Telegram is a growing digital platform that is being used in the region and around the world. Yet, out of all major social media companies, it remains the least transparent in its content moderation and curation practices. The platform makes vocal commitments to protecting user privacy but practice shows otherwise.

Russia and Ukraine share few things in common when it comes to their respective social media environments. Following the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia banned the use of Meta’s platforms – Instagram and Facebook – in addition to the wholesale blocking of various domestic and foreign media outlets. Ukraine, for its part, blocked the Russian social network Vkontakte long before the invasion.

The Telegram platform and online news outlets have succeeded in covering the events of 2020 and 2021 very well and they were used to announce demonstrations during the peak of the protests. Thanks to them, the sense of unity and solidarity disseminated quickly among Belarusians inside the country and the diaspora abroad.

When the 2020 presidential election campaign launched in Belarus, the government authorities did not pay much attention to the enormous popularity of the online media, especially social media. Being confident in his “elegant victory” (this was the term used by the long-term head of the Belarusian Central Election Commission, Lidziya Yarmoshyna), Alyaksandr Lukashenka did not invest much effort on any inventive campaign tools. His campaign team mainly relied on the monopolised television and radio channels, and state financed newspapers.