'Digital battlefield': Embattled app Telegram offers academics 'incredible insight' into conflicts

well there are more questions than answers at the stage about the arrest of DV and to shed some light on this story I'm pleased to be joined on the program Now by Dr Melanie garon she works on Cyber policy at the Tony Blair Institute for Global change and at University College London good afternoon to you thanks for joining us good afternoon what is your understanding first of all of why doov has been arrested because the Kremlin for one is saying they don't know yeah there's not a lot of information out there we know that of the new French agency that was set up in November has arrested him and it's on the basis of content moderation violations likely um you know there've been different opinions some of that with extremist content some of that is exploitation of minor content but that is the most that we know there's not been a clear statement issu of exactly what it is well it's worth saying though that telegram has issued a statement saying that it does abide by EU laws including the Digital Services act on moderation they've said as well that doov has nothing to hide but given that it seems that there was a possibility he was arrested it does beg the question why he' touched down in France at all U it is a really good question and a lot of people are again if you go to tell and you go to some of the haist form say uh of course there's a compacity the is he going to give some information it could be that he wants to uh engage and wipe the Slate lead we do know that telegram does engage in moderation policies I believe in April they issued a statement where they removed about 66,000 accounts associated with a particular exploitation of mind so although there's a lot of content in there it's not actually a forum that's free entirely of any moderation well let's talk a little bit about how the platform operates because it's not an app that everybody might be familiar with but it is enormous isn't it it's got something like 900 million users every month it operates quite differently to messaging apps like WhatsApp it's popular with journalists but it's also popular with extremists of all kinds of different flavors why would you say the platform is so attract I and so popular with particular groups of people uh yes it's had an interesting R and actually it's had a meteoric rise since uh the Russian invasion of Ukraine and that was particularly because content was pushed out of some of the normal social media Network which led to this massive evolution of telegram being used and so let's just take from the Russian side for instance from 6 16 billion views in 2021 for some of the top Russian channels we're talking about up to 109 billion views by 2023 that is stratospheric right and it's been used by both legitimate and illegitimate channels as well so it's a bit of a love to haate relationship because in the sense that uh legitimate news networks and able to get information uh into Russia have also been using as an alternative source so it's but at the same time you've noticed we've got activist we've got private military company groups using it as well as those State based influences both across news networks and other ways that today that conflicts have become both physical and digital so there's a digital Battlefield to every single physical conflict you talk about a digital Battlefield particularly of course in the context of the Russia Ukraine war where it is used extensively telegram It's associated of course with the spread of information on these channels is it also used to spread disinformation fake news um absolutely and it's used to amplify information and it does have not great sort of Bot sets as well slightly different from the other types of opty across other information channels that can active with has seen different types ofation networks usual different kinds of communication being Amplified including conspiracy theories including all the whole range of information speak what kind of impact do you think dv's arrest particularly if it continues perhaps if he's charged will have on how the app is used in places like Ukraine and in Russia it will be really interesting I mean there lot of you there's been a big backlash saying that this does limit free speech and it will be as I said it is a double A SW because it's given us also incredible insights to what's going on uh within the conflict particularly as you've said for journalists for academic research people to to be able to reach Beyond it as is the case with any situation if it's not telegram we'll see a shift to other Ming networks that might be even harder uh to access things like signal possibly whether it's Discord but there there will always be a clever entrepreneur and even clever malicious user that will find a different mechanism by which communicate Dr Melanie garon great to get your perspective thanks very much thank you