What’s your opinion? Are you worried?
KEVIN Honestly, isn’t it?
It is obviously not good for public security that neo-Nazis, far-right militias and other dangerous groups are finding ways to communicate and organize, and that these ways increasingly involve end-to-end encryption. We have seen this happen for years, since ISIS, and it definitely makes things more difficult for public security agencies and counterterrorism officials.
At the same time, there is a real benefit in getting these extremists off conventional platforms, where they can find new supporters and take advantage of the transmission mechanics of these platforms to spread their messages to millions of potential extremists.
I’ve been thinking about it in a kind of epidemiological model. If someone is sick and at risk of infecting other people, the ideal is to remove him from the general population and place him in quarantine, even if that means putting him somewhere, like a hospital, where there are many other sick people.
It is a very bad metaphor, but you understand what I mean. We know that when they are on large, conventional platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, extremists don’t just talk to each other. They recruit. They join totally unrelated groups and try to sow conspiracy theories there. In a way, I would rather have 1,000 experienced neo-Nazis doing bad things together in an encrypted chat app than they would infiltrate 1,000 different local Dogspotting groups or something.
BRIAN I see where you are going with this!
When you open Facebook or Twitter, the first thing you see is your timeline, a general feed that includes posts from your friends. But you can also see posts from strangers if your friends reshare or like them.
When you open Signal or Telegram, you see a list of the conversations you are having with individuals or groups of people. To receive a message from someone you don’t know, that person needs to know your phone number to contact you.
So, to complete our analogy, Facebook and Twitter are essentially billions of people huddled in a huge auditorium. Encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Telegram are like large buildings with millions of people, but each person lives in a private room. People need to knock on each other’s doors to send messages, so disclosing incorrect information would take more effort. On the other hand, on Facebook and Twitter, incorrect information can go viral in seconds because people in this auditorium can hear what everyone is shouting.