The EconomistAugust 29th 2020 Business 53T
he official story is that Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s
president, won a sweeping victory. On August 9th some 4.7m
people, 80% of Belarusian voters, cast their ballots for him. Just
10% voted for Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a former English teacher
who replaced her jailed dissident husband on the ballot. But few in
the benighted country believe the official account, which is why
Belarus has seen nearly three weeks of protests demanding Mr Lu-
kashenko’s resignation.
As has become de rigueur in the 21st century, many of the de-
monstrations are co-ordinated online. One app in particular, Tele-
gram, has become a vital tool. Users share inspiring videos and
plans for marches. One message shows employees of the National
Academy of Sciences protesting in defiance of their bosses, and
proposes a rally in support. Another reminded readers that August
25th marked the 29th anniversary of Belarus’s independence from
the Soviet Union, set out the day’s celebrations, and promised a
message from Ms Tikhanovskaya.
It is not just Belarus. Telegram, with more than 400m monthly
users, has been used by Black Lives Matter protesters in America,
as well as anti-government demonstrators in Hong Kong and Iran.
Silicon Valley venture capitalists flaunt it as a symbol of fashion-
able edginess. Pavel Durov, its creator, makes no secret of his sym-
pathies. A message in his public channel, which has 356,000 sub-
scribers, shows a poster claiming that memes can “topple
regimes”. It is a sentiment straight from the internet’s idealistic
early days, when the assumption was that freedom and democracy
would flow down the wires alongside the bits and bytes. Telegram
did not respond to The Economist’s request for comment.
Although Telegram remains behind WhatsApp and WeChat,
which boast 2bn and 1.2bn monthly users, respectively, it is boom-
ing. In April it said it had added 100m users in the preceding 12
months. It has three selling points. The first is simply that it is a
rather good piece of software, slick and easy to use. It was the most-
downloaded chat app in Belarus before the protests and recently
took the top spot from WhatsApp in Russia, according to Sensor-
Tower, an app-analytics firm. As with WeChat, Telegram users can
design third-party programs to run on top of its service, letting
people while away the time with video games, quizzes and the like.
Whereas WhatsApp chats are limited to 256 participants, Tele-
gram’s user-created public channels can host unlimited numbers.
One of the most popular is “Hindi hdmovies”, which points its 6m
subscribers towards pirated copies of popular films.
Telegram’s second virtue is its promise to protect users from
governments’ prying eyes. Experts debate exactly how secure Tele-
gram is. Like WhatsApp, it offers “end-to-end encryption”, which
prevents third parties, including the app itself, from deciphering
messages. But unlike WhatsApp, this is not Telegram’s default set-
ting, and it does not work with many of the app’s features. Mes-
sages are still encrypted, but Telegram retains a copy of the key. Au-
thorities that persuade the firm to divulge that key could read a
user’s messages. (Telegram says this has never happened and that
it would resist if it did.) The app also relies on its own custom cryp-
tography rather than battle-tested code favoured by experts.
Telegram’s third, and perhaps main, attraction is that it is not
owned by Facebook (as WhatsApp is) or Tencent (the Chinese giant
which controls WeChat). The app trumpets its independence from
internet titans, which netizens view with growing suspicion. Its
business model is simple: it does not have one. It says that running
costs are covered by Mr Durov, who made a fortune with vKon-
takte, a popular Russian social-media platform he founded in- Profit, the firm declares, “will never be an end-goal”, and
“commercial interests will never interfere with our mission.” Such
claims are lent credibility by Mr Durov’s background. At vKontakte
he refused to hand over details of opposition politicians’ websites.
He was fired by the board in 2014 as part of a claimed takeover by
allies of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Mr Durov bought citi-
zenship of St Kitts & Nevis, and began work on Telegram.
However, preserving privacy and security is becoming trickier.
Encrypted chat apps are viewed with suspicion even in democra-
cies. America and Britain have repeatedly threatened to ban end-
to-end encryption, because it frustrates the work of the police and
intelligence agencies.
Autocrats, for their part, have learned how to harness chat apps
to spread misinformation, as well as genuine news. The Hong
Kong protests saw Telegram channels dedicated to posting the per-
sonal addresses of prominent dissidents. By seizing demonstra-
tors’ phones and forcing them to reveal passwords the police can
get their hands on lists of contacts to be arrested or intimidated. A
booming market for private hacking allows governments to buy
software that can bypass encryption by breaking into phones and
reading information straight off their screens. One knowledgeable
observer says it would be foolish to assume that big chat apps are
not targeted by national spy agencies. That goes for Telegram, too.
Returns from senders
If Telegram persuades users that it is both more fun and safer than
WhatsApp and WeChat, it could nibble away at their supremacy.
But for that to happen, it must first survive. It is unclear how long
Mr Durov’s money will last. Since 2017 Telegram has tried to raise
$1.7bn by selling its own cryptocurrency. America’s Securities and
Exchange Commission halted the sale on the grounds that Tele-
gram was dealing in unregistered securities and ordered it to re-
turn most of the cash to investors. That has put paid to plans for an
alternative to bitcoin that may, if boosters are to be believed, one
day supplant visa,Mastercard or WeChat’s e-payments. Telegram
thinks it can nevertheless get by even once the Durov largesse runs
out, by charging for non-essential upgrades. Prospective regime-
topplers are keeping their fingers crossed that it is right. 7Schumpeter For your eyes only
A rebellious messaging app tries to blend security and usability