019s operation says, adding there are \u201cworking groups\u201d for fact checking posts. \u201cIf the information does not come from government agencies, we will definitely check it with several official sources in parallel before publishing it,\u201d the person says. Those working on the channel do so on schedules, and there is a \u201chierarchy of approval\u201d that posts need to go through before they go live.<\/p>\n While Ukrainian officials have effectively used Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, among others, to share war updates, boost morale, and draw international attention to Ukraine<\/a>, the use of Telegram stands out. The app\u2019s hybrid structure makes it a powerful tool for mass communications. Public or private channels, such as UkraineNOW, can have an unlimited number of members, while public and private groups allow up to 200,000 members. WhatsApp\u2019s maximum group size is 256 members, while Signal groups top out at 1,000 people.<\/p>\n UkraineNOW is not alone. Telegram channels across Ukraine\u2014from news organizations, political commentators, and bloggers\u2014have all grown in recent days<\/a>, many of them through extensively posting about the war. Some of those growing the fastest, though, belong to official government channels. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy; the mayor of Kyiv, former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko; and digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov all have large Telegram channels with hundreds of thousands of members. Zelenskyy\u2019s channel had 65,000 subscribers on February 23; now it has more than 1.2 million, according to one Telegram analytics website<\/a>. Government departments and the parliament, known as the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, have all shared hundreds of messages about the war.<\/p>\n As well as promoting official messaging, Ukraine\u2019s government has also used Telegram to call for help from its citizens. Fedorov formed a government-backed \u201cIT Army\u201d of volunteer hackers<\/a> using Telegram; more than 200,000 people have signed up. People can send the government photos of suspicious symbols being left on roads and buildings\u2014\u201csuch attacks by saboteurs can be everywhere<\/a>\u201d\u2014and photos of Russian troops or military equipment<\/a> through Telegram bots.<\/p>\n Fedorov has also used his Telegram channel to share letters addressed to the CEOs of Meta, Google, YouTube, Netflix, and Apple. He asked the companies to restrict their services in Russia and crack down on the spread of misinformation and disinformation. Many of them, including Apple, have complied<\/a> to some extent.<\/p>\n While Telegram has become a vital tool for pro-democracy protests around the world, it has also hosted conspiracy theories and propaganda<\/a> due to minimal content moderation. The Ukrainian government has warned of messages flooding social media trying to damage people\u2019s morale<\/a>, including accounts asking \u201chow to get to Kyiv\u201d<\/a> and debunked claims that mobile and internet connectivity may be turned off<\/a>. \u201cRussian information terrorists broadcast a picture of an alternative reality,\u201d the Ukrainian Center of Combating Disinformation posted on its Telegram channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cSince Russia invaded, many of the claims focus on portraying Ukrainian forces as weak or that they are in retreat, have been defeated, or that Russian forces are de-Nazifying Ukraine,\u201d says Ciaran O\u2019Connor, a disinformation analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The Russian-state backed broadcaster RT and its editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan have prominent Telegram channels. \u201cThey aim to confuse and obfuscate the factual details of the conflict and attempt to sway public opinion towards Russia and Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n Pavel Durov, Telegram's Russian founder, rarely intervenes on the app\u2019s controversies but has posted about the war. \u201cTelegram channels are increasingly becoming a source of unverified information related to Ukrainian events,\u201d Durov posted on Telegram on February 27<\/a>. \u201cWe do not have the physical ability to check all channel publications for accuracy.\u201d Durov considered \u201cpartially or completely restricting\u201d Telegram in both Russia and Ukraine\u2014although quickly backtracked<\/a> after being told it was a key way people are communicating.<\/p>\n The widespread use of Telegram has provoked some security concerns; unlike WhatsApp and Signal, Telegram doesn\u2019t use end-to-end encryption by default. It is only available in specific \u201csecret chats.\u201d Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike warned of the potential for snooping on Telegram on February 25<\/a>. According to internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare, Signal has seen increased traffic in both Russia and Ukraine since the war started. On February 28, Signal traffic in the region passed Telegram for the first time<\/a> during the conflict. But while the use of Signal has increased, Cloudflare\u2019s data shows there\u2019s been no drop in demand for Telegram, suggesting people are using it to keep up to date with the rapidly unfolding events.<\/p>\n That\u2019s likely because the platform has proven effective when the Ukrainian government needs to publish official messaging to thousands of people at once. Millions of people in Ukraine already use Telegram, and the channel infrastructure is already in place to broadcast messages. \u201cWhat counts is the ability to reach the population with key information,\u201d says Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity researcher and consultant who previously acted as a cyberwarfare adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross.<\/p>\n There are still possible consequences for individuals using Telegram: People organizing their movements or who are involved in the conflict are more at risk if they don\u2019t use encrypted conversations. \u201cThis is a big problem for the more active individuals like those being involved in civil defense, or insurgency, armed opposition,\u201d Olejnik says. \u201cSuch people should better be trained in safe communication methods.\u201d While the IT Army is coordinating its public orders on Telegram, for instance, the decisionmakers picking targets use encrypted messaging.<\/p>\n