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RIO DE JANEIRO — Shortly after President Donald J. Trump was banned from Twitter earlier this year, Brazil’s like-minded leader made a call to his millions of followers on the site.

“Sign up on my official channel on Telegram,” said President Jair Bolsonaro.

Since then, Telegram, an encrypted messaging and social media platform run by an elusive Russian exile, has amassed tens of millions of new users in Brazil.

growing popularity in Brazil and elsewhere refueling In a social media ecosystem facing increasing pressure to combat fake news and polarization, by conservative politicians and commentators who have become the freest spreaders of problematic content, including disinformation.

While WhatsApp remains by far the most dominant messaging platform in Brazil, Telegram is advancing fast. By August, it was installed on 53 percent of all smartphones in Brazil, an increase from 15 percent two years ago. report.

Founded in 2013, Telegram has become a coveted tool for communicating privately by activists, dissidents and politicians, many of them in oppressive countries like Iran and Cuba.

But Brazilian government officials and experts worry that the practice could be a potent vector for lies and insults ahead of next year’s presidential election, a tense political moment in the country.

Bolsonaro, whose re-election hopes were jeopardized by his waning popularity, followed the Trump playbook and began to sow doubts about the integrity of Brazil’s voting system, raising the possibility of a controversial outcome. His groundless assertion that electronic voting machines would be fraudulent angered the opposition and the country’s top judges, who said the plethora of disinformation in Brazilian politics had permanently damaged democracy.

“We know that systemic disinformation is produced by very well-organized and funded structures,” said Aline Osório, general secretary of the Brazilian election court and managing the program against misinformation.

Ms Osório said the court has established constructive working relationships with executives of other social media companies that have become tools for misinformation campaigns. But efforts to reach Dubai-based Telegram have failed.

“Telegram has no representatives in Brazil and this has made it difficult to establish a partnership like we do on other platforms,” he said.

Telegram did not respond to a request for an interview. Press inquiries are sent via a bot on the platform.

Experts say that political content and conversations have moved significantly to Telegram in recent years. in Brazil and other countries, largely due to the app’s capacity to mass-reproduce content.

Group chats can contain up to 200,000 users, which exponentially exceeds WhatsApp’s 256 limit. WhatsApp has blocked users from forwarding messages after it came under criticism for its role in disinformation campaigns in the last election in Brazil and elsewhere.

In addition to group chats, Telegram hosts channels, a one-way mass media used by companies, artists, and politicians to distribute messages, videos, and audio files. Mr. Bolsonaro’s channel has surpassed one million followers in recent weeks, placing him among the world’s most followed politicians on the platform.

While competing apps have adopted stricter and more clearly defined policies on abuse and disinformation, Telegram’s guidelines are vague and the service takes a hands-on approach to content in individual and group chats.

This makes it a safe space for provocative figures, including politicians who have been banned from other platforms. In Brazil, the Twitter and Instagram accounts of Daniel Silveira, a lawmaker, and Allan dos Santos, a conservative journalist, have been suspended as part of the Supreme Court’s investigation into disinformation campaigns that include threats against judges.

However, Telegram remains a portal for its followers. This is Mr dos Santos raise funds call him “psychopath” for his legal defense and to justice who banned him from other sites.

“The network clearly benefits from the removal of users from other platforms,” ​​Fabrício Benevenuto, professor of computer science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, told Telegram. “Politicians have noticed that no effort has been made to remove the accounts, so it becomes an attractive network for more radical groups.”

Farzaneh Badieian internet governance specialist who publishes An article on Telegram at Yale Law School This year, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said he doesn’t want to deal with the problem of disinformation that has gone viral in any meaningful way.

“Their approaches are very erratic and very opaque,” ​​he said. “We don’t see a systematic approach to solving these problems.”

Mr. Durov left Russia in 2014 after battling efforts to censor content on the government-founded social networking site VKontakte. He said he designed Telegram himself. as an ultra-private communication tool based on the persecution he says he is living in his own country.

Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube played critical roles in Mr Bolsonaro’s stunning victory in 2018, and the far-right leader continued to rely heavily on social media to mobilize his base, attack opponents and make largely uncontroversial false claims.

But in recent months, the platforms that fueled Mr Bolsonaro’s rise have reined in him for false or misleading claims about measures to contain the coronavirus. Social media companies warned him by removing a handful of videos and tweets they deemed dangerous.

Mr Bolsonaro and his followers opposed these dismissals as forms of censorship. In September, he argued that disinformation was now a permanent feature of politics and dismissed it as a trivial issue.

“Fake news is a part of our life” said. “Who hasn’t told his girlfriend a little lie?”

Telegram received critical scrutiny for more than just its disruptive role in politics in Brazil. Investigations by news organizations revealed that it hosts illegal arms networks and to ensure the distribution of child pornography.

Brazilian lawmakers are debating laws that would require platforms like Telegram to have legal representation in Brazil or risk being banned. However, users have easily circumvented such bans by using software that allows them to hide their location in countries such as Iran and Russia.

Diogo Rais, a A professor at Mackenzie University in Sao Paulo and one of the founders of the Institute for Digital Freedom called blocking apps a “hard measure” that would be ineffective.

“We need to tackle digital challenges recognizing that our laws are from 2009 and are limited to our physical region,” he said. “The digital world has no such boundaries. This is a global challenge.”