A new in-depth report looks at Telegram’s rise as it continues to compete with platforms like Facebook.
Based on a year of research, a new exposé from Wired tracks the rise and progression of Telegram to become the opposite of Facebook, despite the original shared objectives of their founders in creating a space free of state control or regulation.
Telegram stands out in the social media world as an outlier. Yet even with 30 employees, it generally lands in the top ten lists for world’s largest platforms, even without, until recently, a source of ongoing revenue.
The platform also is subject to virtually no content moderation, except to take down illegal pornography and calls for violence.
“At Telegram it is an article of faith, and a marketing pitch, that the company’s platform should be available to all, regardless of politics or ideology,” reads the report.
“For us, Telegram is an idea,” Pavel Durov, Telegram’s Russian founder, has said. “It is the idea that everyone on this planet has a right to be free.”
The exposé tracks Telegram’s rise from the ashes of a Facebook competitor in Russia, and also touches on the platform’s use with fringe extremist groups.
The incredibly informative article is absolutely worth a read over at Wired.
