There’s a battle brewing on 4chan and Telegram – on one side are anti-police violence and blacklivesmatter protestors. On the other side are white supremacists and alt-right trolls. And just to be clear, alt-right is the polite term for neo-nazi.
In this battle, the protestors are gravitating toward Telegram. It’s a secure private messaging service also used for group chat. Protestors have been using the platform to organise.
The alt-right have been using 4chan to organise against them. 4chan is like Reddit for neo-nazis, and users have been pushing other users to infiltrate the protestors’ Telegram channels and gather information about both the protestors and the organisers.
What’s interesting is their focus doesn’t seem to be on harassment — yet. They’re advocating for information gathering, saying “BE STEALTHY, DONT TROLL, THE MOST VALUABLE THING WE CAN GET IS INFO,”
But based on typical 4chan group behaviours, this usually turns into doxxing — that is, the publication of protestors names, phone numbers, addresses, etc. Targets of the information gathering also appear to include so-called “safe houses”.
Protestors are attempting to counter the insurgency. On one protest channel — The BLM Revolution of 2020 — which has nearly 9,000 users — its moderators attempted to reach out to – quote – “the fascists who are watching this channel” – and to appeal to their better nature.