How to Create an Anonymous Political Telegram Channel (and Make Money From It)

A step-by-step guide

As part of the "digitalization" drive and the course toward a "state in a smartphone," anonymous Telegram channels have begun to replace "Antikor," "ORD," "Prokurorskaya Pravda" and other sites from the "toilet tank" category. "Legitimny," "Rezident," "Sheptun," "Zhenshchina s Kosoy" and some fifty other "insiders" have taken on the role of platforms for "leaks" and "kompromat" on Telegram, leaving traditional sites with little in the way of value advantages beyond the ability to influence Google search results.

I see no point in going into the causes and history of this phenomenon: the topic has been chewed over thoroughly. What is surprising is something else: many people who seem intelligent take publications on Telegram channels as a semi-reliable source of information and form their political picture of the world on that basis. 

Over the past six months, I have witnessed situations in which serious and important people in serious and important offices discussed publications from anonymous Telegram channels just as seriously and accepted them as a source worthy of attention. I have received even more questions from journalists and members of the parliamentary corps about "how this works" and "who might be behind them."

As far as I am concerned, the topic is not worth a fig, but given that the obvious and fairly primitive technology seems not so obvious to many, and that the situation in which people making state decisions let low-grade information into their minds and rely on it seems frightening in turn, I have decided to write this column in the form of a step-by-step recipe.

Step 1. Create a Telegram channel

Come up with a name, pick a picture, throw together a description in a hurry: here everything is simple. Leave a contact for feedback, for example an email address on an exotic mail service such as ProtonMail, with a claim to be a DarkNet user. 

Step 2. Create the illusion of readership

Buy several thousand subscribers to start, and with them several thousand views. Readers will be more willing to subscribe to a channel that visibly enjoys demand than to a channel with a few dozen viewers. 

Step 3. Create the illusion of exclusive information

And where do you get this information? It is not difficult, and you do not necessarily need competent sources for it. What you need is to start systematically monitoring the news agenda (interviews, comments from officials, dull briefings); you read, look for hidden meanings, fill in the gaps and broadcast it with a template preface: "Our sources in the Office of the President/Foreign Ministry/SBU/Kremlin/On the Moon report..." You choose the source based on mood. 

For example, if the foreign minister tells a journalist that the next meeting in the Normandy format may take place in April, the information should be presented like this: "A source in the Office of the President said that preparations are underway for a Normandy meeting. It could take place as early as April." You can supplement the publication with some completely obvious routine, with a claim to awareness: "At the moment we cannot say the exact date, as coordination with all participants in the Normandy format is underway." 

Telegram channels are capable of giving media a technical head start: they allow information to be delivered instantly and directly to every reader, so your post will be read faster than the long and boring interview with the foreign minister on the so-called Left Bank gets published. Likewise, no reader will look up and compare timing: who voiced some piece of information and how much earlier. On the contrary, if an interested reader sees this information first on your channel and only then in the minister's interview, he will conclude that your source was right.

Step 4. Create the illusion of credibility for the information you publish

You can make a person believe any nonsense if you repeat it many times with a confident face. In any unclear situation, repeat like a mantra "our source has once again been confirmed." For example: "Andriy Yermak has just publicly confirmed our information, saying..." Whether or not that person actually gave this information, or gave something quite the opposite, does not matter at all: the audience will remember only the repeated mantra at the level of "wow, this channel's insider information is really being confirmed."

Step 5. Create the illusion of influence 

You have already created the illusion of exclusive and time-tested information. Now is the time to work on the illusion of influence. To do this, you need to show that you are so influential that they are now trying to fight you.

Regularly write: "The Office of the President is developing a plan to fight anonymous Telegram channels," "The head of the SBU has just convened a meeting and set the task of finding the authors of the channel," "The president has instructed the creation of a working

group to fight..." Whether it happened or not, what difference does it make? The Office of the President or the head of the SBU will not refute the words of an anonymous channel. 

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Bravo, you have created an anonymous political Telegram channel. You are read and discussed in political circles, and sometimes quoted by seemingly serious media outlets. Now you can think about a payment system, set a price for advertising and monetize your resource.