Immediately after that arrest A warning from Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, viewed more than 85,000 times, began circulating in far-right circles in Germany: “Back up your Telegram data as soon as possible and clean up your account.”
Message from Kim DotcomThe German founder of the now-defunct digital piracy website Megaupload is facing extradition from New Zealand and is understood to face punishment for illegal internet activity.
Telegram users may have reason to fear after French authorities throw the book at Durovaccused him of complicity in crimes committed on the app, including sharing child pornography and drug trafficking. If Durov can be held responsible for crimes committed on the app, then so can the criminals who commit them, the logic goes.
Researchers at Germany’s Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS) monitor some 3,000 channels and 2,000 groups linked to German far-right and conspiracy movements. Users are known to post racist and anti-Semitic hate speech, and some groups include Nazi symbols, deny the Holocaust and call for violence, openly flouting Germany’s strict criminal code. But a mass exodus from the platform, where groups have spent the past five years building a global infrastructure for extremism and offline protests, would be the equivalent of starting from scratch online.
“If you’re a terrorist or extremist, you’re going to take the path of least resistance, and in this particular case, that probably means Telegram,” Adam Hadley, founder and CEO of the UN-backed Tech Against Terrorism, told WIRED.
Durov’s arrest is a wake-up call for Telegram, which has suddenly found itself in the crosshairs of European law enforcement and regulators. The app beloved by neo-Nazis is facing an existential threat, and they’re not sure what to do about it.
A ‘Bridge Technology’
Alarm quickly spread on Saturday when Durov was arrested. Just 90 minutes after French media reported that Durov’s private jet had been intercepted by authorities at Paris’ Le Bourget Airport, a far-right channel posted that his arrest “may have political reasons and be a tool to access the personal data of Telegram users.”
Channel associated with Reichsbürger movementbelieved that Germany was not a sovereign state and was still occupied by the Allied powers. German police foiled their coup attempt in 2022, discovering a stash of gold and cash worth more than half a million dollars, along with hundreds of guns, knives, ballistic helmets, and ammunition.
Similar messages began circulating on the app. That night, Austrian extremist Martin Sellner wrote—the translation here is via Google Translate—that “the ‘free West’ is shutting down the simulation of democracy. All media channels may soon collapse. Will Musk be arrested next?” The message has been viewed more than 40,000 times, according to estimates from TGStat, a Telegram analytics tool that provided the view count cited in this story.
Sellner was banned from entering Germany in March for being a keynote speaker at the AFD’s infamous November conference. Potsdam Conference. There, he presented a plan to members of Germany’s rising far-right party for mass deportations once it comes to power. The AfD won Sunday in state elections in the former East Germany, giving the far-right its first historic victory since World War II.
