Telegram had truly hit a nerve. The place that had been such a reliable safe haven for the far right was becoming unignorably hostile. That said, some of the community’s distress signals sounded a lot like their post-Christchurch prepping amid increasing removals on platforms like Discord:
“We will be experiencing a potential purge of Telegram content coming up. This warning goes to everyone out there who has channels, please forward these messages, create backups, and we’ll have to see what happens.”
Within these messages was an implicit admission of how reliant they were on Telegram. When neo-Nazis and white supremacists left their dispersed array of chan boards and other platforms for Telegram, it was like leaving behind a rickety old car for the USS Voyager. Telegram had it all: the safety of encryption, the ability to archive large collections of content, versatile channel and chat group features, and beyond. Everything they ever needed was now on one platform, where they could (and did) centralize and strengthen, just as al Qaeda and ISIS did.
Where does the far right go from here?
[…]
Source: Neo-Nazis Are Running Out of Places to Hide Online | WIRED