For nearly two weeks, an esoteric debate has raged on X, formerly Twitter: could users concerned about privacy and security trust the messaging app Signal, or was the Telegram platform a better alternative? X’s chatbot, Grok AI, described the trending moment as “Telegram v Signal: a crypto clash”.
Signal is an app for sending end-to-end-encrypted messages to individuals and small groups. Telegram offers broadcast channels and messaging but is not end-to-end encrypted by default. Debates over their relative merits have popped up over the years, though largely within the confines of online spaces inhabited by cybersecurity, cryptography, privacy and policy geeks. This time, the conversation came to broader attention – Elon Musk’s following of 183 million – due to X’s most notorious capability: mutating isolated facts into viral conspiracy theories for the entertainment of rage-riddled crowds. As a bit player, I got a ringside seat to the manufactured controversy.
On 9 April, Uri Berliner, a longtime former editor at NPR, wrote an essay in the conservative-leaning publication the Free Press arguing that NPR had increasingly chosen to cater to a very small subset of leftwing America. Debates about NPR’s alleged lefty tendencies, and conservative calls to defund it, are also not new. This time, however, Berliner’s viral article hit a few weeks after the start of NPR’s new chief executive, Katherine Maher. Conservative activists began to dig.
Maher, it turned out, had some Bad Tweets. “Bad” is subjective, of course – they might be more precisely described as progressive tweets. Their slant made them a goldmine for people angry over Berliner’s story, and the alchemy of influencers, algorithms, and online crowds quickly turned Maher into that most hapless of online figures: the Main Character of X.
The rightwing activist and propaganda guru Chris Rufo helmed the crusade, steering the narrative from social media to rightwing media to the New York Times and back again. The online crowd called for Maher’s immediate firing.
NPR and its board, however, didn’t cave.
Every effective smear campaign takes a grain of truth, then coats it in layers of innuendo like an oyster applying nacre. For the target, distinguishing between truth and falsehood forces a difficult choice: silence, or a cascade of attempted explanations as the accusations evolve and the goalposts move.
But Rufo and other rightwingers – perhaps frustrated that they didn’t get the win of a quick public firing – moved the goalposts off the pitch of reality and into the fever swamp of conspiracy. They unearthed a 2016 tweet from a Tunisian activist insinuating that Maher, who’d worked in the country, was secretly CIA. Though she denied it and her accuser didn’t appear to comment on the matter again, Rufo pushed a blogpost on 24 April alleging that she was a “regime-change agent” who’d launched “color revolutions” in north Africa and was bringing them to America. In this new narrative, Maher wasn’t just a biased progressive; she was part of the deep state.
Rufo’s post relied heavily on a particular smear tactic: the Transitive Property of Bad People, which connects people and institutions in a daisy chain of guilt by association. The smear’s power lies in insinuation, expecting the reader to connect the dots without explicit accusations that could invite defamation suits.
What on earth does this have to do with Signal and Telegram?
Maher is on the board of the Signal Foundation. Via the Transitive Property of Bad People, everything Maher is linked to is now also suspect. And so, on 6 May – with Maher still not fired by NPR – another blogpost by Rufo appeared, the goalposts moved and the conspiracy theory deepened. The point appeared in the opening frame: “Is the integrity of encrypted-messaging application compromised by its chairman of the board?” A new laundry list of insinuations followed: Signal had a grant from the Open Technology Fund, which is sponsored by the US government. The Signal president, who’d picked Maher for the board, was also progressive, a lefty who’d previously been an equity rabble-rouser at Google.
I got an unexpected preview of this layer of innuendo earlier in the campaign when a prominent entrepreneur riled up over the matter worked me into tweet about whether Signal had been compromised: three years ago, I’d joined the board of an open-source cryptocurrency foundation aiming to power payments on Signal. This entailed no personal involvement with Signal or Maher. But I research how online narratives spread, which has landed me on the receiving end of a few rightwing smear campaigns. I was useful as a Bad Person with alleged links to the target. The entrepreneur never specified what, exactly, I could have done to Signal. It was enough that I was said to be involved.
Although the lack of specificity in these accusations should be a red flag, it instead powers the whole endeavor. Instigated by nothing more than a few vague tweets from influencers, the manufactroversy of Signal’s compromised character ricocheted across X absent any evidence.
It’s understandable that ordinary people who shared the claims found Rufo’s smear job persuasive: they trust him, dislike Maher, and the technical aspects are complex. But one person who does understand technology – X’s CEO, Elon Musk – not only saw the insinuations, but added his own on 6 May: “There are known vulnerabilities with Signal that are not being addressed. Seems odd …” He too offered no evidence. Nonetheless, accounts in his replies began to wonder about Telegram. Was it a better, anti-woke alternative? Jack Dorsey, who is tech-savvy enough to know better, also boosted the allegations.
Community notes and journalists got to work fact-checking Musk. Signal’s CEO responded, pointing out that Signal’s code is open-source and closely scrutinized by the security and privacy community. Maher, even if she were the nefarious, woke, deep-state regime-changer she was made out to be, couldn’t compromise the app if she tried. Musk’s claim had little, if any, basis in fact, but he has the power to make dubious claims the topic of discussion for millions.
Thus a viral conspiracy theory trended once again, and others used it for their ends. Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, pointed to Dorsey’s share of the Rufo article in a post promoting Telegram as “the only popular method of communication that is verifiably private”. Cryptography professors, security researchers and tech journalists wrote threads clarifying the risks of using Telegram for secure communications, and warning against Telegram’s attempt to lure activists from Signal.
The original spat about bias at NPR now seems almost quaint. The second-order manufactroversies feel so far-fetched as to be not worth bothering to refute. And yet, due to the hyper-partisan vitriol of today’s fractured reality, they have real consequences.
There are reputational costs to those ensnared in the conspiracy theories, who find it nearly impossible to convince the converted they’ve been misled. But in the case of “Telegram vs Signal: a crypto clash”, there is also risk to activists, particularly outside the US, who might switch to the less secure alternative because they’ve been misled by prominent tech heroes. Undermining trust in companies and institutions, largely to score points against an enemy, has never been easier.
So what can we do? First, support the targets of bad-faith attacks. Institutions must learn to understand how these efforts work and, rather than staying silent, should speak up promptly. More broadly, however, media literacy efforts should focus on explaining how these campaigns work, highlighting the recurring rhetorical tricks, tropes and lack of evidence. Helping others to understand and recognize the mechanics of smear campaigns will ultimately render them less effective.