‘The more I see of what you call civilisation, the more highly I think of what you call savagery.’
It’s not some break towards fascism. It’s more like liberal capitalism has always had a fascist tendency and right now the western elite feels pressured everywhere so they let the mask slip and start easing in the policies of the periphery back to the core, just to keep power. This chat control is there to both allow easier crackdowns, but most of all make everybody feel that they are being watched and are less likely to start any shit against the status quo and submit, as if in a panopticon.
They primarily want it shut down because it has enabled citizen journalism that they can’t control and that is a threat to status quo. Not because people can sell drugs, do money laundering, organize terrorism or share cp on there, that’s just the excuse for it. Like it has been for every outreach against privacy and freedom of information.
Ukraine and palestine have probably been the main motivator for this push against telegram. Like Russians can share it’s view of the war to almost a billion eye pairs. Western media and adjacent political power and institutions have awoken to the fact and find it untenable when they can’t enforce media and information blockade on people. It’s not even about the western population since telegram is much more popular in the third world that it’s in the west.
Every social media that isn’t under anglo american control is a possible threat to the current global order. We have all seen this.