Last week, the Telegram messenger without explanation blocked around a dozen channels specialising in OSINT investigations and fact-checking.
Among those affected was the channel of fact-checker Pavel Bannikov, as well as other Russian-language projects that had existed for years without violating the platform's rules. Thanks to an active response from the community and mass appeals to the service's support team, all blocked channels were restored.
THE SCALE OF THE BLOCKINGS AND THEIR PECULIARITIES
Channels of various sizes fell under the block — from large projects to niche publications. Pavel Bannikov, editor of "Provereno.Media" and owner of the channel "Weather Forecast | OSINT, fact-check and everything, everything, everything", noted the strange selectivity of the restrictions:
"The number of channels about OSINT on Telegram runs into the hundreds, but only about a dozen ended up in the crosshairs, which in one way or another wrote about OSINT on Russian material and mostly — in the Russian language."
The expert pointed out that both channels covering military intelligence and projects simply describing OSINT tools were affected. At the same time, large Russian-language channels with materials on hacking schemes were not subjected to blocking.
COMMUNITY REACTION AND RESTORATION OF CHANNELS
The OSINT community responded quickly to the mass blockings. Users organised appeals to Telegram's support service demanding an investigation into the situation. Bannikov commented on the turn of events:
"The community proved stronger — and flooded the official 'telega' channels with demands to sort it out. Thanks to the widespread publicity and public support, all blocked channels, including mine, became accessible again."
POSSIBLE REASONS FOR THE BLOCKINGS
According to Bannikov, the blockings could have been the result of a coordinated attack using bots. The expert suggests the selection of channels for the attack was based on someone's limited information bubble: among the blocked were Russian, Ukrainian channels, and one Kazakh project with a significant audience from Russia.
"Mass reporting, and — voilà — the algorithm did its job. I don't think this was a decision made by a human, the probability is too low," the fact-checker explained the mechanism of what happened.
CONSEQUENCES FOR THE CHANNELS
The blocking impacted the audience of the affected projects. Bannikov noted that his channel lost around 400 subscribers. As it later turned out, the system excluded not bots from the subscriber list, but real users, including people he knows personally.
The incident demonstrated the vulnerability of the OSINT community to coordinated attacks, but also showed the strength of unity among investigations professionals. The quick restoration of all blocked channels was the result of concerted community action and confirmed the importance of open dialogue between platforms and their users.