Yahoo Finance The social media app being exploited by Hamas as a propaganda tool
Hamas terrorists watch as an explosion rocks the $1bn border wall separating Gaza from Israel’s territory.
In a video that went viral in the early hours of October 7, the terrorists press forward, charging over open ground.
Later clips show them shooting their way through a checkpoint, body cameras offering Call of Duty-style footage of their assault.
The slick propaganda tapes were shared immediately following the brutal massacre of 1,400 Israelis in settlements close to the Gaza border.
As dawn broke, Israelis checked their phones to see social media feeds flooded with horrifying videos, many of them shared and spread by Hamas’s social media accounts on Telegram.
Founded by Russian-born internet entrepreneur Pavel Durov, the private, encrypted messaging app is used by 800 million people – more than Elon Musk’s X – and has long been known for its light-touch moderation of messages and videos.
Before Hamas’s terror attack, Telegram had already served as a source of information, including videos of the most brutal combat from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Particularly popular across Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Telegram has three million users in Israel, according to market intelligence company Sensor Tower.
For much of the first month of fighting in southern Israel and Gaza, propaganda messages and videos from Hamas, designated a terror group by the UK, US and allies, spread rapidly on Telegram.
Durov, sometimes known as “Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg”, launched Telegram in 2013 with an emphasis on privacy and resisting censorship. The 39-year-old left Russia in 2014 after Moscow cracked down on his previous internet company, and is now based in Dubai.
In the first days of the war, Hamas channels pumped out footage of terrorists paragliding into Israel where they later massacred hundreds of civilians at a music festival.
The channels posted graphic images of Hamas fighters standing over the bodies of killed Israeli soldiers, or videos of them bombing tanks via drones. As Israel counterattacks, Hamas has increasingly used its social media channels to highlight videos of civilian casualties from Israeli strikes.
Initially, Durov defended his decision to not block Hamas channels, even claiming it could help protect civilians.
“Hamas used Telegram to warn civilians in Ashkelon to leave the area ahead of their missile strikes,” Durov said on October 13. “Would shutting down their channel help save lives – or would it endanger more lives?”
He also claimed Telegram did not “algorithmically promote shocking content” on its app. Users only received messages from channels they specifically follow. He claimed this made it a “unique source of first-hand information”.
“Just because terrorist content isn’t being algorithmically recommended to users doesn’t mean it can’t reach large audiences, nor that it couldn’t contribute towards radicalisation,” says Andy Burrows, an online safety campaigner.
Telegram has seen a surge in popularity in the region in the wake of the conflict. The number of average users in Israel was up 25pc compared to the four-week average, according to Sensor Tower estimates.
In the days after the terror attacks, Hamas-linked or sympathetic Telegram channels ballooned in popularity. The official account of the Al-Qassam brigades, Hamas’s military wing, added half a million followers on Telegram with minute-by-minute updates of the fighting. The official Hamas account added 100,000.
The channel Gaza Now, accused of being “Hamas-aligned” by the Atlantic Council, has nearly two million subscribers.
Yfat Barak-Cheney, director of technology and human rights at the World Jewish Congress, says: “Groups like Hamas exploit Telegram’s architecture to disseminate violent messages, skirting official bans on larger social media networks.”
Videos first shared on Telegram often rapidly spread to others such as X (formerly Twitter), Instagram or TikTok.
“Hamas has used Telegram to advance its messaging on a nearly daily basis,” says McKenzie Sadeghi, a senior analyst at NewsGuard, a news trust ratings system. “Their posts often receive hundreds of thousands of views on Telegram, which NewsGuard found are then reshared by users on other platforms.”
Rafi Mendelsohn, of Israel-based cybersecurity company Cyabra, says Hamas used Telegram to amplify its captured footage as part of its propaganda strategy.
“The fact there were so many cameras, would suggest this information warfare was a key element,” he says. These videos were then spread via fake accounts and bots across other social networks, Mendelsohn says.
After the initial flood of videos and posts from Hamas, last week Telegram finally moved to restrict several Hamas-linked channels. Such posts are banned under the app store policies of Apple and Google, where Telegram’s app is available for download.
A Telegram spokesman said it had closed “several dozen channels that contained direct calls to violence”. The spokesman added such videos “violate Apple and Google guidelines”.
While the crackdown could hamper the speed at which Hamas videos spread, the group now is looking to alternatives. The Telegraph found that channels that are now restricted on Telegram’s iPhone and Android apps were still accessible on its web-only version and sharing dozens of posts about the war each day.
Other copycat channels have also popped up to continue spreading Hamas posts on smartphones.
Meanwhile, Layla Mashkoor, of the Atlantic Council, said Hamas appeared “prepared for disrupted communications on Telegram” and was now promoting a separate app to followers.
In the UK at least, Telegram will now have to contend with stricter regulations that require it to tackle violent posts or terror content under the Online Safety Act.
MPs are also taking notice. Dame Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP, has asked several questions in Parliament about the spread of violent videos on Telegram related to the war in Ukraine.
Burrows says the new powers under the Online Safety Act “can’t come into force soon enough”.
