New Tool Spots Hidden Fake-News Networks on Telegram Before They Spread
Researchers just tripled the list of known propaganda channels hiding in your messaging apps.
Disinformation keeps spreading across social networks — and the firing of fact-checkers from Meta and the disbanding of Twitter's Trust and Safety Council suggest the trend will keep escalating. In a new paper, researchers propose a graph-based methodology for discovering previously unknown Telegram accounts that spread disinformation. Starting from a set of verified disinformation groups, they examine their interconnections and identify new accounts contributing to the dissemination of false narratives. The approach is language-agnostic: it relies solely on structural relationships between accounts rather than analyzing message content. Using it, they identify 37 previously unknown disinformation channels — a threefold increase. They also demonstrate that Telegram channels display extremely dogmatic behavior, with up to 80% of messages labeled as propaganda, and find that misinformation on Telegram spreads within tightly interconnected clusters — in some cases with over 86K identical messages being shared to multiple channels, suggesting coordinated disinformation campaigns.
- The tool maps connections between accounts instead of reading messages, so it works in any language.
- It uncovered 37 new disinformation channels — about three times more than were previously known.
- Some channels pushed the exact same message over 86,000 times, a telltale sign of coordination.
Why It Matters
Could help platforms flag coordinated fake-news pushes faster, so fewer false stories reach your feeds and group chats.