At the beginning of the year, the Ukrainian informational environment was shaken with the headlines about the denouncing of the Telegram-channel network with the national and local scale created and curated, according to the statements of Security Service of Ukraine, by Russian intelligence. These channels had disinformative and fake materials that were similar to the Russian propaganda messages. After this piece of news, the media paid more attention to the Ukrainian Telegram environment, but a few of them notice the real danger of that social network, about which this article is.
Politics is always surrounded by the plume of conundrums, rumors, and conspiracies. Such a thing is not only one region phenomenon, but global. In the United States, it finds its’ dimension in social media and imageboards. On Jan. 6, we saw the activity peak of the conspiracy movement members – most of those who tried to take the Capitol on that day was precisely on such platforms and groups all around the Internet. It seems that Washington D.C. is too far from us, but it is closer than we can think.
The Ukrainian political Telegram channels fulfill the exact branch of rumors and conspiracy theories. In one of his interviews, the press secretary of Russia’s president Dmitriy Peskov said that such internet formats are popular in Ukraine and Russia because the politics in the Soviet Union was discussed mainly in the kitchens in secret. That is why the anonymous political Telegram-channels can be considered modern alternatives to such “kitchen talks,” which makes them extremely popular.
Such channels use fakes, disinformation and try to show the op-ed as the absolute truth with no options and reasons to argue. They judge the alternative views that do not correlate with the opinion of editors, moderators, and channel owners. And as Ukrainian politics hides many essential details behind closed doors, people want to believe in mythical insight that is told by another anonym from the internet more and more.
In addition to that, Telegram justifies the activity of such channels with “freedom of speech” by ignoring the violations of the platform’s rules from their side. The latest research of the Telegram environment shows its radical character. For the typical users, the ads of channels with the humiliation of some social groups, data leaks, porn, and violent content became normal. Furthermore, the platform’s administration is not hurrying up to solve the issue – the platform founder Pavel Durov condemned the actions of Facebook, Twitter, and Google towards the Donald Trump accounts but blocked channels with the deanonymization of Russian police officers who violently were stopping protests in the country.
But the carelessness of the network’s administration, mutual threats, and offenses are just a half of the cup. Usually, politicians in power stay away from such formats or were present in them in secret and without any excessive hype. But now we can see the involvement of the Ukrainian power representatives in the activity of Telegram channels. Also, we can see how the current power creates similar anonymous channels for the fight of such an informational battlefield. As a result, instead of the honest and fair battle with the help of truth and facts for our better lives, we see how power elites pay too much attention to these “Telegram beefs” and pick formats that push the use of truth far away. That is why it is hard to define who is who.
The situation has to be changed. If it is not, it can lead to consequences similar to the events that happened in the US. The issue of anonymous Telegram channels, obviously, needs legal regulation. With that, the solution has to be genuinely rational not to damage the national security system and meet the natural right to search, get and share the information guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It is evident that after everything said, some may think about the total ban of the messenger in Ukraine, but this total ban will not be effective – the VPN technologies will still be giving access to the network, and the content will migrate from it to other platforms. Instead, we have the cause not to control the media but instead to regulate them for the sake of our common safety and better informational hygiene.
Talking about the problem, we have to start from the urgency of the Ukrainian laws’ broad update. Its foundation lays the Information Law enacted in 1992, which is hopelessly outdated in many moments. Without any doubts, there is the need for reforms – that is why in December 2019 – January 2020, there were two media bills registered in Verkhovna Rada – #2693 created by the ruling 245-member Servant of the People faction in parliament at the behest of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko, and the alternative one – #2693-1 formed by a group of MPs from the 22-member European Solidarity faction led by Mykola Kniazhytskyi. Both of these bills have their pros and cons, but they lack the current understanding of the modern media markets and push the online media (and Telegram is in that category) to the blindspot of the legal system.
The Ukrainian government has to create the foundation for broader responsibility of political Telegram channels owners for its content and its influence on the country’s life. We can follow the example of Latvia for that – they already have the law against fake news. It allowed arresting the owners of a few pro-Russian media platforms for the publication of propaganda and disinformative materials.
Furthermore, we have to draw a straight line between the channels with authors who openly and non-anonymously share their thoughts on Ukrainian affairs and channels where personal opinion is shown as the absolute truth and is shared with disrespect others by the anonymous sources. It has to be taken into account during the creating process for such regulative law. That is why it has to include the rule with which channels with more subscribers than some limited amount (mentioned in the law and determined by different factors that change with the time flow) must have a broader responsibility for the content they upload. If there are disinformative and fake materials on such channels, they may be blocked, and their owners must be arrested.
Seeing everything said, without any doubt, the timeless issue of balance between needs of the state and freedom of speech for a person will soon reappear again in parliamentary talks. Yes, the solutions are not perfect and have to be carefully analyzed before they are implemented. They can even make the Ukrainian internet environment and Ukrainian politics more structured, fair, and, generally speaking, better.
Artur Koldomasov and Bohdan Myronenko are experts of ADASTRA think tank.
